# All Questions

689 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 ...
2k views

### How key materials are generated in SSL V3 from master secret

The generation of key materials is given by ...
230 views

### Changing algorithms during encryption

Inspired by "Guarding against cryptanalytic breakthroughs: combining multiple hash functions", I am curious if there is a cryptographic reason to use only one algorithm during encryption. For ...
2k views

### What alphanumeric string length can be used to guarantee no hash collisions from CRC-64?

If I'm hashing alphanumeric strings (chars in the set 0-9, a-...
283 views

### Secure way to derive separate encryption and MAC keys from a single master key?

I want to derive a 256 bit encryption key and a 256 bit MAC key from a single 256 bit master key for an authenticated encryption scheme. I was considering the following construction to derive the two ...
888 views

### What are Cryptographic Multi-linear Maps?

I've encountered this term many times in the fields of Fully-Homomorphic Encryption and Obfuscation. I want to learn those subject and Cryptographic Linear Maps seems to be an obstacle in the way. ...
551 views

### Can we proxy-re-encrypt using homomorphic encryption schemes?

Homomorphic encryption schemes are PKE schemes with an additional special method Evaluate. The Evaluate method takes input any function (as boolean circuit) and encrypted inputs of the function and ...
758 views

### uniqueness of the RSA public modulus

What is the probability that two separate RSA public moduli are the same? For example, consider a 2048-bit modulus. The number seems to be huge, but the choice for prime factors p and q is much more ...
796 views

### Is there an authenticated encryption scheme where the recipient can attribute the message to a single sender?

With a standard authenticated encryption scheme (or MAC), Alice and Bob share a symmetric key. When Alice sends something to Bob, Bob can check that it is authentic. At that point, Bob can deduce ...
16k views

### FIPS 140-2 Compliant Algorithms

Is there any reference to check the list of encryption & signing algorithms which are compliant to FIPS 140-2. After an exhaustive search I could find only "AES". Any suggestions would be much ...
1k views

### Crypto-Compression Algorithms?

I was wondering, whether there exist such algorithms/enciphering procedures which both compress and encrypt the input data. That means, for starters, the output will be both smaller in size and ...
793 views

### If the PSK is known, is it possible to decrypt traffic from other clients in a WPA2 wlan network?

If in a public WLAN WPA2-PSK is used, but the PSK is more or less publicly available, does this mean that an attacker with that PSK can easily decrypt wlan traffic from/to other clients of that WLAN? ...
196 views

### Is the reduction from left-or-right IND-CPA to real-or-random IND-CPA tight?

A modern trend in cryptography consists of defining security as rigorously as possible, and then designing schemes which are secure according to those definitions. Proving security comes in the form ...
7k views

### Why we can't implement AES 512 key size?

Out of curiosity why we can't implement AES 512 key size? Please explain somehow i can understand! I'm not an expert.
323 views

### Zero-knowledge proof of a product

I have non-negative integers $x,y,z$. I'm going to give you commitments $C(x),C(y),C(z)$ to them. Then, I would like to prove in zero knowledge that $xy=z$. I can choose the commitment scheme to ...
513 views

### RSA Encryption and Signature - Weak Padding

Assume that I have an plaintext $m$ and it is padded with $randompad||00||m$ and then it is encrypted with RSA and a public encryption key so we get the encrypted $Sm$. Then to assure its integrity ...
508 views

### Security of Pohlig-Hellman exponentation cipher?

I am looking into implementing Pohlig-Hellman exponentation cipher and I would like to know how secure that algorithm is? I am guessing it's security relates greatly to the prime number used in it. ...
353 views

### How is the x coordinate of a “point at infinity” encoded in a Secp256k1 signature?

I'm testing an implementation of Bitcoin, which uses the curve Secp256k1 for ECDSA, and I want to see how it handles the point at infinity ($0$) if present in a signature. For example, r could be the ...
390 views

### Can I use PGP to sign a message without providing cryptographic non-repudation?

The difference between a digital signature and a MAC is non-repudiation. A message with a digital signature proves that only the sender could have signed the message, whereas a message with a MAC ...
3k views

### Do I have to recompute all hashes if I change the work factor in bcrypt?

The well-known article about why we should use bcrypt for hashing passwords mentions the work factor - some parameter to the algorithm that determines how long one hashing should be in terms of number ...
1k views

### What algorithm would give the shortest ciphertext for very short plaintexts?

I have to encrypt some very short messages (approx. 5 characters) and I would like the ciphertext to be as short as possible. I am currently using AES but the initialization vector (IV) is making my ...
768 views

### are CFB and OFB really meant for streaming?

CFB, OFB and other modes are meant for streaming and don't require padding. Are there still limitations such as the text needs to be greater than key length?
376 views

### How can one share information using the 'host-proof' paradigm?

I am attempting to make a web-based secure password management and sharing utility, both as an academic exercise and to fully understand and feel safe about using it. I really like the idea of a ...
690 views

### How does the wider cryptographic community view non-abelian group based cryptography?

Is there perhaps some neural expository article on crypto systems based on non-abelian groups? I've gleaned that Anshel–Anshel–Goldfeld key exchange is the most well-known cryptographic algorithm ...
2k views

### Brute forcing CRC-32

I'm working on a cryptosystem which uses IDEA. The designer made the mistake of including a CRC-32B hash of the password unencrypted in the header, so that the system can quickly reject bad ...
1k views

### Alphabetic Substitution with Symbols

I was reading on a site about the Zodiac Killer and how he used a basic substitution cipher, but instead of substituting english letters and characters he substituted symbols. I was wondering, if you ...
247 views

### Do Weak Elliptic Curves Exist?

I'm running into very contradictory opinions when try to understand if weak elliptic curves exist. I'm not interested in the case when a curve's weakness is attributed to properties of an EC's prime, ...
197 views

### Attack against modular inversion operation using side-channels?

I'm building a device that performs a modular inversions using a secret modulus. I would like to know if it is possible to recover all or part of this modulus by side-channels (timing, power, EMR, ...
598 views

### Elliptic Curve Encryption Ciphertext Size

I'd like to know how much bigger is the ciphertext when encrypting a message using ECC encrytpion? ECIES (or ElGamal)
402 views

### some of my confusions about DDH assumption

The wiki defines the decisional Diffie–Hellman assumption as follows: Decisional Diffie–Hellman assumption Consider a (multiplicative) cyclic group $G$ of order $q$, and with generator $g$. The DDH ...
404 views

### Hamming Distance vs. Index of Coincidence

When analyzing a repeating-key xor cipher to find the key length, I've read about two key methods (assuming there aren't just repeating chunks of ciphertext for Kasiski's method), for some assumed key ...
3k views

### Generating a secure random number in javascript

What I am trying to do is generate a large (4096bit) random number in JavaScript that is cryptographically safe to use. My approach is the following: I am creating a ...
450 views

### Proofs of security methodologies

I'm looking for course material on the subject of proofs, reductions, and games, as used to prove cryptographic schemes secure. What are the methodologies? What are the preferred ones? In what cases ...
2k views

### Brute forcing an HMAC

Given current technology such as GPUs and GPU cracking software I was wondering if anyone has an idea on how long it would take to brute force the key used to derive an HMAC?
348 views

### Are hash trees an alternative, quantum-resistant signature scheme which can replace RSA?

Can hash trees provide quantum resistant signatures to replace RSA for signing securely? What is the key size and how many times can we use same key?
335 views

### How is de-synchronisation of HOTP solved?

From RFC 4226 I understand how HOTP generates one-time passwords by incrementing a counter and uses the 'look-ahead' window to try to resynchronise (from this counter), if the user tries a few wrong ...
47 views

### How many polynomials are used in Secure Multiparty Computation?

Secure Multiparty Computation based on Samir Secret sharing methods rely on Polynomials. Imagine corpus of data should be outsourced to bunch of untrusted servers for any computations. Now the data ...
49 views

### Detecting steganography by analysing non-significant data entropy?

I am not thinking only steganography in images, I think it is also possible to encode data for example into the length of spaces of a clear html text. I suspect, the steganography changes (elevates) ...
99 views

### Formal security of recycled random blinding in a Paillier scheme

This question is a follow-up/variant on a previous question. Supposing that we are trying to generate a large number of (indistinguishable) ciphertexts of a given plaintext and want to avoid the ...
750 views

I would like to know what (if any) are the advantages of using Montgomery Power ladder over the Double-and-Add-Always algorithm. I think that firstly, Monty would be slightly faster than DoubleAndAdd. ...
303 views

### SSL-like protocol with public-key hard-coded in the client

Imagine a SSL-like protocol that instead of using certificates signed by a trusted CA, has the server's public key hard-coded in the client. My question is: what happens if the server's private key is ...
2k views

### Why is a 2048-bit public RSA key represented by 540 hexadecimal characters in X.509 Certificates?

In the public certificate, an RSA public key specified as 2048 bits long is represented by 540 hexadecimal characters. Converted to base-2, this yields 2160 bits, 112 more than the stated 2048.
711 views

### How do TLS 1.1 and 1.2 generate IVs (initialization vectors) for each record?

According to RFC 4346 Explicit IVs [CBCATT] describes a chosen plaintext attack on TLS that depends on knowing the IV for a record. Previous versions of TLS [TLS1.0] used the CBC ...
454 views

### Hide a weakness in ECC by choosing the prime or one of the curve coefficients

Suppose you are given a value $c$. Can you find a prime $p$ and an integer $b$ such that the elliptic curve $$E: y^2 \equiv x^3 -3x + b \pmod p$$ is cryptographically weak? You need to choose ...
4k views

### What is the meaning of “trapdoor” in cryptography?

I do not really understand the meaning of a "trapdoor" in cryptography, so here are my questions: What is the meaning of trapdoor and how can I convert a word or string using a trapdoor in ...
224 views

### Alice's forgetful banking

Alice has a bank account number, but has forgotten which bank it is for. There are 4 banks, run by Bob, Carlos, David, and Eve. She could find out by going to all of the banks and asking if they have ...
5k views

### AES+CTR+HMAC Encryption and Authentication on an Arduino

In my project we would like to encrypt and authenticate the the communication channel between our server and our Arduino nodes, which relies on an underlying TCP channel. We have chosen AES in CTR ...
626 views

### Attack on DSA with signatures made with k, k+1, k+2

For homework, I'm asked to find the private key, $x$, in a DSA digital signature scheme. In the particular instance, we are given the parameters $p$, $q$ and $g$, the public key $g^x$, 3 messages ...
In a Non-Interactive $Zero-Knowledge-Proof$, the challenge is chosen by the Prover. I am trying to find a Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge-Proof based on the following problem: DISCRETE LOGARITHM ...