# All Questions

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### $(k, n)$ threshold secret sharing to $(k+k', n + n')$ without reissuing all shares

Given a $(k,n)$ threshold secret sharing used to back up a secret (meaning that the dealer has access to the secret at all times), is it possible to update it to a $(k+k', n+n')$ threshold secret ...
63 views

### Is encryption mainly using Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange?

I know how Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange works. Is this the main way of encrypting with PGP, ssh, ssl (https), DKIM, ...? I wonder if Diffie-Hellman is the clue to understand how encryption with ...
96 views

### Deciphering a Custom Encoding Scheme [closed]

I've been tasked with figuring out the strength of an encoding scheme developed by my employer. I've been given a thousand plain-text numerical values along with their corresponding numerical ...
176 views

### Security issues of a MAC-then-Encrypt-then-MAC approach?

Encrypt-then-MAC does provide ciphertext integrity, but no plaintext integrity. With MAC-then-Encrypt it’s the other way around: Plaintext integrity but no ciphertext integrity. What comes to mind is ...
189 views

### What does well-typed mean?

I am currently studying Cryptography and I don't really understand what does 'well-typed' mean when talking about secure cryptographic protocols. I can't find any reasonable explanation on the ...
86 views

### Combining two keys

What is the most secure way to combine two "random" keys X of size k (k ≤ 512 bits) and Y of size 512 bits in one key Z of size k? Result Z will be used for encryption/decryption with various ...
492 views

### Why is AES considered to be secure?

The security of RSA is based on the integer factorization problem, which is a very well defined and understood mathematical problem. This problem must be solved in order to fundamentally break RSA. ...
679 views

### Entropy of two concatenated random values

In this Intel blog posting, the author claims: The amount of work required to brute-force predict a random value that has n bits of entropy is $O(2^n)$. If you concatenate two values together, the ...
89 views

### Is it possible to find plaintext from ciphertext if (n) and (a) are known for RSA?

I have a couple of questions pertaining to a RSA problem. I need to decipher some ciphertext and find out what the original plaintext was. Modulus: $n = 2537$ and exponent: $a = 11$ Encrypting ...
78 views

### Is there an encryption that is only reversible with a key?

I'm thinking about man-in-the-middle attacks during a website login, and started wondering about reversible encryption. What I'm imagining is an encryption that takes input ...
596 views

### How is SHA1 different from MD5?

On the surface, SHA1 and MD5 look pretty similar. Their diagrams include chunks of bits, bit rotation, xor, and special functions. Their implementations are roughly the same length (at least the ones ...
62 views

### Is XORing a SHA256 better than truncating it? [duplicate]

Let say I want to truncate SHA256 to 128 bits. What would be the best way to minimize a probability of a collision and improve collision resistance? Taking the last 16 bytes Taking the first 16 ...
55 views

### linear computations over bilinear pairings

Does this hold in asymetric bilinear pairings? $e(x_1,x_2)e(x_3,x_4) = e(x_1x_3,x_2x_4)$, where $x_1,x_3 \in \mathbb{G}_1$ and $x_2,x_4 \in \mathbb{G}_2$ for a bilinear pairing $e$
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### Do I need to use AE/AEAD in my particular scenario? Or is it redundant?

This is my scenario: A small structured text message (1-2kB) is to be sent over an insecure channel. Everything except for the header portion (which contains a title, timestamp, category and tags) ...
58 views

### CTR mode encryption using PRG

In CTR mode encryption, the encryption block is not required to be invertible. Thus, a PRF can be used instead of a PRP. However most of the implementations of CTR mode are based on AES which is a ...
96 views

### Currently i am doing decryption for RSA encoding and i face some problem with it [closed]

I am very new to cryptography so I don’t know much about it. I have been given a very large $N$ value and $E$ value to decrypt a ciphertext which was created using a AES 128 key and a IV by using RSA ...
37 views

### RSA encoding problem help [duplicate]

Write a program to attack the Textbook RSA Encryption Scheme in order to decrypt the encrypted file key_enc.txt which contains the 128 bits AES secret key together with the initialisation vector ...
101 views

### Multiparty Computation with ORAM

Hope is not a silly question. I'm really struggling with it and I cannot find an answer anywhere! ORAM works with shared "secure" memory on server that is accessed in an oblivious manner and a client ...
101 views

### Computational Complexity - When is it really exponential time?

I'm currently working on the discrete logarithm problem and the relevant attacks. I'm fine on the mathematical side of things, but when it comes to estimation of running times I run into problems. ...
161 views

### Can we give access to controlled functionality in Fully homomorphic encryption schemes?

Homomorphic encryption schemes are PKE schemes with an additional special method Evaluate. Evaluate method takes input any function (as boolean circuit) and encrypted inputs of the function and ...
76 views

### Hardware Implementation of Pairing over BN curves

I am in the middle of FPGA based Hardware architecture design for the computation of Pairing (particularly R-ate Pairing) over BN curves. Where, the point addition, and point doubling should be ...
28 views

### Question about AES and Cryptsetup [migrated]

I've read that AES can work with three key sizes: 128 bits, 192 bits and 256 bits. I'm trying to set up a LUKS partition with CryptSetup, using “aes-xts-plain64” cipher. Why can I create keys of any ...
97 views

### Is HMAC-SHA-1 secure?

Although SHA-1 theoretically has collisions, HMAC-SHA-1 which is based on SHA-1 is still widely used (in TLS for example) and is considered to be secure. How is that possible?
60 views

### Verification of signed message with encryption

I have a question about the message that is being encrypted and signed. Say, two users called Tom and Mary, both have a pair of private key and public key. Tom sends a message through a system that ...
83 views

### Help deciphering caesar cipher [closed]

I have to to find the shift value and the message for the following caesar cipher. OC_VAWDGPM_VHWTVX_VXJOCVZ_GDX_MWO_VWIZVYGWIZ_NODI_ I have already tried it and with the shift value of 21 i get the ...
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### Streaming mode of operation that is more resistant against nonce reuse

Is it possible to create a streaming mode of operation where the reuse of a nonce does not destroy confidentiality? In this question it would be allowed for the streaming mode to leak if ciphertexts ...
144 views

### SHACAL in SHA-256

I was reading about hash functions, namely SHA, and I read that it is made of the Merkle-Damgard construction. And then the text said that the compression function used is based on the Davis-Meyer ...
146 views

### Format of NONCE in Initialization Vector (IV)

When we talk about a Number used ONCE (NONCE) in Initialization Vector (IV), is it required to use numbers only? Is is possible to use letters or special characters?
3k views

### How does one implement the Inverse of AES' MixColumns

I got an answer in the related question about Mixcolumn for encryption, but how about decryption? what will I do? Because it said that I will used this: During decryption the Mix Column the ...
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### RSA Blind Signature Attack

In Information Security Class I learned a non-adaptive chosen ciphertext attack using "blinding" but I just can't follow the proof and therefore can't reconstruct it. From what I've found out, it ...
166 views

### How many degrees of freedom up my sleeve?

Now that we know how the MD2 S-box was constructed, I find myself wondering how good a nothing up my sleeve number it really is. It is derived from $\pi$, but not in a very obvious way, even in ...
105 views

### Discovering private exponent from public key

I'm going to assume this isn't possible, but I have to ask because I'm trying to fundamentally understand what I've thus far been trying to implement by following an RFC. SRP-6a starts off with ...
80 views

### AES256-CBC vs AES256-CTR in SSH [duplicate]

I used AES256-CBC to SSH to a remote server. Recently, it stopped working with the following message: ...
61 views

### Diffie-Hellman when $p$ and $g$ are pre-agreed and hidden from Eve

During a regular Diffie–Hellman public key exchange, Alice and Bob agree to use a prime number $p$ and a base $g$… which are both made public and are therefore also assumed to be known by Eve. Alice ...
217 views

### Recover from compromised shares with Shamir Secret Sharing

He is a quote from Wikipedia page for Secret Sharing: If the players store their shares on insecure computer servers, an attacker could crack in and steal the shares. If it is not practical to ...
756 views

### Is there any strong enough pen-and-paper or mind cipher?

Some ciphers are talked about at “Is there a secure cryptosystem that can be performed mentally?”, but (at the time of writing) I don't see an answer. Are they strong enough, or are non-computer ...
143 views

### CMAC vs HMAC security strength

From the perspective of a Birthday Paradox attack, isn't it true that CMAC based on AES-128 is weaker than HMAC-SHA-1? The attack on CMAC-AES-128 requires about $2^{64}$ operations whereas the same ...
178 views

### Building a stream-cipher out of a hash function?

I've already read this: Is it feasible to build a stream cipher from a cryptographic hash function? However, my proposed construction differs… Suppose the hash generates N bits. These bits are split ...
179 views

### How does Truecrypt change password without the need for a complete re-encryption of volume

From what I understand: TrueCrypt takes the password as message Add salt calculates a digest use digest for encryption From what I understand. A good hash function has Second pre-image ...
544 views

### 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: ...
136 views

### RSA, finding p,q [duplicate]

If the public key $(e,n)$ and the private key $(d,n)$ are known, what is the easiest way to find the primes $p$ and $q$? When $n$ and $\phi(n)$ are given this is easy to solve. But I can't manage it ...
60 views

### Implementation and Testing of SRP-6a

I have been wracking my brain trying to develop a functioning implementation of SRP-6a in Python to use with a 3rd-party API that claims to use SRP-6a with $N=$ 2048-bit prime and generator of $2$. ...
636 views

### ABC Conjecture's Impact on RSA Encryption

A recent proof of the ABC Conjecture has been released by one Shinichi Mochizuki. Now, I'm not well versed in mathematics but it would appear that this proof implies that finding prime factors could ...
113 views

### Is it insecure to encrypt the wrong plaintext?

Most plaintext must be fed as a string or a binary object to be encrypted. However, it's often possible to mis-decode the plaintext before encrypting it. i.e. If it's received as a string in JSON, ...
525 views

### Is there any semantic difference between predicate encryption and functional encryption?

Predicate encryption(PE) arrived as a descendant of attribute based encryption. Attribute based encryption allows the encryptor to embody a policy to the ciphertext (Ciphertext-Policy based ...
504 views

### Can we ensure the security of a crypto-algorithm and -implementaton against acoustic cryptanalysis?

Like people always say: “Attacks only get worse…” — which is why I'm asking early. I have been reading the paper “RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis” published December 18, ...
58 views

### Algebraic Normal Form Piccolo

I'm trying to verify the claim of paper Improved Algebraic Fault Analysis: A Case Study on Piccolo and with Applications to other Lightweight Block Ciphers about the numbers of equations in algebraic ...
172 views

### How exactly does key whitening manage to increase security?

Wikipedia states that key whitening increases security: In cryptography, key whitening is a technique intended to increase the security of an iterated block cipher. It consists of steps that ...
Scenario: I have to protect the integrity of some files that will be exchanged between entities $A$, $B$, $C$. Entity $A$ creates the file (e.g. configuration) and sends it to $B$ and $C$. Entities ...