# All Questions

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### What parts of number theory does the RSA algorithm use?

It is said that the RSA algorithm uses number theory. What parts of number theory does it use? I know it uses modular arithmetic and Euler's totient theorem and function. Is that all?
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### Solve a Modular Exponentiation

It might be common, but if we had to solve an equation like this $m=s^{e}$ mod $n$ where $m,e,n$ are known. How can we find $s$. What optimisations could be applied? And what would the complexity of ...
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### Single Party Encryption, Multi Party Decryption

I am looking for an adequate protocol for public key decryption, which would allow $n$ parties to jointly decrypt a cipher text. The usage scenario for such a protocol would be a mixnet that wouldn't ...
2k views

### Forgery Attack Against RSA Digital Signature

I have been reading about attacks against RSA Digital Signature in a book The attacker chooses the signature first and then computes the message. As a consequence, he cannot control the ...
221 views

### How does a backdoor in the RNG enable an attacker to break encryption protocols?

I'm wondering how a backdoor in a random-number generator (as rumored the NSA have placed), actually compromises the security of things like VPNs or TSL/SSL. What I understand is that, if such a ...
149 views

### With Encrypt-then-MAC, and flexible protocols, do I need to authenticate the authentication?

Sorry, the question is not easy to state (or wasn't for me, anyhow). So I'm writing a very flexible format for security. It allows for full choice of cipher, key size, and so on, along with key ...
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 ...
125 views

### What's the alternative should PKI collapse?

Premises - please check it and critique if necessary: If factoring the products of large numbers suddenly becomes simple, PKI goes up in smoke. Is this correct? If it is correct, it seems to me ...
2k views

### How many possible input files are there who's length can be stored in 63-bits?

I'm trying to calculate how many possible combinations of files there can be using a signed 64-bit file length, but can't seem to find a formula (or I'm using the wrong keywords). For example, the ...
736 views

### ECB weakness and its exploitation

Lets say that I have a server which encrypts information at the server side using ECB mode with the blocksize of 16. If the server appends data that I control with a secret and sends back the ...
396 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 ...
187 views

### Is there a name for this 'enhanced' caeser shift and if so, is it trivial to break?

This cipher shifts the letter that it will shift to, after each shift... I used to play with this when I was a kid. I was thinking about it recently and realized that it wasn't as simple as I ...
769 views

### Using IV buffer after altered inside a Rijndael CBC Encryption/Decryption process as IV for next message?

When sending a block to be decrypted or encrypted, with RijndaelCBC, we input the data to decrypt/encrypt and an IV for syncing and to prevent identical outputs for identical inputs. This question is ...
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 ...
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 ...
2k views

### Is it possible to generate an RSA SHA1 signature only from a public key?

Is it possible to generate signature only from Public key. See example below where i have valid signature but what if I change hash ? Is then any way to do this? Public key(160 bytes): ...
215 views

### Diffie-Hellman insecure on addition modulo $n$

Assume that the group $G$ is the set $\mathbb{Z}_{n} = \{0,\ldots, n-1\}$ for a 1024 bit integer and $+$ is addition modulo $n$. Then why would Diffie-Hellman key exchange in this group be insecure?
589 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. ...
689 views

### RSA Signature Weak Padding Attack

Assume that we have a message $m$ of size $n$, and it is padded with two 01 bytes in front. Then the signature $s$ is computed using a private key $ks$. Can we ...
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 ...
2k views

### With sufficient randomness, is XOR an acceptable mechanism for encrypting?

I have heard criticism of various cryptosystems saying that "at their heart, they were just XOR." Is this just ignorance, or is there something inherently wrong with XOR based ciphers?
377 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 ...
143 views

### Private Messaging

Suppose Alice and Bob wants to send messages through Sue without revealing to Eve that the exchange took place. Slightly more formally, I don't want Eve to have any advantage telling if Alice is ...
196 views

### In S/MIME, are the same certificates always used to sign and encrypt messages?

My assumption is that S/MIME almost always utilizes certificates as follows: My certificate can be used to allow people to encrypt messages and send them to me. My certificate (the same ...
203 views

### Logical OR operation in a homomorphic additive cryptosystem

Suppose we have a cryptosystem homomorphic for addition (say Paillier's). Is there a way to perform a logical OR operation between two binary values (with a binary result). We can, of course, obtain ...
4k views

### Multi-party encryption algorithm

To give some foreground information: I acknowledge that I am a cryptography newb and not by any means an expert (and probably never will be). In a recent CS class we had several assignments writing ...
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### What is the best (thoroughly covering) textbook for application of LFSRs in cryptography? [closed]

What is the best (thoroughly covering) textbook for application of LFSRs in cryptography? (Beside Cipher Systems by Beker & Piper)
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### Type A Curves of Supersinglular

In the Type A curve used in Pairing based Cryptography, what is meant by sign0 & sign1 in the expression below? ...
1k views

### Is this the mathematical equation for the Vigenere Cipher

Is this the mathematical equation for the Vigenere Cipher or something else and if something else what is it? Where t is the letter of plain text and n is the position of t within the text and c is ...
241 views

### Elliptic Curve Verifiable Secret Sharing

I'm reading this paper, which on page 3(Section IV.C) presents a Jointly Random Verifiable Secret Sharing Scheme for Elliptic curves. The algorithm makes sense to me save for this part: "Each ...
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### Is there a general method to crack this type of fractionating cipher?

I've seen a few puzzles based on a type of cipher in which letters in the plaintext are substituted with groups of characters in the ciphertext. The ciphertext only uses a handful of unique ...