# All Questions

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### Does the Biclique attack on AES pose a credible risk to its security?

I have heard a lot about the biclique cryptanalysis research on AES, which as far as I know is the closest anyone has got to breaking AES. Exactly how close did they get? Does this attack propose a ...
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### How is BCrypt secure when it uses a static dataset for blowfish hashing?

I'm planning on using this Javascript BCrypt implementation, but as you can see in the code, it uses a 4KB precalculated dataset for the P and ...
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### How does PBKDF1 work?

I need some basic guideline on Password Based Key Derivation Function. PBKDF1 generates a key from password and salt using Hashing algorithm (like SHA1, SHA256, MD5). What is the step behind this?
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### How to account for moore's law in estimating time-to-crack?

It seems to be common practice (at least in some communities) to tack on the phrase "with current computing power" when estimating the absurdly long time it would take to, for example, brute-force an ...
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### How to construct encrypted functions (with either public or private data)?

Homomorphic encryption is often touted for its ability to Compute on encrypted data with public functions Compute an encrypted function on public (or private) data I feel I have a good grasp of #1 ...
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### Need an introduction to SPKI (or “SPKI for dummies”)

I am familiar with concepts such as the following: PKI and CAs ID based cryptography Certificateless cryptography PGP web of trust more or less anything in basic Crypto that is taught in a college ...
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### Compression function to guarantee randomness of one time pads?

First of all, I would like to note that I am not building my own crypto. I am simply curious and would like to learn. What I am wondering is this: if we are worried about randomness of something ...
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### Turning PRPs in PRGs with a counter

I am following the Coursera Cryptography I course and I have the following question, I am a bit perplexed by the statement, in week 2 lecture "What are block cyphers?" that a counter-mode PRF is a ...
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### Advantages of making streamcipher stream depend on plaintext?

Most descriptions that explain how streamciphers work (like the one on Wikipedia), tend to describe a model that boils down to a simple “$ciphertext = plaintext \oplus stream$”, where the stream is ...
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### How can one encrypt with RSA (or ElGamal) without revealing whom the ciphertext is intended for?

Imagine Alice wants to encrypt for Bob and post this encryption publicly, so that only Bob can decrypt but no one can other than Alice or Bob tell that the message was encrypted for Bob. The naive ...
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### Proving the possession of signature in zero-knowledge

Does anybody know an efficient mechanism to prove the possession of a digital signature (e.g. RSA) on a certain attribute (message) in zero-knowledge? That is, without revealing the actual signature ...
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### Can I prove set membership and uniqueness without revealing the element?

Assuming a publicly known set $\Psi$ with $N$ unique elements. I have a set $\Sigma=\{\sigma_1,\sigma_2,...,\sigma_m\}$ where $m\leqslant N$. I would like to publicly prove that all the elements in ...
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### Is there a reason that the N value in scrypt is limited to powers of two?

I have been looking at the scrypt hashing algorithm and am confused as to why the N value, which determines the overall cost, is limited to powers of two. There are ...
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So these days I see everyone using AES-GCM. What are its advantages over simple CTR+HMAC modes? Is it speed? Or ciphertext length? And what are the security tradeoffs, both in terms of practical ...
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### Keccak padding implementation, and bit ordering

I am trying to implement Keccak in Java for my school work. And I am getting stuck in two places: On the summary page the padding is shown as P = M || 0x01 || 0x00 || … || 0x00 P = P xor ...
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### Can an RSA public key be generated without ever knowing the factors? [duplicate]

Context: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/a-few-more-notes-on-nsa-random-number.html Assume I wanted to use RSA as the basis for a hash function or DRBG. Also assume that my construct ...
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### RSA Encryption and Signature - Weak Padding

Assume that I have an plaintext $m$ and it is padded with $randompad||00||m$ and then it is encrypted with RSA and a public encryption key so we get the encrypted $Sm$. Then to assure its integrity ...
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### Unforgeability and type of adversary

When trying to prove security of asymmetric signature, for instance for existential (or strong) unforgeability against chosen messages attack, do we need to consider the signer as a possible ...
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### Why are security against eavesdropping and security against CPA equivalent in the setting of public-key cryptography?

Why are security against eavesdropping and security against CPA equivalent in the setting of public-key cryptography?
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### Why use a timestamp and how can someone know it's the correct one?

Let's say A wants to send a message, so everyone who gets the message, can be assured that it's from A. A then sends a message ...
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### Question about the definition of a perfect cipher

I need to prove that the following encryption scheme is a perfect cipher: Let $p$ be a prime. The secret key is a pair $(a,b)$ sampled uniformly at random from $\mathbb{Z}_p^* \times \mathbb{Z}_p$. ...
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### MARS and RC6 in CUDA

I am working on a project where I am benchmarking the 5 AES finalists (Rijndael, Twofish, Serpent, MARS and RC6) on CUDA Hardware. My problem is that I am no experienced CUDA programmer. My approach ...
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### Is there an encyption scheme that combines additive homomorphism with ability to proxy re-encrypt?

Is there an encyption scheme that combines additive homomorphism with ability to proxy re-encrypt? I've tried digging around on the Internet but haven't found anything conclusive on the topic.
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### Why no swapping block in the last round of DES?

Round 16 on the encryption side, and round 16 on the decryption side of DES have no swapping module. Why is it like this? Can anyone provide any justification? This is my homework question.
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### OMAC/CMAC constant for different block sizes

OMAC/CMAC only specifies constants for 64-bit (0x1B) and 128-bit (0x87) block size. I would like to know how to get constants ...
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### Is there any research about cryptography on nondeterministic Turing machines?

I know it's a highly theoretical topic, but I was wondering if there was any research out there about what cryptography would be like assuming that we had access to nondeterministic Turing machines. ...
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### Swapping Key and IV in AES? Safe?

I have an application where I want to be able to send an encrypted file, and then mete out "keys" that allow the receipient to decrypt the file from a certain point to the end of the file. Actually, ...
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### Converting Ed25519 public key to a Curve25519 public key

I understand that: $$x_{montgomery} = \frac{1 + y_{edwards}}{1 - y_{edwards}}$$ Using the libsodium ed25519 implementation, I have tried to write the following: ...
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### Is asynchronous perfect forward secrecy possible?

DH key agreement protocols require the participation of both parties, so are only suitable for synchronous connections. Is it possible to implement PFS in a fashion usable for asynchronous protocols, ...
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### Compare two hashes with different salt

I'm storing the salted hash of a credit card number in a database. What I'd like to be able to do is determine if two different entries in the same database correspond to the same credit card. ...
546 views

### ECDSA Compressed public key point back to uncompressed public key point

From the ECDH demo here http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/jsbn/ecdh.html If I generate a private key for alice I can get ...
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### Simple protocol for 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer

I'm trying to explain the concept of 1-out-of-2 oblivious transfer to folks who haven't seen this idea before. I can explain what properties it provides, but it's also helpful if I can show a simple ...
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### Difference between “one-way function” and “cryptographic hash function”

What's the difference between a one-way function and a cryptographic hash function?
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### Has GMAC mode a future outside GCM?

Once gcm has been implemented for providing both encryption & authentication solution , it appears obvious to consider that such implementation can also provide (if required by new user) a Mac ...
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### Why is SRP not widely used?

SRP seems to be a very good password authentication protocol, compared to any other things used now. So why is there no popular implementations, or even no working secure implementations? I tried to ...
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### Is it safe to assume Salsa20 to be a PRP?

Often in security proofs a certain block cipher is assumed to be a pseudorandom permutation or PRP. I wonder if this goes for stream ciphers as well, and specifically for Salsa20. If limit ourselves ...
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### Client and server using same SSL certificate - any issues?

I'm working on software where multiple components will communicate with each other using SSL. There would be one central component acting as a server, which would also require the clients to present ...
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### Which MAC scheme is quantum resistant?

will HMAC survive Grover algorithm ? if not then which MAC scheme provide post-quantum security ?
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### What crypto system allows for 3 parties: Party 1 who makes an assertion, Party 2 mutates the assertion, Party 3 validates it

I'm looking for the cryptographic equivalent of a Drivers license where the issuer can be verified, the issuer doesn't need to know who you showed the drivers license to, but also allows ...
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### Security of Pohlig-Hellman exponentation cipher?

I am looking into implementing Pohlig-Hellman exponentation cipher and I would like to know how secure that algorithm is? I am guessing it's security relates greatly to the prime number used in it. ...
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### RSA blind signatures in practice

Hi I have a problem with moving my blind signature implementation from educational (textbook RSA) to more practical (padded RSA) side. David Chaums paper gives a following figure: $r$ - blinding ...
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### Security implications of using constant string to verify AES key?

I know that you can use for example CBC-MAC to verify data integrity and thus the password upon decryption. But would there be security implications of just adding a constant string to the plaintext ...
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### AES timing attacks

I'm just interested in cryptography, so please don't expect me to be an expert. ;) I recently read about AES cache timing attacks and found it very interesting. I read the article Cache-timing attacks ...
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### Why, or when, to use an Initialization Vector?

i'm trying to figure out when an Intialization Vector (IV) should be used. There are anecdotal reports that WEP was broken because of weak IV's. It's also claimed that if two pieces of plaintext are ...
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### is this RSA private key valid?

is this RSA private key valid? First, here's the RSA private key in question: ...
### A discrete-log-like problem, with matrices: given $A^k x$, find $k$
Let $p$ be a large prime; we will work in $GF(p)$. Let $A$ be a $n\times n$ matrix. Also, let $x$ be a $n$-vector and $k$ a positive integer. Suppose we are given $p$, $A$, $x$, and $y$. The goal ...