All Questions

107 views

How many bits to flip in an RSA public key to do signature forgery?

Scenario: Alice wants to verify a signature from Bob. Alice knows Bob's RSA public key (e, n). However, Alice is getting the data, the signature of the data and the public key from an attacker Eve. ...
119 views

Deterministic ECDSA signatures?

ECDSA signatures depend on parameter k that is chosen by the signer. As a result, there are many signatures for the same private key d and message m. What I want to achieve is a deterministic ...
86 views

What needs to be proved for a cryptosystem to be secure?

For example showing that it is easy to produce ciphertext from plaintext but is difficult/impossible to get plain text from ciphertext. I am asking in general but am more interested in asymmetric ...
58 views

Why does encryption in STS protocol protect against identity attacks?

The basic STS protocol contains encryption of the signature as shown in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station-to-Station_protocol If we would like to defend against MITM attack, this ...
82 views

Blowfish Weak keys

I've read about the weak key issue with Blowfish, but can't seem to find anything that explains the practical effect of weak keys on Blowfish with the full 16 rounds. Is there any actual attack upon ...
49 views

Unconditional authentication

I have a few questions regarding universal-hash functions: Is there a way universal hash functions can be used to provide unconditional authentication in the way the OTP provides unconditional ...
71 views

Problems implementing AES in CBC+CTS mode

I'm trying to implement an AES cipher in CBC+CTS mode, but I'm unable to get the second last plaintext block to decrypt properly. I've attached my code, it's based on the steps listed under CBC ...
102 views

How to derive the curve Ed25519 from Curve25519?

According to the paper "Faster addition and doubling on elliptic curves" by Bernstein and Lange, the Montgomery curve (Curve25519) $$v^{2}=u^{3}+486662\cdot u^{2}+u$$ is birationally equivalent to the ...
41 views

One-Time-Signature based codes

I'm trying to understand the sentence in bold, in the follow paragraph of A new one-time signature scheme from syndrome decoding Keygen: Given a security parameter $\lambda$, choose a suitable ...
13k views

Difference between encrypting something and hashing something

What is the difference between encrypting something and hashing something? in what situations would I want one or the other?
143 views

Is this hypothetical key-exchange secure?

I've thought about the following (generic) key-agreement protocol. The only weaknesses I could have found are missing freshness guaranteees. As for the notions: $E^1_K(P)$ is the symmetric encryption ...
40 views

Correctness of ideal protocol of MPC in presence of malicious adversary

In presence of malicious adversaries in ideal protocol of Multi Party Computation, how can honest parties get the correct output? i.e., corrupted parties modify their inputs and give to the trusted ...
39 views

N users must approve a request

I have a locked-down production system that we'd like to process specific requests, picked-up (poll) from a less-secure location. For security and "go slow, this is production" reasons, a request ...
91 views

EAX cipher mode with nonce equal header

I am using EAX AEAD with an 8-byte message header which carries a 32-bit sequence number, a message length, and some other bits that I don't mind exposing. Assuming the sequence number never repeats ...
1k views

What good is a hash accompanying a program?

After studying at length about weaknesses in SHA2, length extension attacks, forged signatures, etc. I have to ask why groups like Gnu provide hashes on their program texts? As long as the public ...
45 views

“Order” in cryptographic terms for generators

Frequently I have seen people use the term order in cryptography (the group theoretic one). I have a mathematical background and order (say for prime modulus $p$) is defined as the smallest integer ...
126 views

Where I can find a list of certified software / hardware RNGs compliant to NIST SP 800-22?

I need to use NIST SP 800-22 approved software / hardware to generate RSA key pair. Where I can find a list of certified software / hardware RNGs compliant to NIST SP 800-22? And how is the SP ...
13k views

Calculating RSA private exponent when given public exponent and the modulus factors using extended euclid

When given $p = 5, q = 11, N = 55$ and $e = 17$, I'm trying to compute the RSA private key $d$. I can calculate $\varphi(N) = 40$, but my lecturer then says to use the extended Euclidean algorithm to ...
57 views

Get AES key from client request

I get a request from a client who encrypts the message with the wrong AES key. Is there a way for me to know what AES key the client actually used? I understand I may get the decrypted msg which is ...
6k views

The modulus of RSA public key

I am studying the RSA cryptosystem. The public key consists of $(n, e)$, the modulus (product of two large primes), and the encryption exponent. I want to separate the modulus $n$ and exponent $e$. A ...
104 views

Ring-LWE elliptic gaussian distribution

I am currently trying to understand this Ring-LWE article: http://www.cims.nyu.edu/~regev/papers/ideal-lwe.pdf and I have a question. Firstly, it is mentioned in the paper that we can view the ...
539 views

Why should the primes used in RSA be distinct?

The two primes $p$ and $q$ part of the public key need to be distinct. What's the reason for them to be distinct? Is it because factorization of $p^2$ where $p$ is a prime is relatively easier, or is ...
64 views

What is the meaning for a vector mod a matrix in a lattice?

I'm reading about the lattice recently.In the paper, it gives a method of a vector mod a matrix: ⃗c mod B as ⃗c−⌊⃗c×B^(−1)⌉×B = [⃗c×B^(−1)]×B. I know that a integer A mod the other integer B is ...
72 views

AES-CBC pre-determined IV vs. null IV

Is there any security advantage to using a pre-determined IV in CBC mode over a null IV? I'm implementing a license key system similar to this article on CodeProject, but I'm confused by the authors ...
40 views

how to implement order preserving encryption except cryptdb

Which cryptographic algorithm is suitable for implementing order preserving encryption with out using cryptdb
318 views

Why isn't outputting only a portion of the hash state a simple defense against length extension attacks?

As I understand length extension attacks, they depend on the coincidental property of most cryptographic hash functions that the hash value is exactly the hash function state after hashing the last ...
371 views

Is there a multiple asymmetric encryption algorithm, which requires all private keys to reveal the secret?

I am looking for an asymmetric encryption algorithm, which allows to encrypt a secret with multiple public keys, but to reveal the secret all private keys must be used. You shouldn't be able to tell ...
112 views

What is the difference between the standard representants of $\mathbb Z/q\mathbb Z$?

The symbol $\mathbb Z/q\mathbb Z$ (given that $q$ is prime) represents the prime field $\mathbb Z_q$. Basically, the elements of this field are represented by $\{0, 1, \dots, q-1\}$, let's call this ...
131 views

What's the differences among Blind Computation, Secure Multi-Party Computation, Secure Circuit Evaluation and Homomorphic Encryption

We know that Blind Computation, Secure Multi-Party Computation, Secure Circuit Evaluation and Homomorphic Encryption all can process the encrypted data, but I am puzzled by them. What are their ...
336 views

SHA-256 exhaustive search

How do I calculate the number of computations needed to break SHA256 in case we are using it for safely storing passwords (together with a salt)? Are there any formulas that can be employed? For ...
105 views

How is an epsilon of 1/1000 non-negligible?

Lately I've been studying cryptography and in the current course I'm taking we're reviewing statistical tests and how they can be used to determine if a pseudo-random generator is secure or not. ...
49 views

Brute forcing the secret key in Elgamal encryption

Crypto noob here, I am attempting to do this programming challenge. I do not have the secret key that is used to decrypt the message. However, the key is small enough for a brute force approach. I am ...
59 views

How to compute two EC point multiplication?

I would like to know how to compute multiplication of two valid EC points over a curve E with generator G. i.e. Given only P and Q points then how to compute R = P * Q where $P = p G$, $Q = q G$ and ...
43 views

Point multiplication using Montgomery ladder technique over Montgomery curves only require x coordinate, which in many situation leads to faster implementation as compared to point multiplication over ...
222 views

Which concrete applications benefit from Oblivious RAM constructions?

The main motivation for Oblivious RAM (ORAM) is that, for instance, in the "cloud" setting a client outsources his data to a server in the form of encrypted blocks. Later on, he wants to perform read ...
111 views

Does exponentiation by squaring work on Montgomery curves?

Consider the point multiplication $Q=[d]P$, where $P$ a point on elliptic curve multiplied with an integer $d$ to get another point $Q$ on the same curve. This operation can be computed by a ...
228 views

Which is better ECDHE with TLS 1.0

I have a webserver which only supports TLS 1.0 and I am not sure about something: Which is the better cipher in this group when aiming for the best security? ...
257 views

Fractal Merkle Traversal

I am studying Fractal Merkle Tree Traversal algorithm in the book “Post Quantum Cryptography” (PDF). On the [pag. 54] I don't understand this paragraph: We may determine the number of pebbles ...
29 views

IES: What security has the asymmetric primitive to provide?

I think most of us know the notion Shoup introduced of KEM/DEM (Key encryption material / data encryption material) which is used for example by the (famous) ECIES, where the key is the hash of some ...