# All Questions

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### How does the certificate trust model work in detail?

How does the whole achitecture between the certificate authority (e.g VeriSign) and its clients (e.g foo.com) work. How does my browser know that foo.com hasn't created its own certificate, wrote ...
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### What Does This Symbol Mean? (Hardcore Predicates for One-Way Functions)

I am studying Pseudorandom Number Generators and when reading the discussion on One-Way Functions and Hardcore Predicates, I came upon this equation. $$b(x,r)=\displaystyle \bigoplus_jx_jr_j$$ I ...
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### How does a user register his verifier at host in SRP (Secure Remote Password) protocol?

I read RFC 2945 and 5054 describing SRP, but there was no mention of registration. How should user registration happen in SRP? Is there a standard or paper describing it?
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### Miller Rabin - Error probability of .5 a possibility?

I'm testing the property of Miller Rabin that the error probability is at most 1/4 when only a single base a is chosen and we iterate only one time. We are testing odd integers 90,000 to 100,000. ...
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### If PRF is non invertible, why does Ctr-mode work?

I am currently taking Dan Boneh's Cryptography I course online. I have just finished the segment discussing the Cipher Block Chaining and Counter-Mode. I am having difficulty understanding why ...
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### Is it possible to correct the exponent of an RSA public key if it has been altered?

Is it possible to change the exponent of an RSA public key?
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### The benefit of PBKDF2 for big keyfile?

The man page of cryptsetup says: Whenever a passphrase is added to a LUKS header (luksAddKey, luksFormat), the user may specify how much the time the passphrase processing should consume. The ...
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### Computing the padding of MD5

So I'm reading this question to learn more about length extension attack, and I want to make sure I understand the basics of padding. It says in the post that given the hash and the length of the ...
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### How can I prove I have a certain Facebook account by signature?

I would like to know how to prove I have certain Facebook account (or that I can login to that account).
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### Is it safe to use MD5 in a proof of work system?

Here is the POW system: you are given a string and you need to compute a suffix so that first few bits of the MD5 value are all 0. I know MD5 is collision vulnerable, but is it safe to use MD5 here, ...
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### Certificate Path Verification of X509 Certificate

I have the trusted root certificate which I am validating using the self signed key. I also have the intermediate certificate, which i am validating using the root certificate. Now when i am ...
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### Determine if a public key point y is negative or positive, odd or even?

Take an elliptic curve cryptography public key (x, y) and its additive inverse (x, -y). How do you identify which is the positive point and which is the negative point? Examples: Private key 1 -> ...
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### How to deliver an encrypted message to multiple recipients without revealing keys

Let's say I have generated a private and a public key. I create a message and encrypt it with the public key. I deliver this encrypted message and a private key to multiple recipients. Why would I do ...
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### How long does it take to brute force a Wordpress password?

I'm not a cryptograhpy expert, I am a web developer trying to determine the origin of a Wordpress blog hack, and how likely it is that it was brute forced. The administrator account username had been ...
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### Fibonacci LFSR, recovering previous bits

Suppose somewhere is Fibonacci LFSR, we know that it has 7 cells and feedback taps are cell 2 and 7. We intercepted part of a stream, and part intercepted is 1010101. Is it possible to recover ...
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### Confusion regarding computing Multiplicative Inverse Modulo P?

May be a silly doubt, please rectify my confusion regarding below problem: For concreteness assume $g=2, p=11, a=6$ and $x=9$ $$A = g^a \bmod p = 2^6 \bmod 11 = 9$$ X = g^x \bmod p = 2^9 \bmod 11 ...
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### Let $G$ be a PRG. Are the following $G'$ constructions based on $G$ necessarily PRGs?

$G$ is a PRG where $|G(s)| > 2 \cdot |s|$. $G'(s) = G(s0^{|s|})$. $G'(s) = G(s_1...s_{n/2})$, where $s = s_1...s_n$. My question here is whether my own proposed solutions are correct and do ...
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### How is message length involved in public/private-key encryption?

I've just read this question regarding why to sign only the hash of a message. I kind of understood the answer, but the question arisen is now: Why can I encrypt any text messages with the same ...
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### Trying to understand the constant factors (19 and 38) in Ed25519 ref10 function 'fe_mul'

I would like to transpose the Ed25519 ref10 implementation to a similar twisted Edwards curve that is based on another prime, in order to have the same speed optimizations in place for the new curve. ...
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### How to crack SHA256 only letters

I recently created a program that hashes a password using SHA256 and potentially using salt. How can I crack that if I know that the password only contains lowercase letters?
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### ElGamal scheme attack when one message is known and ciphertexts are intercepted

Let $G$ be a finite cyclic group of order $p$ and let $pk = (g, h=g^a)$ and $sk=(g,a)$ be Bob's ElGamal public/secret key pair in $G$. To encrypt a message $m$, a random number $r$ is selected and a ...
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### Getting the encryption/has algorithm used for modem configuration file [closed]

Hello guys I have backed up my modem configuration file and found the username and password is in clear text; the files shows the username and the password is : ...
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### what are the most common stream ciphers algorithms? [closed]

say that we have an unknown stream cipher which output bytes and which have more than 10 years of existence. What can be the most probable algorithms if we consider the most 'populars' stream cipher ...
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### Encryption(AES) and verification per message

I want to send/receive messages with A (an peer) using TCP socket. I want to encrypt messages using AES CBC. Only I and A know a symmetric key K1 used in AES CBC, and K2 used in HMAC. The size of each ...
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### simple algorithm to encrypt/decrypt a text file

I need to write a first program in one language that saves data in a text file, and write a second program in a second language to decrypt that file. The two languages in question don't include any ...
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### What is the proper usage of GCM nonce in TLS1.2?

I have written a program with the help of the bouncy castle for C# library. I am monitoring the traffic which is send between the client and the server and found something (i find) strange. The ...
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### How do we know one-way functions can be iterated?

Suppose we have some one-way function $h$. Without further specification of $h$, how can we be sure that we can define another function $g(n) = h(h(n))$? That is, how do we know the range of $h$ is a ...
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### Modifying a [CRC32] checksum protected file [closed]

I dont want to ask for help without showing how far I came by myself, so this is what I have so far: The file of interest is an encrypted/obfuscated .bin script, which cotains information on certain ...
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### Why does Diffie-Hellman need be a cyclic group?

Why is Diffie-Hellman defined on a cyclic group? Doesn't it work for any commutative operation which the inverse is hard to find? Say Alice and Bob agree in a public prime $c$ and both choose a ...
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### Why Might XOR's Lead to Hash Functions Lacking 2nd Pre-image Resistance?

My hash function is as follows: Cut the string in half (assume even length of 2m) XOR's the two halves together Take the result of the XOR and pass it to a function (a one-to-one and "onto" ...
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### Looking for encryption algorithm not subject to known-plaintext attack with IV reuse

I've encountered an interesting problem where we can basically say the following: We need to encrypt messages, but we have no room to store IVs. We can synthesize IVs; however an attacker would be ...
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### Adding a Random component to CBC MAC in order to enlarge the tag space

CBC MAC that is using AES as the underlying block cipher, has tag space of 2^128. If we add a random single block, concatenating it with the tag, and encrypt it again in AES CBC mode, with additional ...
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### SSL certificate / SSL configuration - FIPS-197 compliance

What does it mean when we talk about FIPS-197 compliance in the context of SSL certificates, their deployment and usage ? I am almost certain that the FIPS-197 compliance in the context of SSL ...
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### Are keys generated by the user or block cipher algorithms themselves? [closed]

We know block cipher algorithms. In the block cipher algorithms, Key Scheduling is the one crucial part. I see that in some simulation programs of the AES,DES,TripleDES encryption algorithms. In ...
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### Finding Vigenère cipher key(s) [closed]

How can we find the key used with a Vigenère cipher in small number of steps? If we have text like: Peit Wokm! Mhfa fepatgb ets bvvrvxmea ebte bae twkd qiqi ...
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### SSL / TLS digital signature exchange

If server is sending its digital signature, in which message / where does the digitally signature is provided to the client. Is it after the server_hello message because there the public key of the ...
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### Rationale of “r” AES key use in OTR version 3 AKE protocol?

I just tried to review & understand AKE (Authenticated Key Exchange) protocol as defined in OTR secure messaging protocol version 3 here , and aiming to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy I am a ...
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### AES Mix Columns and Shift Rows

Why we use Mix Columns and Shift Rows in AES? FOr example, if i want implement an AES algorithm without Mix Columns and Shift Rows what is the difference in the ciphertext?
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### What do I use as the encryption key and initialization vector in AES cfb128

I'm writing a program that can encrypt a file using AES cfb128 (using Openssl and C++). The scenario of the program is this: Person A visits computer, encrypts a file they make, takes away a key ...
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### AES inversion operation in sub byes

I was wondering why in the AES sub-bytes operation one can represent the inversion as computing $x^{254}$. What is the reason for this? Moreoever, I was wondering what the text on page 212 of ...
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### anonymous signature implementation and usage?

This is one of the question asked in my class. Implement a anonymous digital signature. So it means hiding signers information. i could not find any article in anonymous digital signing. Also another ...
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### How to decrypt a '.enc' file that has been encrypted with RSA using a public key? [closed]

While solving a CTF challenge online, I came across a situation where I needed to decrypt a '.enc' file that has been encrypted using someone's public key. The ...
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### Identification by RSA

Suppose we have identification scheme as such: Bob takes random $r$, and encrypts it with Alices public RSA key $(n,e)$, sends $r^e$ to Alice. Alice decrypts $r$ and sends it back to Bob, becomes ...
Lets say we have 2 primes, $p \equiv q \equiv 3 \pmod{4}$, and we make $n=p \times q$ public. I can, without revealing factors, show that $n$ has two prime factors. How can i zero knowledge prove ...