# All Questions

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### SHA-256 Reversing A String of Equal Length

I've done a lot of reading on how SHA-256, I've found that SHA-256 is irreversible because more data is fed into the hashed string than the hash string contains. But, what if the data that was ...
63 views

### Is there a partially homomorphic quantum secure public key cryptosystem with IND-CCA1 security?

I recentely asked "IND-CCA1 RSA padding?" about whether there is a IND-CCA1 secure variant of RSA. The original version of the question also allowed usage of ECC which would allow usage of ElGamal, ...
172 views

### Why have round constants in hashes?

This may seem like basic crypto knowledge, but why do hash functions like SHA-2 and Whirlpool have round constants that are absorbed into their respective states? I can understand that in a cipher ...
128 views

### Turning a 64 bit block cipher into a 128 bit block cipher

There are quite a few block cipher modes of operation that require 128 bits. There are also modes of operation where a higher block size than 128, e.g. a block size of 256 bit would even be practical. ...
553 views

### ECC vs RSA: how to compare key sizes?

I know and I have understood the details of RSA, elliptic curve cryptography, (EC)DH and (EC)DSA. I keep reading everywhere that (if we don't consider non-deterministic computers) "ECC can achieve ...
320 views

### Brute-force attack given small search-space and hash prefix

Suppose we have a value $secret which is a random 56-bit (7-byte) string. Suppose an adversary wishes to discover$secret. The ...
115 views

### Is it ever unsafe to compress an EC point?

I am working with a library that outputs EC points in uncompressed form. To save space, I'm considering modifying said library to use compressed EC points. Assuming that I keep track of the sign bit ...
214 views

### Why are we not using multiple ciphers per message?

I am aware of at least rsa, elgamal-encryption, and variations of elliptic-curves relying on different problems and that those problems are considered hard. However, if someone figures out a way to ...
297 views

### Cryptographic data structure: sparse array without membership test

I would like a data structure supporting two operations: $\mathsf{set}(k,v)$ and $\mathsf{get}(k)$, with the following properties: $k$ can be any number between $0$ and something impressively large, ...
235 views

### Encryption-Decryption-Encryption

I have learned from Applied Cryptography that triple encryption with three independent keys in encryption-decryption-encryption (EDE) process gives security not higher then $2^{2n}$ when it comes to ...
158 views

### Public key in fully homomorphic encryption over the integers

I'm reading “Fully Homomorphic Encryption over the Integers” by van Dijk et al. I wonder why $x_0$, which is a component of the public key, should be an odd number?
581 views

### True Random Number Generator by milliseconds per keystroke (TRNG-Kms)

The simplest way to generate truly random numbers for OTP keys is to measure the time in milliseconds between each keystroke on a keyboard. The randomness depends on the user typing in various speeds. ...
238 views

### Solving Vignere Encryption

I'm currently trying to crack a cypher that I believe is Vignere Encrypted and I'm currently stuck. I calculated the key length by finding repeated sequences in the cypher and calculating the the ...
466 views

### Making my steganography code more hard to detect and crack

I'm doing a college project about digital image steganography on MATLAB. So far i've been able to get the help i needed from cool guys on stackoverflow but i now need to make my algorithm more hard to ...
508 views

### Perfect Forward Secrecy with Pre-shared Key

I've recently been looking at how to do perfect forward secrecy on a unidirectional connection (server can only push messages to client, client cannot respond). What I've come up with is the idea of ...
870 views

### How do institutions like banks do RSA with big primes?

When encrypting with RSA it is often infeasible to decrypt by just doing c^d mod n, because for example when using the primes $(p,q)=(12553,1233)$, which are small ...
511 views

### Computing IV for CBC from PBKDF2 + HKDF

Note that this question is somewhat similar to Can I use my random IV (for AES) as a salt for PBKDF2? My current encryption format computes two random PBKDF2 salts (encryption and HMAC, 8 bytes each) ...
1k views

### Why is the discrete logarithm problem assumed to be hard?

This might be a quite stupid question: since a naive brute force algorithm to solve the discrete logarithm problem will only take O(n) time for a group G with order ...
283 views

### How to attack this authentication protocol from “Cryptography: An introduction”

Consider the following protocol (from the book "Cryptography: An introduction", by Nigel Smart): ...
260 views

### Do test vectors ensure a cipher is free of backdoors?

If a cipher implementation passes unit tests using test vectors from some trusted source (these for AES, for example), then can we say that it is fully conforming to the specification, and must have ...
195 views

### Keyed digest function with odds of collision below the birthday bound?

I wonder if it is possible to devise a function $F(K,S,R_S)\mapsto D$ where: $K$ is some key (I have freedom on $K$, it could even be generated by a trusted party); $S$ is in $\{0,1\}^s$, say ...
265 views

### How to Distribute the Shares using Secret Sharing for arbitrary Monotone Access Structures

Consider 4 people, $A$,$B$,$C$,$D$, & a secret $s\in\{0,1\}^k$. Construct a scheme which enables the following subsets of people to retrieve the secret $\{A,B\}$, $\{A,C\}$, $\{B,C,D\}$. I know ...
885 views

### Where is the S-Box generated in Rijandel/AES?

It's rather kind of lame questions, and I can't find good and clear explanation: In which step of Rijandel is S-box generated? Is the S-box reused in every round of cipher or is generated in every ...
1k views

### HMAC-SHA1 input size

I know that the HMAC is a message authentication code that uses a cryptographic key in conjunction with a hash function (SHA1 , MD5, etc.). The HMAC output is 160 bits for HMAC-SHA160 and 256 bits for ...
322 views

This question is related to this one in intention, and this one in scope. Would I be guarding myself against future attacks on a single PRNG if I combine two (or more) together? I am thinking of ...
184 views

### Does EAX use the same keys for encryption and authentication?

I am actually checking use of EAX AEAD mode, and following EAX spec review (scheme definition for my part), my question is: what about the derivation of the authentication and encryption keys? In the ...
467 views

### Why are elliptic curves better than cyclic groups?

The set of points of an elliptic curve over a finite field is isomorphic to the direct product of two cyclic groups (i.e. $E(F_{p^n}) \cong Z_{s} \times Z_{t})$. What is the advantage of representing ...
318 views

### How hard is it to generate a partial RSA fingerprint collision?

When I use SSH to log into a new system, I get asked to verify that the fingerprint (a 32 hex digits string) of the hosts's RSA key is correct. How much if it must I actually compare (by hand/eye) to ...
148 views

### low-exponent RSA

I have questions from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-68339-9_1 Suppose we have 2 messages $m_1$ and $m_2$ related by a known relation $m_2=m_1+1$. Suppose further the messages are ...
1k views

### Security of authenticated encryption modes GCM & CCM

I have two questions for Clarification for AE mode choice criteria GCM : it appears to be actually the most popular and widely used AE mode of operation. however it is also well-known to be highly ...
651 views

### Hill-cipher, disordered alphabet

I am going to apply a simple substitution cipher to my input, then encrypt the result with a Hill cipher. How can this be broken, in a chosen-plaintext threat model? In other words, instead of the ...
1k views

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### What is “Blinding” used for in cryptography?

What does "blinding" mean in cryptography, and where do we usually use it? Can you describe a sample implementation?
703 views

### Can I use my random IV (for AES) as a salt for PBKDF2?

Also, where do I store my salt (can I just store it at the beginning of the encrypted file)?
838 views

### Is this a correctly formatted PGP session key packet?

RFC 4880 may be full of information, but it can be incredibly vague at times, so im looking for someone who actually knows the answer to this. Given this public key: ...
496 views

### Using a derived key for CMAC

Consider the following authenticate-and-encrypt scheme that uses AES-128 in CBC mode for encryption and AES-128 - based CMAC for authentication: Two keys are derived from the master key k (16 byte): ...
207 views

### Addition step in MD5 implementation

In MD5, there are four rounds. After every round, why do we need to add the computed $Q$ values to the initial values and then take this value as input to the next round. For example after the first ...
490 views

### Blind signature with openssl

I'm trying to understand (to reproduce in practice) how does blinded tokens work. Currently i'm lacking examples. According to Wiki the blinded signature protocol is the same as ordinary signature ...
121 views

### RSA security assumptions - does breaking the DLP also break RSA? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Would the ability to efficiently find Discrete Logs have any impact on the security of RSA? I'm wondering if breaking the DLP, that is the basis for ElGamal and DSA, ...
2k views

### What is the 'Version Incompatibility" Problem in TLS 1.1/1.2 and 1.0?

It's unclear to me if there are multiple problems, or a single one, (and just what that problem is) with servers incorrectly negotiating down from a client offering 1.1 or 1.2 to something they ...
674 views

### Does RSA padding have to be unpredictable if the payload is?

I'm trying to understand the precise requirements on padding when using RSA for encryption. Suppose Alice uses RSA to encrypt a payload $M$ that cannot be guessed (say, a random nonce): Alice send ...
623 views

### Differential cryptanalysis - breaking the last round of FEAL4?

I've been trying to learn cryptanalysis. I've come across this resource which proved very helpful: http://theamazingking.com/crypto-feal.php So far I've been almost successful in breaking FEAL4 ...
415 views

### Provable Encryption

Is it possible to encrypt data in a way that it can be proven that the data is encrypted, without revealing the key? Alice chooses some plaintext, then she encrypts it with a certain scheme. She ...
276 views

### Protocol for Randomized Oblivious Transfer?

If we define Oblivious Transfer as following: Alice inputs $(x_0,x_1) \in F^2$, where $F$ is a field, and Bob inputs $b\in\{0,1\}$, then Alice gets a dummy output(for which she knows nothing about ...
1k views

### How does a key wrapping like RFC 3394 secure my cryptographic keys?

So I'm messing around in the BouncyCastle library with the RFC 3394 AES Key Wrap engine and I'm trying to understand the benefit of it. The problem I'm running into is how to store keys securely on a ...
I'm implementing point addition and point doubling of elliptic curve cryptography. The formula that I'm using for slope is Point addition: $S = \frac{(P_y-Q_y)}{(P_x-Q_x)}$ where $P$ and $Q$ are the ...