# All Questions

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### What functions allow for practical indistinguishability obfuscation?

Recently, there has been a major theoretical breakthrough in program obfuscation, in the area of indistinguishability obfuscation. Background: Indistinguishability obfuscation is a form of program ...
467 views

### Is there a technique to confirm that a given large integer value is a product of two primes?

Given a list of 2048 bit integer values in which one or few 2048 bit integer values may be product of two prime numbers and other values may be just 2048 bit odd integers numbers. My question is - ...
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### Secure degree reduction for Shamir's secret sharing

I understand the basic Shamir Secret Sharing protocol, and when two shares are multiplied, the degree of the polynomial increases. I've seen in a number of papers a reference to a degree reduction ...
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### What does “Inverting the RSA function is as hard as factoring” mean (a rigorous explanation or intuitive will do)?

I was reading that a current open problem is if inverting the RSA function is as hard as factoring. Does this mean that, its an open problem whether, if given a subroutine that computes in ...
239 views

### AES column mixing and S-Box confusion

I am trying to understand the AES encryption algorithm. I know that we process 128 bits at a time for a 128 bit key in a 4x4 octet form, but am confused by the following: How does the substitution ...
246 views

### Initialization Vector Properties

This is a multi-layer problem, and I want to take you through the whole thing rather than just asking about IVs. Bear with me. Also, all code below is in Common Lisp because that's what I'm using, but ...
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### HMAC construction based on the combination of two hash functions

I would like an $\operatorname{HMAC}$ that's based on two different hash functions ($H_1$ and $H_2$), so that a break of the combined $\operatorname{HMAC}$ would imply a break of ...
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### What signature schemes allow recovering the public key from a signature?

It seems to be possible to retrieve the (public) key used for creating an ECDSA signature just from the signature alone. This seems like an interesting property; as far as I know, RSA doesn't share ...
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### Practical uses of Manipulation Detection Code (MDC) and IGE

I've just skimmed over most of the paper "On Message Integrity in Symmetric Encryption". I've included (the last) part of the abstract below: We show that generic compositions of ...
232 views

### Toy encryption system that provides “hints”

I'm looking for a toy encryption system that has a specific property that when decrypting it with a key that is close enough to the key used in the encryption, it will produce some of the original ...
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### Secret sharing scheme with possibility to change the secret

Here's a scenario I want to handle with a secret sharing scheme: Alice wants to share the secret $S$ with Bob, Charlie and Dave. Alice generates private shares based on $S$ for Bob, Charlie and ...
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### Should the secret key of Shamir's secret-sharing algorithm be interpreted byte by byte?

Should the secret message of Shamir's secret-sharing algorithm be interpreted and processed byte by byte? Interpreting it byte by byte makes it easier to process, but in case one of the shareholders ...
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### Is SHA-1 still practical secure under specific scenarios?

It is conjectured that SHA-1 has been broken from the "research" perspective but no in real world. That is that there is an algebraic attack that explores weaknesses on its algrebraic construction. ...
624 views

### How can an S-Box be reversed?

So, as an exercise to greater understand some things about cryptography, I decided to try and implement GOST 28147-89, which uses eight 4x4 S-Boxes. I can grasp the concept of putting 4 bits through ...
284 views

### Security for IV in AES-GCM mode

I'd like to use AES-GCM instead of HMAC for authentication and privacy in a token used in a web application, but I'm unsure how to securely tag each token with an IV. Is it safe for me to prepend the ...
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### What do $0^n$ and $1^n$ mean in cryptography?

EDIT : I added more context. Let $f$ = {$f_k$} be a pseudo random function family. Let $G(x)$ be a pseudo-random generator such that: $G(x)$ = $f_x$($0^k$)$f_x$($1^k$) where k=$|x|$ . I don't ...
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### md5: is reverse length-extension attack possible?

If I know H = md5( SECRET_KEY | DATA ) then I can calculate H' = md5( SECRET_KEY | DATA | DATA' ) That's length-extension ...
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### Does TLS use RC4-drop[n]?

According to many sources, the first few (n) bytes of the RC4 keystream are strongly biased, and therefore should be discarded before using the keystream to encrypt anything; this precaution is ...
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### What's the reason for applying the hash twice when hashing with salt?

One of the typical approaches to computing a salted hash is this: hash(salt+hash(secret)) where hash is something like SHA-256 hash function - taking any size ...
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### What is the harm if I publish an encrypted RSA private key publicly?

What is the harm if I publish an encrypted RSA private key publicly? Or in this case, what is the harm if I publish many thousands or millions of them? Assuming that the private key is encrypted ...
260 views

### S-box Cryptanalytic Resistance

In DES, different S-boxes were tested for cryptanalytic resistance and the most secure one was chosen for the algorithm itself. How do different S-boxes offer different levels of security against ...
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### 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.
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### Cipher for Product Registration?

I'd like to implement a "Product Registration" scheme into my software where upon initial use, the User must enter a key to unlock it. The key they enter is compared to their encrypted Username. ...
2k views

### How to calculate the time it'll take to crack RSA or DH?

Sometimes the easiest way to describe security of a type of cryptography is to say that "the time it takes to solve for an x-bit key would be y years". How would one go about doing such a calculation ...
598 views

### ElGamal signature without calculating the inverse

I stumbled upon this question in some textbook. Propose a variant of ElGamal signature scheme such that there is no need to calculate the inverse $k^{-1}$ as it is usually done using the EEA. ...
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### Is it possible to construct a secure block cipher of size $2n$ given a secure block cipher of size $n$?

Given, say, the Blowfish block cipher, which is considered secure but only has a 64-bit block size, can we construct a secure block cipher of 128-bit block size? Say we run the key through two KDFs, ...
197 views

### Authenticated encryption without padding

I want to encrypt data and protect its integrity and confidentiality. However, I cannot increase the length of the data. Are there any cipher modes of operation which provide confidentiality and ...
284 views

### Perfect Forward Secrecy with Pre-shared Key

I've recently been looking at how to do perfect forward secrecy on a unidirectional connection (server can only push messages to client, client cannot respond). What I've come up with is the idea of ...
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### Computing IV for CBC from PBKDF2 + HKDF

Note that this question is somewhat similar to Can I use my random IV (for AES) as a salt for PBKDF2? My current encryption format computes two random PBKDF2 salts (encryption and HMAC, 8 bytes each) ...
353 views

### Can an RSA public key be generated without ever knowing the factors? [duplicate]

Context: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/a-few-more-notes-on-nsa-random-number.html Assume I wanted to use RSA as the basis for a hash function or DRBG. Also assume that my construct ...
163 views

### Unforgeability and type of adversary

When trying to prove security of asymmetric signature, for instance for existential (or strong) unforgeability against chosen messages attack, do we need to consider the signer as a possible ...
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### Do test vectors ensure a cipher is free of backdoors?

If a cipher implementation passes unit tests using test vectors from some trusted source (these for AES, for example), then can we say that it is fully conforming to the specification, and must have ...
1k views

### Can you explain “weak keys” for DES?

A weak key for DES is a key $K$ such that $DES_{k_1}(DES_{k_2}(x))=x$ for all $x$. I don't get why are the 4 keys $k_1||k_2$: $1^{112}$, $0^{112}$, $0^{56}||1^{56}$, $1^{56}||0^{56}$ considered as ...
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### Keyed digest function with odds of collision below the birthday bound?

I wonder if it is possible to devise a function $F(K,S,R_S)\mapsto D$ where: $K$ is some key (I have freedom on $K$, it could even be generated by a trusted party); $S$ is in $\{0,1\}^s$, say ...
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### Why use a timestamp and how can someone know it's the correct one?

Let's say A wants to send a message, so everyone who gets the message, can be assured that it's from A. A then sends a message ...
181 views

### How to Distribute the Shares using Secret Sharing for arbitrary Monotone Access Structures

Consider 4 people, $A$,$B$,$C$,$D$, & a secret $s\in\{0,1\}^k$. Construct a scheme which enables the following subsets of people to retrieve the secret $\{A,B\}$, $\{A,C\}$, $\{B,C,D\}$. I know ...
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### How much entropy is lost via hashing when you add known or low entropy data?

(I updated the title, as I think there was some confusion as to the question) Here's the question: For example, if I have a bit stream that is 64K bytes long and there is about 16 *8 bits worth of ...
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### Will rehashing an SHA256 hash continually, eventually produce every possible value?

So let's say you had infinite time and energy. You have a hashed string of some sort. Because you have infinite time and energy, you can produce a collision(or the original value) easily enough. But, ...
1k views

### How can I remove my personal data from my PGP public key?

According to this Q&A-discussion it is possible to remove all personal data (name and mail address) that is attached to a public key. What steps do I have to follow in order to remove all ...
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### Is my identity exposed when publishing my public key or encrypting with PGP?

Let's say I create my PGP keys with my appropriate name and email address. Will these personal information be exposed if I publish my public key? When I encrypt a message for sending it to my ...
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### CTR mode nonce with aggressive key rotation policy

I'm writing a small encryption library which will be required to use the shortest possible amount of overhead for describing ciphertexts. I want to use CTR mode with a 6-byte random nonce. Normally ...
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### Does EAX use the same keys for encryption and authentication?

I am actually checking use of EAX AEAD mode, and following EAX spec review (scheme definition for my part), my question is: what about the derivation of the authentication and encryption keys? In the ...
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### Why are elliptic curves better than cyclic groups?

The set of points of an elliptic curve over a finite field is isomorphic to the direct product of two cyclic groups (i.e. $E(F_{p^n}) \cong Z_{s} \times Z_{t})$. What is the advantage of representing ...
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### How hard is it to generate a partial RSA fingerprint collision?

When I use SSH to log into a new system, I get asked to verify that the fingerprint (a 32 hex digits string) of the hosts's RSA key is correct. How much if it must I actually compare (by hand/eye) to ...
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### low-exponent RSA

I have questions from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-68339-9_1 Suppose we have 2 messages $m_1$ and $m_2$ related by a known relation $m_2=m_1+1$. Suppose further the messages are ...