# All Questions

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### Blum Blum Shub vs. AES-CTR or other CSPRNGs

Following on from D.W.'s comments on a previous question, what properties does Blum Blum Shub have that make it better / worse than other PRNGs? Are there significant implementation difficulties or ...
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### When is each key used when encrypting an email using OpenPGP?

When you send an email using PGP to encrypt emails, is the recipients public key used to encrypt the email, or is your private key used? Are they both used? At what points do each of the four keys ...
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### One-time pad and zero key

I'm doing some exercises before my exam, and I am stuck with task number 4 in this file: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~jkatz/crypto/f10/hw1.pdf Could you help me with this task? When using the one-time ...
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### Traditional DES scheme in Unix crypt function

In a security context course, we need to reproduce the old DES hashing scheme in the crypt program, on an old unix system. I am actually reading the crypt page on wikipedia: The traditional ...
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### Ways to protect flash player against MITM diffie hellman

We have a server, which sends content encrypted with AES128 or RC4 to a flash client over an insecure HTTP channel. The encryption key is negotiated using Diffie Hellman. The problem: Diffie ...
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### Do Cryptographic Hashing Algorithms operate only on Integers?

Do all the Cryptographic hashing algorithms operate only on integers (32 bit or 64 bit)? Is there any operation performed on Floating Point Numbers as well? The reason I ask this is because I read ...
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### Could the Enigma algorithm be classified as a Feistel network?

The Enigma algorithm is a encryption method that was developed (I believe) by the Germans in WWII. It went a little something like this: When a letter was typed on the keyboard of the Enigma ...
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### Why does Skein use an output transform, but other similar hashes don't?

Skein uses an additional compression function call to finalize the output, even when the output isn't larger than the native output size. The Skein paper says: Due to Skein’s output ...
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### Impact of algorithms for factoring using elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$

Recently a few papers have appeared that describe a new approach to factoring, using elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$. See, e.g., Factoring integers and computing elliptic curve rational points, ...
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### Key derivation from a random seed

The main problem is to use a block cipher to generate a random key. I would like to generate 256-bits key which can be as random as possible. I generate it in the following way: Pick a plaintext ...
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### Determine complexity of a SAT problem

Is there a standard way to determine a complexity of the specified SAT problem? I'm researching algebraic cryptanalysis and came to solving multivariate quadratic equation systems using CryptoMiniSat. ...
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### How do I encrypt with the private key? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: RSA encryption with private key and decryption with a public key This wording is creeping everywhere (e.g. there): "I encrypt with the private key" and even sometimes, ...
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### What exactly is addition modulo $2^{32}$ in cryptography?

EDIT: I've been confusing this the whole time. What I've been wanting to say this whole time is addition modulo $2^{32}$ not addition modulo 32 as the question originally said. Thanks for pointing ...
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### Is frequency analysis a useful tool against encryption by multiplication?

If I transform natural plaintext by: making each letter two decimal digits, considering the whole as a decimal number; multiplying by the key (some integer constant), giving the ciphertext; would ...
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### Matrix Multiplication of Bits

How to multiply the matrix of bits example I have two 4x4 matrices of bits ...
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### Using pairings to verify an extended euclidean relation without leaking the values?

Let $P_i(x)$ be polynomials $i=1,...,n$, $s$ some value, and $g$ a generator of a group $G$ where the discrete logarithm is hard. Assume a prover wants to convince a verifier having access to the ...
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### Is secure remote snap possible?

Scenario: We have a central server $S$. We have a number of peripheral servers $P_i$ We have some individuals $U_j$ A given individual may be "known" to one or more peripheral servers. Each ...
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### Is AES in CBC mode secure if a known and/or fixed IV is used?

I have a need to encrypt credentials for a third-party app used by a secured internal app. Over on ITSec.SE, I was helpfully shown a scheme to encrypt the third-party credentials based on a hash of ...
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### Would the ability to efficiently find Discrete Logs have any impact on the security of RSA?

This answer makes the claim that the Discrete Log problem and RSA are independent from a security perspective. RSA labs makes a similar statement: The discrete logarithm problem bears the same ...
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### Can I combine two of SHA-3 candidates cryptography hash functions and obtain more secure Algorithm?

For example, Is possible to combine (Concatenate or Chain or XOR) Skein SHA-3 candidate with Grostl SHA-3 candidate to increase security? Note: I just want more secure output and CPU cycles does not ...
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### Hill Cipher known plaintext attack

I know a plaintext - ciphertext couple of length 6 for a hill cipher where its key is a [3x3] matrix. Based on what I've read and learned, to attack and crack keys of [n x n], if we know a plaintext ...
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### How can I implement the “Multiplication Modulo” and “Addition Modulo” operations in IDEA?

I am currently working on IDEA (International Data Encryption Algorithm), and I don't know how to perform Multiplication Modulo and Addition Modulo. This is how IDEA operates: IDEA operates on ...
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### Are there secure stream ciphers that cannot be parallelized?

Are there any stream ciphers (or a deterministic random number generators, that should work as well I guess?) that cannot be parallelized? So for example if I seed it with a specific value, and then ...
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### How to construct a variable length IND-CPA cipher from a fixed length one?

Suppose we can construct a secure (IND-CPA) encryption scheme for fixed length messages. I was wondering if there is a natural way to extend this construction for messages of variable length such that ...
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### What is the flaw in this model for homomorphic encryption?

Imagine a Field Isomorphism $g : \mathbb F1 \to \mathbb F2$ given by some $g(x)$ Assume a client is planning to outsource his computations to server, translates every possible $x$ as $g(x)$ and ...
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### How was the complexity of the Biclique Attack calculated?

The abstract of the Biclique Attack paper claims: The first key recovery attack on the full AES-128 with computational complexity $2^{126.1}$. What does $2^{126.1}$ mean in this context? And ...
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### Proving knowledge of a preimage of a hash without disclosing it?

We consider a public hash function $H$, assumed collision-resistant and preimage-resistant (for both first and second preimage), similar in construction to SHA-1 or SHA-256. Alice discloses a value ...
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### Key Scheduling of International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA)

How to perform the key scheduling in International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA), I took a research but I can't understand how to perform it, "further groups of eight keys are created by rotating ...
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### Stream ciphers based on discrete logs

Blum Blum Shub is a stream cipher that is provably reducible to the difficulty of factoring integers. I'm wondering whether there is a similar construction for discrete logs? For example, I could ...
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### Is it safe to hold key file's hash in application

Title says all; Is it safe to hold key file's hash (MD5 or SHA1) in application (hard-coded)? Thanks
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### Should I use md5 for my new application?

MD5 is a very fast hash and its output is short and easy to store. Should I use it for my non-security-sensitive application? I don't think so, but I can't seem to convince anyone else that this is ...
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### Can I save space for short messages by using encryption with private key instead of a signature?

Let's say I have a message, a Private Key and a Public Key. Normally if you want to see if the message is unaltered and is from the sender you would have the message part + signature part, which you ...
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I have the following password with a prescribed format: it starts with a fixed value of 111, followed by 2 random lower case letters and then lastly a random digit: "111""2 Random lowercase ...
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### What's the difference between a Key Derivation Function and a Password-Hash?

It seems to me that anything that was sufficiently good as a KDF would work just fine as a password hash, though the reverse might not be true. Are there considerations specific to password-hashing ...
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### What happens to the entropy of a password when you hash it?

For example, if the entropy of a password is 30 bits, what is the entropy of the password when you hash it with MD5?
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### Implementing AES encryption for firmware distribution system

I need to implement an AES encryption for firmware distribution system. I have a bootloader that can decrypt various AES variants (ECB,CBC,CTR). When I approached this I found few issues that aren't ...
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### Design criteria for AES

I hope somebody can help me understand the design criterias for AES. Therefore, I would be really thankful if somebody could explain "non-linearity" in this context. A criteria for the s-box in AES ...
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### Simulation-based security?

I've been reading Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Katz and Lindell as an introduction to cryptography. The book seems to use the term 'simulator' when it talks about a game like, for instance, ...
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### Avalanche noise RNG for one-time pad use

I came across this little HRNG widget and was really intrigued as I have been looking for a decent but afordable source for truly random bits to use in a one-time pad. The question is, would a HRNG ...
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### Encryption algorithm which produces comparable results for substrings

I am wondering is there any encryption algorithm available which produces comparable string. I am expecting the output as shown below. ...
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### PBKDF2 and salt

I want to ask some questions about the PBKDF2 function and generally about the password-based derivation functions. Actually we use the derivation function together with the salt to provide ...
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### RSA keys finding when messages are known

I have this situation, where, in a game, people send messages to each other (game moves etc...) These messages need to be encrypted, and should only be readable by the destination person. I am using ...
1k views

### AES encryption for images [closed]

Why AES based encryption is not recommended for encrypting images with high redundancy in their content? for example, the encryption of an image which shows a bird in the blue sky. Most of the pixels ...
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### Perfect security definitions

In my notes, there are 2 definitions of perfect security: "For $M \in \{0,1\}^m$, define the distribution $D_M$ on strings as follows: to choose a random member of $D_M$, choose a random \$K \in ...
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### Quantum key distribution and OTP

Why is QKD usually associated with OTP ? QKD is about key distribution, where as OTP is about using key as long as message to get perfect secrecy, can any one explain how they are related ?
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### In layman's terms, how does Shor's algorithm work?

I've just been reading up on Shor's algorithm, and I find it both fascinating and baffling. I don't really understand much about it, other than that it can factor semiprimes in polynomial time. Could ...
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### How to encrypt a short string and keep the length secret

I need to encrypt relatively short strings (generally less than 100 characters). If possible, I want to avoid leaking the length of these strings. How can I do that? The thing that came to my mind is ...
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### Strength of multiple hash iterations?

Is it correct that increasing the iteration possibly decreases the cipher strength but increases the amount of time it would take to find the original hash values if using brute-force on a given hash? ...