All Questions

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Why does Paillier have poor performance?

Can anyone explain to me why Paillier crypto system does not provide good performance? I read here (pdf) that RSA and ElGamal provide better performance than Paillier algorithm.
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Does adding more characters to the Enigma rotors improve crypto strength?

This seems like an obvious question but I haven't been able to find it, so here goes: Enigma is based on an alphabet of A-Z (26 characters); obviously this directly affects message content (e.g. ...
1k views

Can an Enigma-style cipher of sufficient complexity be considered secure today?

Regarding the German Enigma machines, if I recall correctly, the reason they were defeated was because the Allies were able to generate a massive database of possible rotor settings, and because the ...
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Least-weak way to authenticate using only AES ECB/CBC

I have an embedded application that needs to occasionally get secure updates from a server. The only crypto library I have available for the chip is an AES-256 cipher (ECB and CBC, encrypt/decrypt). ...
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GPG/PGP Verification of Revocation

How does one verify a key revocation? After revoking a key and sending the revocation to MIT's keyserver, I noticed that the key is listed as such: ...
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Intuition for random variables in cryptography

I have a simple question about the use of random variables for encryption schemes, to make sure my intuition is correct. We say $P(K = k)$ to represent the probability that a particular key $k$ is ...
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Encrypting the same message using different schemes

$E_1$ and $E_2$ are IND-CPA secure encryption schemes. $E$ is defined as: $k_1,k_2 \leftarrow K_1 \times K_2$ . $E_{k_1,k_2}(m) \leftarrow E_{1,k_1}(m)||E_{2,k_2}(m)$. Hope the notations are in an ...
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Differential privacy with oblivious transfer

I have the following scenario: A has encrypted text, with max length $L$; B wants to know if the decrypted text, which contains one or more words from a closed group of $X$ words; A is not to be ...
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Can MGF1 within OAEP and PSS be replaced by a XOF?

Do we still need MGF1 as used in the PKCS#1 v2.x specifications for SHA-3 hash functions? MGF1 is currently used for OAEP and PSS as Mask Generation Function. Now that the SHA-3 specification contains ...
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Can stream ciphers (usually) be “run backwards”?

Is it possible to reconstruct the previous output bits of a stream cipher, e.g. RC4, when only the current state is known, or is that computationally hard, or even impossible (due to ambiguous ...
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What is the PRG period of stream ciphers such as RC4 or Salsa20?

I am confused about how long a stream cipher can be used before you should change the key. To be concrete, let me use the stream cipher based on RC4 as an example. Let's say I want to encrypt a very ...
471 views

Difference between a circuit and a normal function

I've seen the word circuit used in many crypto contexts (for example, regarding FHE in this pdf). I've always thought of a circuit as another word for a program or function. But is there a difference -...
Why does DSA require that a new $k$ be chosen and the algorithm restarted if $s=0$?
DSA is an algorithm used to generate a digital signature, which consists of a pair of values $(r,s)$. The algorithm computes $r$ first and then $s$. However, if we calculate $s=0$, it says to restart ...