# All Questions

73 views

### How to generate the APA SBox?

I am trying to generate the S-Box provided in the Affine Power Affine paper (PDF) but I'm not sure I understand it fully. The essence of the paper is this: ...
85 views

### Authenticated EC key exchange without a signing/signature scheme?

From my little understanding of EC-based authenticated key exchange protocols, I believe that it is not possible for authenticated key exchange without a signing/signature scheme. Is this correct? ...
49 views

### DHKE choice of private keys

In some literature it is written that the private key should be chosen random from {2,3, ..., p-1} and in some it says {2,3, ..., p-2} I guess p-1 is a weak private key, but why is that so? The ...
56 views

### Are there equivalent IVs in DES/CBC?

I'm playing around with the CryptoPP library with DES/CBC and I've noticed that for some sets of data, if I decrypt the ciphertext with Key1, IV1, I get a good cleartext result -- but if I decrypt the ...
82 views

### Value of S and r in Fiat-Shamir Protocol

In the book Cryptography and Network Security by Forouzan,in chapter 14, Fiat-Shamir protocol, its mentioned that two large prime numbers p and q are chosen and kept secret. However n=p*q is made ...
50 views

### Errata for NIST SP 800-63

I'm looking through the latest version of NIST SP 800-63, and there is a table (Table A.1) in the Appendix that supposed give the "entropy" of a password for a 94 character alphabet for various ...
115 views

### CTR_DRBG versus OFB_DRBG

As far as I know, in the development of ANSI X9.82, there was consideration of OFB_DRBG, a pseudorandom number generator based on block ciphers like CTR_DRBG, but it appears to have been rejected of ...
124 views

### (Simple) Tool for analysing performance (speed in particular) of cryptographic hash function?

I am doing some research for which I intend to insert some (external) function in different cryptographic hash functions and I would like to analyse how the insertion of this extra code in the hash ...
157 views

### KDFs for symmetric encryption master key & serial number

Let's assume that I generate a high entropy AES master key (through /dev/random for example) and I want to derive it with a fixed-length serial number (12345 for instance). The derived key is used to ...
109 views

### How does the certificate authority generate a signature F?

E=encrypt(K,M) - is message M encrypted with key K gives encrypted text E M=decrypt(K,E) - is encrypted text E decrypted with key K gives message M KCA−pub,KCA−priv - is the private-public key pair ...
59 views

### difference between soundness in ZKPoK and special soundness for sigma proofs

What is the difference between soundness in ZKPoK and special soundness for sigma proofs?
86 views

### Will ANY prior knowledge assist in determining contents of a SHA1 hash?

I am working on a project testing a hash that protects some data, and I've already eliminated hash length extension attacks as a possible point of compromise, and I'm trying to educate myself on all ...
506 views

### Decrypt AES-encrypted data with another key

Here is a plain question, all filled with pseudo-real data :) We have a string: "hello" and two keys for AES: GoodKey and BadKey. We encrypt our string with GoodKey, and receive something like ...
1k views

### Key sizes supported by 3DES

I read about 3DES encryption but I don't understand exactly what the specific meaning of key size is. For example I found that 3DES supports 64, 128, 192, and 256 bits key size. What are all the ...
111 views

### Regarding NTRU homomorphic properties

NTRU has some homomorphic properties modulo q, supporting both addition and multiplication. Due to its nature, it cannot support many of them. My main focus currently is in the addition, so the ...
123 views

### NTRU Encryption

It's using Euclidian inverse. Can you show it step by step? $$N=7, q=11, a = 3+2X^2 -3X^4 +X^6$$ the inverse of $a \pmod {11}$ is $$A=-2+4X+2X^2 +4X^3 -4X^4 +2X^5 -2X^6$$ How do we compute $A$?
112 views

### Key Confirmation Attack [Key Distribution Center (KDC)]

Okay this is how I understood it according to this: Alice $A$ establishes a connection to $KDC$ and prepares for session key Exchange $k_{ses}$ $A$ encrypts the request with her key $k_A(A, B)$ ...
96 views

### Is it safe to prefix the a key with a known value?

Almost every encryption algorithm is based on a secret key. I wonder when the algorithm is considered safe, does that also imply that I can prefix (or suffix) the key with a known value, as long as ...
36 views

### Determining nonce between unsynced systems

It's my first venture into cryptography, and I'm struggling with how to use a nonce in an encryption standard between two digital radios. The two radios support AES encryption, only requiring a ...
183 views

### Problem with testing MD5 collisions

I am trying to test MD5 collisions presented in “Collisions for Hash Functions MD4, MD5, HAVA” (PDF) by Xiaoyun Wang, Dengguo Feng, Xuejia Lai, Hongbo Yu; 2004. I wrote a PHP script to test it, but ...
148 views

### Koblitz encoding a message to a point, what is the “associated auxiliary base parameter”?

I am looking at the Koblitz method for encoding a message as an elliptic curve point. The first step given in the paper I'm reading is: "Choose an elliptic curve and its associated auxiliary base ...
67 views

### How to choose the integer m in the general number field sieve (GNFS)?

Given an integer you want to factor $N$, GNFS starts by selecting a monic irreducible polynomial $f \in \mathbb{Z}[X]$ and an integer $m$ such that $f(m) \equiv 0 \text{ mod } N$. In practice, if $m$ ...
139 views

### How does ccrypt work?

On many Linux/GNU distributions CCrypt (ccrypt) by Peter Selinger is available as a command line utility to encrypt files. How does the protocol work and is it ...
224 views

### How does knowing the factorization of N help to obtain the secret?

Assuming $x=a^2 \pmod n$ and knowing $x$, $p$, $q$ how is it possible to obtain $a$?
87 views

### Send an encrypted question and return answer without decryption

Oke bear with me for a minute. Once upon a time someone mentioned a hypothetical way where you would send an encrypted question to Google and Google would return an answer without decrypting it. As ...
1k views

### Multiple private keys for single public key

I am currently working in security in mobile ad-hoc networks. I have several clusters, and I want to send some data encrypted with its public key, from the cluster head to the cluster members. I ...
278 views

### Is cryptanalysis of CTB-Locker really impossible?

It seems that CTB-Locker make a lot of victims nowadays, and yet, the full encryption scheme of it is now publicly known [1,2]. Would any of you could find a weakness to exploit in this encryption ...
157 views

### IV's for different AES encryption modes

I wanted to know if my understanding is correct! I have been reading up on aes encryption and modes(specifically CTR and CBC) and it took me sometime to understand the concept of IV. If the IV is ...
71 views

### How to store and use a Cryptographic Seed in a database [closed]

Companies such as Barclays use cryptographic seeds (for their PINsentry system), RSA do the same for RSA SecurID, but how do they safely secure the seeds in the database. With passwords you just hash ...
53 views

### How does the attacker include input before compression and encryption in CRIME?

I have read this article about the CRIME attack against TLS and SPDY. The article says that: What is not yet clear is how the attacker is including their input in the source material before it ...
202 views

### Symmetric mutual authentication with client using a derived secret

I'm attempting to find a client/server authentication protocol that allows the client and server to authenticate each other when the client doesn't know the server secret but does have a sensitive key ...
84 views

### Pseudorandom function library [closed]

I'm wondering if there is any library supporting pseudo-random function, so I can specify the key length and output domain. Is it correct that I need to use a block cipher for this purpose? Any ...
55 views

### Can a tree hash with leaf-size of 1 byte support verification of content with elided ranges, at a cost of at most 2 supplied internal-node hashes?

Perhaps someone can confirm my intuition: A tree hash with leaves of size 1 (for example Blake2 in a tree-hash mode) would of course not be very efficient. But it seems that it might be a suitable ...
149 views

### Diffie-Hellman Application

Alice and Bob want to perform a Diffie-Hellman key exchange using the group $G$, a primitive root $g$, Alice’s secret key $k_A$ and Bob’s secret key $k_B$. In each case below compute the element of ...
461 views

### CBC-MAC: is it secure to authenticate a fixed length ciphertext?

Suppose I have a fixed-length arbitrary ciphertext. To authenticate such ciphertext: I generate a random AES Key $K_{auth}$. Then I compute the CBC-MAC Tag of the ciphertext with $K_{auth}$. ...
234 views

I have recently been playing with Chacha20-Poly1305 with libsodium, and all of the examples state the additional data portion of the tag is stored in plaintext when encrypted. But from what I can tell ...
80 views

### Can you exchange a shared key without any hardness assumptions?

Imagine that P=NP, and one way functions don't exist. Can two people end up with a random shared key of arbitrary length, if every exchange is public? They have true RNGs, and know who they are ...
49 views

### Automatic generation of secure passwords with the least inconvenience for a user

I'm working on a web site for a private company that should allow them to upload files, which will be later retrieved by their affiliates. The site will be available from a public Internet using ...
107 views

### ElGamal and Schnorr groups

As I gather, a normal practice for choosing a cyclic group for ElGamal key generation is to find a safe prime $p$ and use a multiplicative cyclic group with modulus $p$ and order $q = (p-1)/2$. ...
172 views

### Simple message authentication code

I used to figure that message authentication codes function like digital signatures: a hash of a message is calculated and then encrypted with a secret key. To verify the authenticity of a message, ...
505 views

### Is it an example of bilinear pairing?

Consider a bilinear pairing $e: G_1 \times G_2 \rightarrow G_T$. Let's assume, $G_1 = G_2 = G_T = (\mathbb{Z}_n,+)$, i.e. additive group of integer modulo $n$ and $e(x,y) = xy$ mod $n$. Isn't it an ...
178 views

### open source whitebox-crypto implementation

I am trying to code a simple WBC situation to help my understanding about white-box cryptography. Details: I have 2 programs, a "server" and a "client", the server utilises caesar cipher (key = 2) ...
58 views

### Confused with the role of AES round keys

AES works when each plaintext block is arranged in a 4x4 array of bytes called states. State goes through 10 rounds of encryption consisting of 4 operations: bytesub, shiftrow, mix columns and add ...
51 views

### TimeStamp in Cache-time attacks on AES [closed]

I have recently read about AES cache timing attacks. More specifically, I read Daniel Bernstein paper Cache-timing attacks on AES. I have a question about the code in Appendix A: ...
196 views

### What is the importance of adding round key in AES

I know this may not be the place to ask this but I have found it difficult to find an answer to this question. I know the steps of the AES encryption algorithm but I am finding it difficult to ...
447 views

### What is the algorithm behind PasswordDeriveBytes?

Microsoft has created an implementation of PBKDF1 in the PasswordDeriveBytes class. It can however generate more bytes than PBKDF1, which is limited to the number ...
279 views

### How to roll my own hardware RNG?

I am considering building a hardware RNG myself using cheap parts. Is this a good idea and safe enough? Random sources: amplified Zener noise from one randomly chosen ...
79 views

### Post processing of AAD and len A||C in a hardware AES GCM implementation

I'm new to GCM and I need to implement it in hardware, using FPGA. The data bus is 640 bits, so I will use 5 adder/multiplier blocks in parallel. The message size and AAD size are constant. My design ...
130 views

### Luby-Rackoff on Feistel ciphers [closed]

On page 46 of these lecture notes, it seems to say that if we have a Feistel cipher, and plaintexts $(L_0, R_0)$ and $(L_0^*, R_0^*)$ with corresponding encryptions, then we can determine the key? But ...
184 views

### test vectors for 3DES seem to in fact be testing DES - not 3DES

NIST SP 800-20 Appendix A has what presumably are supposed to be test vectors for 3DES except almost all of the test vectors utilize 8-byte keys and not the 24-byte keys that 3DES is supposed to have. ...

15 30 50 per page