# All Questions

4answers
1k views

### Webapp password storage: Salting a hash vs multiple hashes?

For security's sake, of course it's blasphemous to store passwords in plain-text; using a hash function and then doing a re-hash and comparison is considered much better. But, if bad guys steal your ...
2answers
608 views

### Is there an effective way for public key generation in homomorphic encryption schemes?

Is there any way to effectively generate valid distributed public key in schemes like ElGamal or Benaloh for a number of participants? There's no need in private keys since there's no intent to ...
2answers
1k views

2answers
2k views

### What is the most practical fully homomorphic cryptosystem?

Craig Gentry recently gave the first fully homomorphic cryptosystem. Quite a bit of work has been done since extending his work. It seems, however, that no system is practical for real world use. ...
3answers
4k views

### SHA1 usage for passwords, alternatives and advantages?

My application can authenticate via openid and oauth (facebook, twitter, etc) and also with its own authentication system. I previously switched hashing from MD5 to SHA1 and during migration I had to ...
3answers
820 views

### Does NTRU decrypt correctly now?

The NTRU public-key cryptosystem has a lot of interesting properties (being resistant to quantum computer attacks, being standardized by several important bodies), but it also has a pretty unique ...
1answer
517 views

### What algorithm does PGP use to encrypt email?

I know it uses RSA/DSA to create keys, but does it use that same algorithm for the actual cipher?
1answer
736 views

### KeeLoq showing that decryption is indeed the inverse of encryption

In some text I am reading, there is an exercise asking to show that KeeLoq decryption function is the inverse of the encryption function. Details about KeeLoq are given in the Wikipedia article. As I ...
1answer
513 views

### Would RSA-encrypting a private key for itself constitute a vulnerability?

I'm planning to encrypt some individual files for storage, using the GnuPG implementation of RSA. If I happened to encrypt the private key corresponding to the public key used for encrypting -- either ...
11answers
6k views

### Is modern encryption needlessly complicated?

RSA, DES, AES, etc. all use (relatively) complicated mathematics to encrypt some message with some key. For each of these methods, there have been several documented vulnerabilities found over the ...
3answers
12k views

### Why is public-key encryption so much less efficient than secret-key encryption?

I'm currently reading Cryptography Engineering. After giving a high level explanation of the difference between secret-key encryption and public-key encryption, the book says: So why do we bother ...
2answers
378 views

### What is the sign bit for in Feige-Fiat-Shamir?

The Feige-Fiat-Shamir identity scheme is based on a ZKP assuming that square roots are "hard" modulo an integer of unknown factorization. The "parallel version" of this protocol includes a "sign bit" ...
5answers
6k views

### How can we reason about the cryptographic capabilities of code-breaking agencies like the NSA or GCHQ?

I have read in Applied Cryptography that the NSA is the largest hardware buyer and the largest mathematician employer in the world. How can we reason about the symmetric ciphers cryptanalysis ...
3answers
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 ...
6answers
7k views

### Types of Cryptography for a 4-8 bit microcontroller

This is more of a research question. I was wondering what types of crypto algorithms would work best on a small 4-8 bit micro controller. I recently read a paper called Security Considerations for ...
3answers
3k views

### Calculating the amount of zero bits to be appended to the message

From FIPS 180-3 Suppose that the length of the message, M, is l bits. Append the bit “1” to the end of the message, followed ...

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