# All Questions

1k views

### What happens to entropy after hashing?

What happens to entropy after hashing? Suppose you have a key with entropy $k$. Can entropy $k$ be increased by hashing the key?
651 views

### Can we ensure the security of a crypto-algorithm and -implementaton against acoustic cryptanalysis?

Like people always say: “Attacks only get worse…” — which is why I'm asking early. I have been reading the paper “RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis” published December 18, ...
400 views

### How can uniformity of hash functions (e.g. SHA-256) be proved?

In reading about the Bitcoin protocol I noticed how much its proofs-of-work apparently depend on uniformity of the SHA-256 hash function. And so presumably do many other applications. How do ...
383 views

### Brute Force on 3DES with Reduced Keyspace and Unknown IV

I'm trying to brute force a 3DES problem given a reduced keyspace (ie I know the first half of the key) but with an unknown IV. The code decrypts to plaintext. My first thought was that I could set ...
141 views

### Is this algorithm demonstrating “proof of work”

Is this algorithm demonstrating proof of work? This is a algorithm where a "token" is combined with a time stamp and then a cryptographic hash is generated from the combination, next the objective is ...
322 views

### Can $r$ and $s$ from an ECDSA signature be negative numbers?

I have an ECDSA implementation in Mathematica over secp256k1 and $r$ and $s$ are always positive numbers. But if you encode them as bytes, the most significant byte can be over ...
141 views

### Calculate entropy of key derived from PBKF2 function

I am using PBKF2 to derive a encryption key from a password. suppose entropy of my password is y and my PBKF2 function has x number of iterations. So how to calculate the entropy of finale key derived ...
319 views

### Is SSL broken? If so, what can I do about it? [closed]

But recently, with the scandals about the (in)filtrations, I read that the NSA (and of course others, but I'm not particularly worried about NSA) is able to break SSL and track your data. It is true? ...
593 views

### Guessing encryption algorithm based on key and ciphertext

Is it possible to tell which encryption algorithm was used, assuming I have a key and a encrypted text? To not complicate the situation let assume we are speaking about symmetric algorithms only. ...
2k views

### How to perform authentication without central server in P2P?

How can one be sure that the man who you're talking with is the one who you think he is? i.e. How can one perform authentication in P2P network without a central trust server or Certificate Authority? ...
153 views

### How to use HKDF to combine two keys

I have heard that to combine two keys HKDF is better than using XOR function. But if you look at the HKDF RFC I could not figure out how to use it for concatenating two keys. What I can see is HKDF ...
1k views

### Pollard’s Rho Method

I can't get my head around Pollard’s Rho Method for solving discrate log problem I have read in a book: The basic idea is to pseudorandomly generate group elements of the form α^i · β^j ...
218 views

### Outsourcing arbitrary computations securely

Consider the following scheme. Alice wants Bob to make some computations for her, but she doesn't want to reveal the data on which he's going to do it. So, she encrypts the data, sends them to Bob, he ...
83 views

287 views

### RSA exhibits symmetrical properties — is it possible to form a cryptanalytic attack?

This question is broken into two sections really: Symmetry in RSA I have been analyzing raw RSA and I have noticed some interesting symmetrical properties of the algorithm. Assume that $M$ is a ...
6k views

### Calculation of time to crack SHA-256 hash

A problem is given: 1 million users are authenticated with 9-digit PIN codes (e.g. 343534643). The PIN values are stored as hash values in a database. The hash is SHA-256, and is computed as: ...
391 views

### Would it be possible to create a game where one would need to decrypt a simple encryption?

This might sound pretty weird, but I was thinking of a game a person could play alone with a pen and paper. I got this idea where the person would write a random four letter string on a paper, and ...
451 views

### Attacks against El Gamal private key

El Gamal encryption involves picking $(p,g,b)$ which is our public key. We compute $b=a^x$ $mod$ $p$. Here, $x$ is the private key which we don't know. What are some efficient and strong algorithms ...
84 views

### Authentication mechanism for low memory, low computing power device

I am looking for an authentication mechanism that works best with low memory, low computing power devices. I came across a paper "A Practical Zero-Knowledge Protocol Fitted to Security Microprocessor ...
379 views

### What exactly is inside a private key?

May sound stupid to many, but I would like to have some pointers on what exactly is contained inside a private key. I have decent understanding of public/private keys/certificates (have created them ...
197 views

### What does pseudo pre-image of a hash function mean?

So finding a pre-image means given the hash value, one tries to find a message that gives this value using the function's standard IV. What about pseudo-preimage?
478 views

### Hierarchical Encryption

Is there a way to setup a hierarchical encryption using public key encryption? Let's say a higher level user can decrypt messages encrypted by lower level users. Is that possible? I guess it is only ...
164 views

### How would using only one s-box affect security of Blowfish?

Schneier says: Fewer and smaller S-boxes. It may be possible to reduce the number of S-boxes from four to one. Additionally, it may be possible to overlap entries in a single S-box: entry 0 ...
3k views

### Is AES still secure considering all this NSA/Snowden scandal? [duplicate]

Im trying to understand if nowadays using AES is secure or not, after reading some arguments on Schneier’s blog (to be more exact, a comment to “The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet”) ...
270 views

### Increased security weaknesses when truncating SHA1

Given the following preconditions: A plaintext A (~512bit length), that is hashed by using SHA-1 and truncated to (the first) 64 bits. I know both, the plaintext and the truncated hash, and want ...
535 views

### Two-timing a one-time pad [duplicate]

Is a one-time pad still breakable on a depth of 2+ if the plaintext is completely random? I'm assuming this idea is wrong, mostly because it occurred to me, but let me walk you through my logic so ...
1k views

Consider the pairing $e: G_1*G_2 \to G_t$. Why we are mapping element from group $G_1$ and group $G_2$ to an element in $G_t$. How are they used in cryptography? What advantages do they provide?