All Questions

191 views

What are the consequences of a MAC tag collision?

I've seen some proofs of MAC security that are based on the extremely-unlikely event that two MAC tags collide (ie, they are equal for distinct messages). Suppose that this extremely unlikely event ...
1k views

Is the CBC weakness in XML Encryption a new discovery? Are other applications vulnerable?

The RUB in Germany reports that XML encryption is broken. This is essentially the W3C standard for protecting XML documents from prying eyes. Does this mean that an attacker can only see a single ...
691 views

Encryption technique performance evaluation

I've come up with a light weight bit wise encryption algorithm and seems good. Ive tried it with text and image input. But I've the following questions I would like to ask What do you think of bit ...
936 views

What is the proper way to use a client nonce?

I've implemented an API for one of my clients, it relies on nonces and a shared secret. The structure: Client's Site (CS) requests nonce from My App (MA), posting their username MA verifies the ...
2k views

RSA-PSS salt size

One of the inputs of RSA-PSS signing and verification is the salt size. According to PKCS#1, you must know the salt size before the verfication is carried out. However, this makes interoperability ...
652 views

Random Coin Flip using ElGamal and a Trusted Party

An old exam question I am trying to figure out: Consider the following protocol for two parties to flip a fair coin. Trusted party T publishes her public key pk A chooses a random bit ...
4k views

Are there practical upper limits of RSA key lengths?

Suppose one wanted to use RSA encryption for the sole purpose of sending key bits for use in symmetric crypto systems, a dedicated key exchange system so to speak. And say you didn't think that the ...
514 views

Threshold Secret sharing - How to create a shared secret from pre existing secret parts?

In usual $(t, n)$ secret sharing schemes, a secret $S$ is split into $n$ parts so that any $t$ out of $n$ parts reconstruct the original secret. So, suppose that there is a group of $n$ participants ...
429 views

For public-key encryption, why does COA resistance imply CPA resistance?

My professor told me: If a public-key crypto-system is secure against ciphertext-only attacks, then it is also secure against a chosen-plaintext attack. Why is this true? Is there a proof that ...
1k views

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How can I encrypt more than 64 bit with the Data Encryption Standard?

The Data Encryption Algorithm is designed to encipher and decipher blocks of data consisting of 64 bits under control of a 56-bit key. If my data is more than 64 bits, (suppose 66 or 67 bits), will ...
1k views

Is SHA-512 bijective when hashing a single 512-bit block?

It's been said that CRC-64 is bijective for a 64-bit block. It the corresponding statement true for SHA-2?
996 views

How to require two keyholders to decrypt a document?

I want to create a system to encrypt a document and store it with a 3rd party, but not have the 3rd party be able to decrypt it until some unspecified later date. It seems like the solution would be ...
599 views

Is key size the only barrier to the adoption of the McEliece cryptosystem, or is it considered broken/potentially vulnerable?

A recent paper showed that the McEliece cryptosystem is not, unlike RSA and other cryptosystems, weakened as drastically by quantum computing because strong Fourier sampling cannot solve the hidden ...
168 views

Is there a group of prime order which could fit the CT-Computational Diffie-Hellman assumption?

I'm trying to choose a group that is hard under the Chosen-Target Computational Diffie-Hellman assumption, according to the definition in this paper, in order to implement the oblivious transfer ...
669 views

Why did NIST remove The Lempel-Ziv Compression test from the Statistical Test Suite?

NIST removed "The Lempel-Ziv Compression" test from the Statistical Test Suite in revision 2008 and above and has not incorporated it since – see revision 2010. Why was it removed? Does it no longer ...
4k views

What are the details of the DES weakness of reusing the same IV in CBC mode with the same key?

I think I once faced the recommendation, that the initialization vector should always be random and never be used twice with the same key. How serious is this weakness? Also, is AES less effected ...
619 views

What is the general justification for the hardness of finding preimages for cryptographic hash functions?

Since most cryptographic hash functions are simple, compact constructions does this simplicity impose a limit on the complexity and the size of a function that can generate preimages? That is, given a ...
934 views

public key cryptography and digital signature

I read the following from Understanding Public Key Cryptography on Microsoft TechNet: Using a private key to establish identity shows that the full encryption and decryption operation was ...
978 views

Why doesn't preimage resistance imply the second preimage resistance?

Let the preimage resistance be defined as »given a hash value $h$, it is hard to find any message $m$ such that $\operatorname{hash}(m)=h$«, and let the second preimage resistance be defined as »given ...
212 views

Is the last step of an iterated cryptographic hash still as resistant to preimage attacks as the original hash?

Considering a cryptographic hash, such as MD5 or SHA2, denoted by the function $H(m)$ where $m$ is an arbitrary binary string, there is a lot of material available that deals with potential weakness ...
1k views

Is it feasible to build an index of prime factors?

Would it be possible to break an RSA key, in for example 1 week of time, if the cracker have already spent X number of years building an index of primes by performing every permutation of existing ...
479 views

Deniable Encryption from simple primitives

Is there a deniable encryption scheme $M = E(p_1,k_1,p_2,k_2,...,p_n,k_n), p_j = D(M,k_j)$ of $n$ plaintexts $p_1,p_2,...,p_n$ and $n$ keys $k_1,k_2,...,k_n$, such that we can fix $D$ to be a known ...
852 views

How can I improve a password generation scheme based on a shared secret and URL?

I currently use the following method to generate a different password on every website I have to login: password = SHA1 ( mainPassword . domainName . number ) ...