# All Questions

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### Is it safe to use PBEWithMD5AndDES?

I'm encrypting some of my (not so much important) files with PBEWithMD5AndDES. Is it a strong method or it can be de-crypt easily without knowing my selected ...
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### Key Confirmation Attack [Key Distribution Center (KDC)]

Okay this is how I understood it according to this: Alice $A$ establishes a connection to $KDC$ and prepares for session key Exchange $k_{ses}$ $A$ encrypts the request with her key $k_A(A, B)$ ...
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### Is it safe to encrypt data by simply randomizing chunks based on a permutation?

Say I want to encrypt the following text: "Today is March the 22nd, 2015". And say want to encrypt 8-byte blocks of data using the following permutation [6,3,0,1,5,7,2,4] to swap characters at those ...
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### credit card number encryption using aes-ctr mode

I want to encrypt credit card numbers. I want to apply AES-CTR mode. Is it suitable for that? How can I store nonce and counter values for an individual credit card number? How can I send the ...
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### security of pairing based cryptography

while going through some papers on cryptographic accumulators i find the following statement "several pairing-based accumulators have been proposed in the past. However, due to continuous and recent ...
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### Why would using a random seed with other variables be bad for ecrypting if you can't guess the key?

I asked this on stack exchange with it being code based, but someone suggested to ask here. Basically, I've done a script in python and wanted an option to encrypt the input, but I couldn't get any ...
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### Using ssh agent to sign a string [migrated]

I am trying to learn more about asymmetric keys. I am writing a program that uses ssh-agent server to sign a message. This works well, but it generates a RSA-SHA1 signature of the message, which I am ...
23k views

### How can I use SSL/TLS with Perfect Forward Secrecy?

I'm new to the field of cryptography, but I want to make the web a better web by setting up the sites that I host with Perfect Forward Secrecy. I have a list of questions regarding the setup of ...
4k views

### Is there a simple hash function that one can compute without a computer?

I am looking for a hash function that is computable by hand (in reasonable time). The function should be at least a little bit secure: There should be no trivial way to find a collision (by hand). For ...
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### How are RSA and ElGamal compatible in PGP?

I'm starting to play with PGP and I don't understand how if your key pair is RSA you can encrypt a message for someone whose key is for example ElGamal. How does the asymmetric key exchange work if ...
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### SHA-1:Is there any mathematical result that gives us the minimum number of 1's in a 160-bit SHA-1 hash output?

Is there any mathematical result that gives us the minimum number of 1's in a 160-bit SHA-1 hash output? What is the probability that a 160-bit SHA-1 hash output contains at least 128 1's?
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### chaining multiple key derivation functions together

I was looking at PBKDF2, bcrypt and scrypt as options for key derivation; and would like to try using them all together in order to get the cryptographic strength of the strongest one (which seems to ...
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### How do you implement a cipher as one lookup table?

I am reading up on whitebox cryptography and have trouble understanding how are ciphers implemented as one lookup table? assuming my plaintext is just 4 bits so the size of my lookup table should be ...
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### Practical Attack on RSA

Currently I am designing an RSA based application, and I am thinking of how long should the key be in order to be secure against attacks. I know that RSA 4096 bit key can be recovered using Sound ...
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### Purpose of expanding then shrinking in SHA-1

What is the purpose of expanding then shrinking in SHA-1? Does it serves any security purposes?
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### Choosing a cipher in SSH

When and how do the client/server agree on what cipher and MAC will be used during an SSH connection?
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### Replacing the PRF in PBKDF2 with Keccak

I am unable to find a reliable, tested library for a decent password based key derivation function e.g. Scrypt in the programming language I am using, but I have a reliable library for PBKDF2 (which ...
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### What does invertibility of the cryptographic primitive mean?

source: http://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/publications/thesis-152.pdf ,page 32 Note that key recovery implies invertibility of the cryptographic primitive (because due to the Kerckhoffs’ ...
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### Estimating random number entropy for input into 256 bit hash

Assuming a random number generation process outputs lots of numbers between 0-9. First I gathered up a bunch of the numbers, converted them to binary and created a bitmap. Not so random as you can ...
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### Naive implementation of Rainbow Table and/or Hellman's trade-off

Is there any naive implementation of Hellman's cryptanalytic time memory tradeoff in C and/or a naive implementation of Oechslin's rainbow table algorithm in C as well? I have seen some ...
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### AES product function

Small description: consider a polynomial in GF($2^8$) , which has the form $$f(x) = b_7x^7 + b6x^6 + b_{5}x^5 + b_4x^4 + b_3x^3 + b_2x^2 + b_1x + b_0$$ If we multiply by x , we have x * f(x) = ...
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### How many attempts does it take to crack a 32-bit password hash with this scenario?

How many attempts does it take to crack (match) a 32-bit password hash from a database of 4 million password hashes? Correct me if I'm wrong, but to crack a 32-bit password hash would take roughly ...
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### About the Security of PCBC Encryption Mode

We are designing an encrypted file system. We plan to use the PCBC (Plaintext Cipher Block Chaining) encryption mode for encryption. This is because we desire the feature ("small changes in the ...
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### Moral dilemma on releasing a new E2EE Method [closed]

Please forgive me if this is not an appropriate question but I wanted the opinion of those working in this field as I kind of stumbled into this problem. Im not a cryptographer but I think it's fair ...
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### Are factorization algorithms parallelizable?

I was reading about the Blum-Blum-Shub random number generator, and its security depends on the hardness of factoring very large numbers (like many things in crypto do). I'm just wondering, if I have ...
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### Security of simple Skein PBKDF mentioned in the paper

From the Skein 1.3 paper section 4.8, Skein as a Password-Based Key Derivation Function (PBKDF), it mentions the following as a simple PBKDF (S = seed and P = password): An even simpler PBKDF is ...
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### Is this an example of a zero knowlege proof?

My Math Structures professor mentioned the strange concept of a zero knowledge proof to me after class one day, and I decided to do some reading about it. After reading the relatively famous "How to ...
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### Coding of unsigned int to prevent guessing next ID

Suppose we are assigning records an unsigned integer ID from a N-bit space (say 32-bit) in a sequential manner. Is there a way we can code this ID before showing it to the public such that someone ...
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### Is it safe to prefix the a key with a known value?

Almost every encryption algorithm is based on a secret key. I wonder when the algorithm is considered safe, does that also imply that I can prefix (or suffix) the key with a known value, as long as ...
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### Creating a new cipher! [closed]

http://flashbackcipher.blogspot.ae/2015/03/introducing-flashback.html Hey guys the above is the blog for a new cipher, if you guys can take a look and suggest problems.. it would be of great help!! ...
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### RC4 , Is it possible to find the key if we know the plaintext and ciphertext?

Is it possible to find the key if we know the plaintext and ciphertext with RC4. How should I write the algorithm?
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### Rijndael S-boxes: Where do the $\mu$ and $\nu$ polynomial ring elements come from?

I've asked some other questions before about Rijndael's S-boxes, and step by step I'm coming to an understanding; but those steps often guide me to new questions. I did some lines of code to ...
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### Information-theoretic bound on leakage by timing measurement

I'm looking for an information-theoretic upper bound on leakage by timing measurement. I'm assuming that an attacker wants to leak out of a black box a secret key of $k$ bits that is secretly ...
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### Open and Closed Hasing Algorithm [closed]

I have been looking for both open and closed hashing algorithms for over two weeks now. I can't seem to find any that are general and could be applied to any language. I would really appreciate it if ...
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### How can ECDSA signatures be shortened (to be used as a product key)?

So I made my own serial key generation software, using ECDSA, for use in my own applications and it works great so far! To keep the serial key short enough I use a 128 bit EC curve. My final signature ...
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### How dangerous is it to encrypt with AES 256 if the end user knows the unencrypted value?

I am implementing a bit of security in a system that was originally built without encryption on a specific piece of data. The plan was to encrypt this piece of data and include it as part of the ...
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### Why is diffie hellman sha1 used instead of diffie hellman

For SSH why is diffie-hellmangroup1-sha1 used instead of just diffie-hellman? In other words why is the hash function used?
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### Encrypting small values with RSA private key

I'm looking for best practices when it comes to encrypting small (< 128 bytes) amounts of data with the RSA private key. Signing it would make the resulting payload too large.
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### What is the most light-weight symmetric cipher thats still usefull?

I need a very light encryption scheme which costs almost no performance during encryption (while decryption may be slow). I found 5 algorithms: RC4, DES, LED, PRESENT, and Piccolo. But how do I ...
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### MAC in SSH packet encryption, benefits to not including it?

What are the benefits to not including MAC in a SSH packet encryption? I understand what the MAC is there for, but if it was not included would there be an advantage? Is the MAC somewhat redundant ...
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### Behaviour of LDPC code as density of check matrix increases [closed]

My assignment is to implement a Loopy Belief Propagation algorithm for Low-density Parity-check Code. This code uses a parity-check matrix H which is rather sparse (say 750-by-1000 binary matrix with ...
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### Do asymmetric signatures require constant-time verification?

To avoid a timing attack, HMAC signatures are usually compared in constant-time (every byte is compared, and the results aggregated). Is the same necessary for asymmetric signature algorithms such ...
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### Construct rainbow table to cracking DES

I'm facing to a project that is build a rainbow table to cracking DES. I've already collected information about Hellman, DP, rainbow table method. Finally, i choose rainbow table. I've read topic ...
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### Substitution cipher with hexidecimal key and encrypted plaintext? [duplicate]

This is a challenge for a past CTF that I was unable to find a writeup for. The challenge gives two ciphers (http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Fq98trFw). The "key" has a length of 32, and the flag has a ...
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### What happens when a RC4 stream gets corrupted?

I want to encrypt a large file using RC4. But what happens if the encrypted file gets corrupted (bytes modified or lost)? Can I still decrypt the rest of the file correctly? If not, what is the best ...