# All Questions

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### How can scrypt be improved to counter GPU mining

I know scrypt was designed to lessen the GPU/ASIC advantage. We now have litecoin as a real-world example of this. However, it hasn't worked out perfectly. Most coins are mined by GPUs, although the ...
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### How to prove a cipher resistant to differential cryptanalysis?

How do you prove that a cipher is resistant to differential cryptanalysis? It's said that Rijndael has been proven resistance to differential cryptanalysis. How do cryptographers do that?
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### Applications of 3-collisions

I recently read Improved Generic Algorithms for 3-Collisions by Joux and Lucks (Asiacrypt 2009), available as http://eprint.iacr.org/2009/305.pdf. I was wondering about applications of this technique ...
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### 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 ...
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### What prevents continued hashing of a key from being used as a cipher when xored with plaintext? [duplicate]

This is just an idea I had while looking through some threads so take it as you will. Given a plaintext of any length and a key that a specific hash function is capable of taking as input(I mention ...
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### How can Alice prove that a message has not been tampered with?

In terms of the usual suspects. The problem I have is that Alice wants to send Bob a message M, which gives Bob permission to perform some actions. However Alice wants to verify, from time to ...
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### Primality testing (deterministic vs. non-deterministic)

I noticed that non-deterministic primality testing algorithms are more commonly used in practice while there is a deterministic algorithm e.g., AKS which runs in polynomial time? I am right? if so, ...
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### How does NaCL Poly1305 implementation do modular multiplication?

The NaCL ref implementation of Poly1305 performs modular multiplication to calculate a polynomial $\mod 2^{130} - 5$ using the following modular multiplication ...
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### Length of data to hash for PGP

I have finally managed to verify some simple PGP signed message blocks. However, I discovered that for some reason, my implementation limits me to verifying data that is 9-16 bytes long. no less. no ...
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### Best hash size for hash trees

I want to know if having a 8-byte hash value is better than 16-byte hash value for use within hash trees. My mind tells me that the shorter the hash value, the better. But doesn't a smaller hash ...
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### OpenPGP tag 18/19 description confusion Continuation [closed]

After coming back to try to finish more of my OpenPGP implementation, I refound one of my questions http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6021360/openpgp-tag-18-19-description-confusion that I am still ...
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### IV and Headers inside cipher text

I am a bit confused about the use of IV, and key hash. Is the key hash and IV stored inside the headers of the cipher text? Isn't it a security risk to store this header information? By key hash I ...
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### Review of AES encryption concept for an open source project

i'm working on an opensource project, A generator for static (html/js), password protected photo galleries. The generator AES 256 encrypts many images with the same key in PyCrypto, and decrypt them ...
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### Four-Square cipher and its keyspace

Am I thinking about this correctly? Consider that the keyspace of the Playfair cipher is equivalent to all permutations of the alphabet, e.g. the number of distinct permutations of 25 objects, and ...
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### The probability of finding a limited set of collisions for HMACSHA256

I need some input on the use of HMAC-SHA256 in an open source project, any help appreciated. The problem I'm solving is session fixation. We have a username, for that username we'd like to generate a ...
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### Creating a PKCS#12 file where public key doesn't match the private key

For testing purpose, I want to create a PKCS#12 file in which the private key doesn't match the certificate. Is there any tool which will help me do this? If I use ...
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### Homomorphic Encryption

Homomorphic Encryption (HE) which supports any function on ciphertexts is known as Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), while Partially Homomorphic Encryption (PHE) includes encryption schemes that ...
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### CBC with random prefix but no IV - secure? [duplicate]

I'm looking at a datagram-based protocol that encrypts a payload. The payload is encrypted with AES or blowfish in CBC mode, and the result is then authenticated with a HMAC. To save space, the ...
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### Is OpenPGP vulnerable to the “crypto doom principle”?

From reading RFC 2015 (MIME security with PGP), and from looking at the raw format of (GnuPG) encrypted and digitally signed email messages, it seems that first a signature is calculated from the ...
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### Which area of Maths should I pursue?

I would like to know which area of Mathematics would be most beneficial to cryptography. Surely Algebraic Number Theory and maybe to a lesser extend, Elliptic Curves, are closely linked to ...
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### Algorithm for proving Carmichael numbers

I have an application for determining if a number is a prime or not, currently I'm getting a random number, then doing the Fermat primality testing to find out if the number is probably prime (so this ...
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### Selecting bijective functions for permutations

How would one go about selecting an appropriate bijective function for introducing permutations into a cipher or hash? For example, $f(x) = x+1 \space mod \space n$ is a bijective function, but isn't ...
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### What parts of AES encryption result are safe to pass on the network

I'm using AES to encrypt the message. both sender and receiver know the passphrase, but only sender knows IV and salt I assume that receiver also needs to know IV and salt to decypher text; is it ...
441 views

### RSA padding: what is it and how does that work?

If I am not mistaken, plaintext RSA is not secure. So, I have read that padding and hashing is needed to make the RSA algorithm secure. However, I am confused on what does padding or armoring mean in ...
2k views

### Is it possible to change PGP / GPG Key Size on an exisiting key?

Is it possible for myself to change the key size (say from 2048 to 4096) on an EXISTING PGP / GPG key, and just republishing that key? Or do I have to generate a new key all together? I want to say ...
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### BLS signatures in the G-valued Random Oracle Model

This paper on semi-generic algorithms considers "non-standard properties of the employed hash function". For BLS signatures whose main group is $G$, I'm curious what can be shown when the hash ...
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### Are SSL modes with forward secrecy vulnerable to the BEAST attack?

From the original BEAST paper, it seems to me that you need the same session key when encrypting data, so you can check if the original plaintext block is the same as your chosen plaintext (which is ...
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### How are Predicate Encryption algorithms implemented?

After a lot of reading on the internet, i can't seem to figure out how Predicate Encryption works. As i read, it consists of 4 algorithms: ...
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### Is there a problem with this non-ECDSA message signing?

Is there a problem with signing a message like this? ...
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### Using plain Diffe-Hellman for server authentication with known public key

Other considerations aside, is it possible to use DH with an established public key (together with fixed g, p, q) to safely authenticate a server instead of using some signing algorithm? In other ...
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### Is the SILC protocol still used? [closed]

I'm looking into implementing a private SILC server for friends (and possibly their friends). And after visiting the Wikipedia entry for SILC protocol, it seems all the official pages linked at the ...
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### Why restrict nonce/IV and counter to specific sizes?

When setting up a nonce/IV and counter (e.g. for AES-GCM-128), why are the nonce/IV and counter restricted to specific sections (e.g. random nonce/IV in first 8 bytes and counter in last 8 bytes)? ...
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### Are there any bi-bidirectionally indistinguishable Asymmetric Encryption Algorithms

I have been using Asymmetric Encryption for a while, and I have come across an interesting concept, and it would be cool if it could be done. Are there any Asymmetric Encryption Algorithms where the ...
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### Is it possible to insert a key derivation function when using EAX?

I am currently investigating use of EAX mode for a dedicated application and following useful clarifications received from my previous post , to consider according to my applicable input security ...
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### Are there Cryptography certifications variants of CISSP?

Are there Cryptography certifications variants of CISSP ( Certified Information Systems Security Professional)? Like a CISSP exams, but only for cryptography?
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### What kind of adversary is a compromised party?

Imagine multiple parties executing a secure multiparty computation protocol to evaluate a function securely. Let Alice be one of the parties who is intended to get all the partial results and combine ...
Let us say there exists a permutation matrix $n \times n$ for some large $n$. Then, there are $n!$ possible permutations. If one to use brute-force to find the secret permutation among $n!$ ...