# All Questions

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### Offline anonymous electronic money systems and their cryptographical base

What anonymous offline electronic money systems exist and what are they based on? I know only one currently - eCash, based on RSA blind signatures.
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### Is SHA-256 a one way permutation when restricting the domain to {0,1}^256? [duplicate]

Suppose we consider the space of $\lbrace 0,1 \rbrace^{256}$ as the domain and SHA-256 as our hash function. Does SHA-256 become a one way permutation? Has anyone tried to prove this? Or can it be ...
1k views

### Using Whirlpool hashing function to encrypt data

I've read that the Whirlpool hash function can produce footprints that could be used as a pseudorandom generator. Is it "OK" to use it to encrypt some data using something like the following? ...
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### With EC secp256k1 is there a way of transforming a function of the private key to a function of the public key?

A key pair has a private key $D_A$ and a public key $Q_A$. $D_A$ is an integer less than the curve's $n$. Is there any (boolean) function of the private key $f(D_A)$ which can be transformed into a ...
149 views

### AES Message Authentication Vulnerability

My securities instructor recently posed this question to the class and I am bending my brain in half trying to figure it out. Suppose $y_1 = AES(K, x_1)$ and $y_2 = AES(K,x_2)$, and suppose you ...
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### Could this alternative hash based MAC construction be as, or even more secure than an HMAC?

Begin hashing (Key||Message) Encrypt the hash state (or some part of it, such as the first 128 or 256 bits), with the key. Add the encrypted hash state to the hash ...
261 views

### 64 bit Elliptic Curve key?

For a simple proof of concept project i'm (attempting!) to do, i've started looking into openSSL elliptic curve cryptography. However instead of the standard key lengths, 160-512. I'm interested in ...
2k views

### What is the probability of breaking the AES algorithm?

I am doing a project which requires the encryption to be done using AES. Is it really possible (technically) to crack AES? If yes, please tell me: What is the probability of breaking AES? How ...
199 views

### RC4 system pitfalls

A system fell into my neck, where lots of files are splitted into several segments and encoded via RC4. RC4, because client side - slow computer, slow flash arithmetic ops - can only decode big blobs ...
558 views

### Solve a system of non linear equations over GF

I have the following set of equations: $$M_{1}=\frac{y_1-y_0}{x_1-x_0}$$ $$M_{2}=\frac{y_2-y_0}{x_2-x_0}$$ $M_1, M_2, x_1, y_1, x_2, y_2,$ are known and they are chosen from a $GF(2^m)$. I want ...
366 views

### What is the period of a cipher?

For the following explanation of RC4: It is a variable key-size stream cipher with byte-oriented operations. The algorithm is based on the use of a random permutation. Analysis shows that the ...
28 views

### Some questions about the internals of bcrypt [duplicate]

I'm attempting to get a better understanding of cryptography and have run into some questions about bcrypt. Bcrypt relies on the blowfish cipher, which is a reversible method of encryption. But ...
123 views

### How do I know if a given curve requires a FpCurve F2mCurve or ECCCurve?

I'm trying to read a public key into Bouncy Castle (secp256k1) and need to choose from the following objects FpPoint; FpCurve; or ...
205 views

### Messages of different lengths and one-time computationally-secret

I'm preparing myself to exam, but I have a lot of troubles with rigorous proofs. Let $\Pi=(Gen,Enc,Dec)$ be an efficient secret-key encryption scheme that is not fixed-length. That is, for any $n$ ...
313 views

### Could completely public passphrase hashes ever be reliably secure?

This is a hypothetical question and I only have a basic understanding of Cryptography. If one were to follow the very best cryptographic practices for storing passphrases, could it ever be possible ...
2k views

### Using one-way hash functions as the encryption method

Suppose two parties want to communicate securely with each other (Bob and Alice) using a simple messaging system in English. There are approximately 180,000 currently used words in the English ...
494 views

### inverse problem about scalar multiplication on elliptic curve

Let $E$ be an elliptic curve over a finite field $F_p$. Given $n$ be a positive integer and $Q$ be a point on $E$, assume that $Q=nP$, how can we find this $P$? We can assume that $n|p-1$. If $n$ is "...
150 views

### How hard is a known prefix hash preimage attack?

Suppose the attacker knows $X, Z$ such that $H(X || Y) = Z$ If bit-length(Y) < 60 then a brute force attack is possible. What if ...
578 views

### Is One Time Pad considered Chosen-Plaintext Attack Secure?

If we're considering Chosen-Plaintext Attack setting, then the adversary has access to the Encryption Oracle right, and we know that OTP is only considered secure if we use the key only once. How ...
202 views

### One Time Pads and reuse of the decrypted message?

How is it insecure when Alice encrypts a message with a One-Time-Pad to Bob, and Bob then uses the decrypted message from Alice as the next One-Time-Pad? For example: Alice sends Bob a message ...
80 views

### Compression in key generation of DES algorithm

Does anyone have a pseudo-code or an algorithm or even a diagram of the compression (pc2) of the DES algorithm? I can't find a relation between the bits that are dropped, even when I do it manually ...
140 views

### Correct way to truncate data to a range [duplicate]

2 hours ago I thought I had this figured out, but now I am doubting myself and want someone to validate my algorithm. I want to take a stream of k trusted random ...
572 views

### Proof for exponentiation in modular arithemtic

If $e$ is a natural number, then this is true: $$m^e \bmod\ n = (m\bmod\ n)^e\bmod\ n$$ This is often used when encrypting, especially with RSA, since one can avoid directly calculating $m^e$, ...
77 views

### Can the key-complement property of DES be used against 3DES?

The comments in this recent question about the security of 3DES made me wonder if the key complement property of DES (which reduces its security by ~1 bit) can be used in the meet-in-the-middle attack ...
272 views

### Why is Bcrypt called a Key Derivation Function?

I am trying to understand why is bcrypt called a Key Derivation Function? I looked up the details of Ekfblowfish on Usenix article here: http://static.usenix.org/event/usenix99/provos/provos_html/...
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### How much processing power should you assume an attacker has?

The answer to this question says that you should assume an attacker can do one billion operations per second: Key Size for Symmetric Homomorphic Encryption Over the Integers Is that a single attacker ...
56 views

### Using a product of a series of curve25519 scalars as a private key

There are a few systems like the GNU Name System and the Sphinx mixnet packet format that employ a series of curve25519 scalars all multiplied together as a private key. Are there any caveats to ...
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### What key exchange do OpenSSL and CryptoAPI prefer by default?

Here is what I know. When I connect to a brand-new Linux Web server with Chrome and click the "lock" icon, the key exchange algorithm is described as "ECDHE_RSA". (Yes I know what that is.) When I ...
212 views

### How does ccrypt work?

On many Linux/GNU distributions CCrypt (ccrypt) by Peter Selinger is available as a command line utility to encrypt files. How does the protocol work and is it ...
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