# All Questions

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### How feasible is word-level frequency analysis over English (or any language)?

Say I have some black box which, given any English word, deterministically outputs a token for that word. Assume our black box is implemented using strong cryptography, i.e. the hardness of reversing ...
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### Using PBKDF2 twice with different argument order

I'm pretty sure this is a really bad approach (in theory), but one of my clients is doing this and I was wondering… How bad it is to perform pbkdf-2 in this way (with 2000 iterations)? ...
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### Is there a flaw in this ECC blind signature scheme?

Recently I've found the following work on the internet: An ECC-Based Blind Signature Scheme The paper claims to be an ECDSA blind signature however it seems that their scheme has a flaw in it. The ...
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### Does $i^n=j^n$ for $i, j \in GF(2^q)$ and $i \neq j$ for some $n<2^q-1$

Let $i, j \in GF(2^q)$ and $i \neq j$ and $i,j\neq0$. Is that possible that $i^n=j^n$ for some $n$ such that $0 < n < 2^q-1$? I am looking for a proof if the answer is no, or for a method to ...
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### Convert m-Sequence into a de Bruijn Sequence

In his paper Alternating Step Generator Controlled by de Bruijn Sequence, C.G. Günther states on page three that a de Bruijn sequence (..) can easily be obtained from an m-sequence (maximal length ...
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### Why does Openssh use only SHA1 for signing and verifying of digital signatures?

I am learning SSH protocol. With my current understanding of SSH protocol, I think that message digest algorithms for using in digital signature should be derived from Key Exchange. But Openssh ...
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### Making my steganography code more hard to detect and crack

I'm doing a college project about digital image steganography on MATLAB. So far i've been able to get the help i needed from cool guys on stackoverflow but i now need to make my algorithm more hard to ...
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### How to attack this authentication protocol from “Cryptography: An introduction”

Consider the following protocol (from the book "Cryptography: An introduction", by Nigel Smart): ...
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### DES — Can I recover the key when I have both ciphertext and the plaintext?

Given a message and DES encrypted form of said message, is it possible to efficiently compute the key used to encrypt the data?
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### Finding a keylength in a repeating key XOR cipher

In an old cryptography FAQ, I found the following step described for determining a the length of the key a cipher was repeatedly XORed against: Discover the length of the key by counting ...
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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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### If RSA is limited to 117-200 bytes or so, is that a very limited use case?

Am I missing something, or is RSA very very limiting when it comes to ecrypting data when it comes to the actual message size? I have read that you can only encrypt a message of around 117 to 200 ...
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### Is there a way to do fair exchange between two parties who don't trust each other?

Let's suppose we have an Alice who knows a secret key A, and Bob who knows key B. Using their own keys, they each encrypt a message (Alice encrypts $m_A$, Bob encrypts $m_B$) with their own key, and ...
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### Counter Mode: static IV but different keys [duplicate]

Given we are using AES counter mode, suppose we randomly generate several keys, all of them are using same IV (say, zeros). Does this lead to any security issue? I know that in CTR mode, same key-iv ...
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### Why are the Davies-Meyer and Miyaguchi-Preneel constructions secure?

The Davies-Meyer compression function $h(H, m) = E_m(H) \oplus H$ is said to be secure. So too is the Miyaguchi-Preneel compression function $h(H, m) = E_m(H) \oplus m \oplus H$. Why are these ...
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### How to compute the dot product on encrypted values?

Is there a practical homomorphic encryption scheme that can give reasonable execution time results in computing a dot product: $$a_1*b_1 + a_2*b_2 +a_3*b_3 +\ldots+ a_n*b_n$$ I imagine the scheme will ...
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### Can I combine two PRNGs to make use of more seed data?

I have 320 bits of seed data (actually 512 bits of data with 320 bits of entropy, derived from a Diffie-Hellman shared secret and nonces). The PRNG I am using at the moment is the android version of ...
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### How hard are discrete logarithms problems in $\mathbb Z^{*}_{n}$ and $\mathbb Z^{*}_{n^2}$, where $n$ is the RSA $n=pq$

Use the notations form the Wikipedia article Paillier Cryptosystem , assume that the chipertext $c$ and $c^{\lambda} \mod n^2$ are both given, is it possible to compute $\lambda$ easily?
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### Symmetric encryption mode where ciphertext size is plain text size

I've had many questions on Stackoverflow on how to minimize the output of a cipher - during encryption of course - to the same size as the input. Obviously this is possible for a single block of ...
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Let $p$ be a prime number, and let $g_{1},g_{2},...,g_{n}$ be $n$ generator of $Z^{*}_{p}$. We have a list $y_{1},y_{2},\dotsc,y_{n}$ of elements in $Z^{*}_{p}$ such that for every $i\in ... 1answer 454 views ### What is “Blinding” used for in cryptography? What does "blinding" mean in cryptography, and where do we usually use it? Can you describe a sample implementation? 2answers 176 views ### Probability that an attacker wins the discrete logarithm game when exponents are drawn from a subset Suppose$g$is a generator of an order$p$cyclic group in which discrete logarithm is hard and$p$is a prime (i.e., given$g^x$for a random$x \in \{0,1,\ldots, p-1\}$, it is hard to recover$x\$ ...
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I've been looking at the weakness with plain/textbook RSA, where the same message is encrypted and sent to multiple destinations. In this case, it is possible to recover the message. Given that an ...
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### Two step encryption

Is there any asymmetric cryptography algorithm which will allow recursive encryption. ...
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### Constructing RSA private key, given public key

As part of a puzzle I was given an RSA 256-bit public key and an encrypted message. The key itself is very weak, having exponent e = 65537 and modulus N = ...
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### Cracking the Beaufort cipher

Is there any easy way to crack a Beaufort cipher? We have a Vigenère table, and are trying to guess the keyword. Any easier way?
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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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### The meaning of “scheme”

This question is a bit different from other questions here, but I think it is suitable to correctly understand the terminology of cryptography. Consider the following two sets of terms: Encryption ...
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### Encrypt array of int for individual retrieval

I have limited exposure to cryptographic terminology, so please bear with me. My end goal is to encrypt integer IDs, before transmitting them to a web client in a list of search results, in a way ...
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### Is symmetric encryption vulnerable to plain-text-attacks?

Imagine that Bob sends a message to Alice for symmetric encryption to send to Charlie. (Only Alice and Charlie know the key.) Alice sends the encrypted message back to Bob to send to Charlie. Can Bob ...
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### Advanced Encryption Standard Algorithm Secret Key

just a follow up question with this question.. How does the key schedule of Rijndael looks for keysizes other than 128 bit? A 256-bit key can still encrypt a block of plaintext in 128 bit? but in ...