# All Questions

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### Is it possible to create an easy to use encryption/decryption method that will never be comprimised?

In the comments of the question "Why programming languages don't provide simple encryption methods?" the following statement was made: A well thought out, tested and understood standard that has ...
764 views

### Is ISAAC considered secure as a cryptographic random number generator?

The ISAAC site claims it is secure, but I wasn't aware of any trusted 3rd party sources that verified its security.
1k views

### Related-key attacks on AES

According to Wikipedia: Related-key attacks can break AES-192 and AES-256 with complexities $2^{176}$ and $2^{99.5}$, respectively. What are the requirements for these attacks (i.e how many ...
243 views

### AESManaged Trade Compliance Issue in United States

I am currently using AESManaged encryption for my silverlight application. Does AESManaged encryption have a severe trade compliance issue in Bureau of Industry and Security in terms of shipping the ...
12k views

### How can I use asymmetric encryption, such as RSA, to encrypt an arbitrary length of plaintext?

RSA is not designed to be used on long blocks of plaintext like a block cipher, but I need to use it to send a large message. How can I do this?
2k views

### ElGamal: Multiplicative cyclic group and key generation

Here on the ElGamal wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElGamal_encryption Alice generates an efficient description of a multiplicative cyclic group G, of order q, with generator g. How ...
1k views

### Does AES-CTR require an IV for any purpose other than distinguishing identical inputs?

I'd like to encrypt files deterministically, such that any users encrypting the same plaintext will use the same key and end up with the same ciphertext. The ciphertext should be private as long as ...
289 views

### In storing passwords in a database should I use a per-application salt in addition to a per-secret salt?

Assuming that the salts are sufficiently long (16 random chars) is there any advantage in using a per-application salt in addition to a per-secret salt when storing hashed passwords in a database? ...
1k views

### How can I make my cipher show the avalanche effect?

I am a beginner in cryptography. I designed an password based encryption-decryption algorithm, which uses a random salt and a password to encrypt a message. I'm using SHA-512 for hashing, matrix ...
271 views

### How does one design a traffic analysis resistant protocol?

I'm curios about protocols which leak considerable personal information, like instant messaging exposing the contacts relation. How does one make an instant messaging protocol which is resistant to ...
166 views

### Does an attacker gain an advantage if they have the initialisation vector?

Does an attacker gain any advantage by knowing which initialisation vector was used for encryption?
356 views

### Does this block cipher mode allow for decryption?

Is there's a way for someone (with the key) to decrypt a message encrypted with the cipher mode shown? $$P_0 = IV$$ $$C_i = P_{i-1} \oplus E_K(P_i) \oplus P_i$$
538 views

### How close is homomorphic encryption to handling regular expressions?

Is there any reasonable homomorphic encryption protocol that supports some meaningful fragment of regular languages/expressions and/or edit distance bounds? I'm suspicious that homomorphic encryption ...
140 views

### How is the password sent across for verification?

I am familiar with Challenge-Response Authentication scheme. However I would like to know actual message content sent between client and server for 1 way authentication, over an insecure channel. ...
649 views

### Can I determine if a user has the wrong symmetric encryption key?

We're using the Objectivity/DB object database with a custom encryption plugin that encrypts serialized objects on disk. Encryption uses AES with a shared secret key held by all users. I would like to ...
320 views

### Verifying the integrity of ciphertext using the cleartext hash?

I want to be able to verify the integrity of a ciphertext by providing the cleartext hash, for this to work it would need to: $$hash(crypt(cleartext)) = f(hash(cleartext))$$ Where $f$ is an ...
331 views

### Is EKE attackable by a brute-force password search?

So I'm trying to properly implement the EKE protocol and I'm using C# with the Windows CNG and ECDH key exchange. I need to use this because it's FIPS certified and all that jazz. So what I'm ...
328 views

### What other one-way functions are used in cryptosystems?

For RSA and El Gamal (and most other public key cryptosystems), one of the key ideas is that factoring and finding discrete logarithms are hard. There are other systems that rely on certain properties ...
573 views

### Creating a hash of XOR'd blocks

Suppose a message $m$ is divided into blocks of length $160$ bits: $m > = M_1 || M_2 || ... || M_l$ And define $h(m) = M_1 \oplus M_2 \oplus ... \oplus M_l$ Which of the three desirable ...
301 views

### How safe is it to derive MAC key from a hashed password?

Imagine I have a blob that I want to encrypt-then-MAC. Now, what I can realistically ask my users for (out of UX considerations) is just an encryption password. Naturally, I bcrypt original password ...
7k views

### How to choose a padding mode with AES

Depending on the framework you are using, there are various padding modes that can be used with AES encryption. For example, with .NET we can choose PKCS7, ISO10126, ANSIX923, Zeros or None. I ...
2k views

### RSA: If n=35, show that e will equal d

Show that if $n = 35$ is used as an RSA modulus then the encryption exponent $e$ always equals the decryption exponent $d$? What I have so far: $n = 35$ Therefore $p = 5$ and $q = 7$ or vice versa, ...
1k views

### Proof of security for RSA signatures

I am new to here, I was having some problems with a problem I am working on: "For each of the following variants of the definition of security for signatures, state whether textbook RSA is secure ...
1k views

### Why is ElGamal considered non-deterministic?

One difference between RSA and ElGamal is that ElGamal isn't necessarily deterministic (while RSA is). What makes it non-deterministic? Is this advantageous to security? How else does this property ...
898 views

### How do I solve this RSA instance for m?

How we can solve this equation and get the value of M? $$8 = M^{13} \mod 33$$ not a computer program, but a mathematical operation.
2k views

### What is the importance of Modular arithmetic in cryptography?

Why do we use modular arithmetic so often in Cryptography?
1k views

### Demonstrating the insecurity of an RSA signature encoding scheme

I'm working on problem 12.4 from Katz-Lindell. The problem is as follows: Given a public encoding function $\newcommand{\enc}{\operatorname{enc}}\enc$ and a textbook RSA signature scheme where ...
291 views

### Hermitian curves introductory references

Could you give me some reference to start on Hermitian Curves. Some papers or textbooks would be perfect, and please mention if it's math inclined or comp.sci. inclined. I've only seen hermitian ...
363 views

### Is it safe to store initial counter value for AES-CTR alongside with ciphertext?

The initial counter value can actually be thought of as a sort of IV, which I assume is safe to transmit with the ciphertext, but I really want to be sure that this is indeed safe.
190 views

### Does hash_df use binary or an ASCII hexadecimal representation for numbers to be passed to the hash function?

I'm implementing the HASH_DRBG algorithm. As per NIST-SP800 90 document for HASH DRBG Generation, section 10.4.1 "Derivation Function Using a Hash Function (Hash_df)", the Hash_df algorithm contains ...
6k views

### Cracking plain RSA without private key

I was wondering whether plain RSA encryption can be cracked given: The public key A plaintext of a known cipher text(s). In other words the decrypted message from an encrypted one (but without ...
341 views

### Why are the random exponents so much bigger in the Socialist Millionaire protocol versus Diffie-Hellman key exchange?

Section 8, Security considerations, of RFC3526, which defines groups used for Diffie-Hellman has a table recommending some random exponent sizes. In particular, it says: The strength of a key ...
826 views

### Are there two-way encryption algorithms that include a work factor?

I recently learned about the hashing algorithm bcrypt, which allows you to specify a "work factor" for the hash which can be incremented to stay ahead of Moore's Law. I understand there are some other ...
723 views

### Generalizing the conversion of Diffie-Hellman to El Gamal

How can we generalize the conversion of Diffie-Hellman to El Gamal public-key encryption scheme? The goals is to be eventually able to show that any 2-round key-exchange protocol can be converted into ...
432 views

### What is the appropriate public key encryption for secure coin flipping?

I quote Bobby's question here since I encountered the same one... Random Coin Flip using ElGamal and a Trusted Party Consider the following protocol for two parties to flip a fair coin. Trusted ...
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### Where is the proof of security of Diffie's cipher?

There is an apparently provably secure cipher that was proposed by Diffie, but enhanced by R.A. Rueppel. The scheme, which was mentioned in Applied Cryptography, works like this: Measure the length ...
3k views

### Unpredictability of X.509 serial numbers

About X.509 certificates serial numbers the RFC 5280 says: The serial number MUST be a positive integer assigned by the CA to each certificate. It MUST be unique for each certificate issued by a ...
977 views

### AES and perfect ciphers

I'm taking a crypto class this semester and after learning the definition of a perfect cipher. I started wondering how this definition applies to AES. Obviously AES isn't a perfect cipher, since the ...
842 views

### Verilog simulation of Data Encryption Standard

I interested in developing DES(in verilog) for my college project.Can i get help in understanding the simulation results of DES encryption and decryption ? thanks in advance .
471 views

### How does the wider cryptographic community view non-abelian group based cryptography?

Is there perhaps some neural expository article on crypto systems based on non-abelian groups? I've gleaned that Anshel–Anshel–Goldfeld key exchange is the most well-known cryptographic algorithm ...
1k views

### Using a Non-Random IV with modes other than CBC

The weakness CWE-329 is an interesting problem with CBC mode. However, does this same weakness affect the other modes of operation that rely upon an IV such as: PCBC, CFB and OFB? My gut feeling is, ...