All Questions

175 views

CTR mode nonce with aggressive key rotation policy

I'm writing a small encryption library which will be required to use the shortest possible amount of overhead for describing ciphertexts. I want to use CTR mode with a 6-byte random nonce. Normally ...
103 views

Is generating public key inevitably slow in classic Diffie-Hellman if the private key is large?

Let's say I pick a 3000+ bit prime $p$ for which I also know that $q = (p - 1) / 2$ is a prime. If I've understood correct, then I can pick pretty much any $g$. Is generating $g^x$ now inevitably ...
288 views

Can you break a multi language code using Frequency analysis?

Let say that I wrote a 26 letter alphabet, each letter of my alphabet represent a letter from the latin alphabet. I'm writing in 3 languages, only I know which languages. Grammar is the one from my ...
153 views

multiple keys via HKDF - whats better, one or two applications of HKDF-extract

Assume for the sake of the question that I have two variable-length bit strings, each with 128 bit cryptographic randomness, and I want to extract two 128 bit keys via HKDF-SHA256. Which alternative ...
104 views

Jumblar: Using map locations as passwords

I had the idea of converting map locations into passwords. Basically Jumblar takes a hash of the user's location and stores this as a comment on the PGP network. The 'stored-hash'(Vague-Hash) ...
97 views

repeated use of HKDF-extract on the same PRK

Regarding HKDF (RFC 5869) - HKDF has two steps, extract and expand. Some answers on this site suggest that you can extract once, and then generate multiple keys from the resulting PRK by multiple ...
90 views

using random encrypted RSA challenge as key material

Assume a simple protocol for authentication - one side sends a randomly generated challenge string and encrypts it with RSA. The receiver decrypts it and replies with a hash of the challenge, proving ...
108 views

estimating entropy/randomness as fail-safe mechanism

Real-world encryption systems are often not broken algorithmically but because the implementation has a bug. Sometimes the bug only happens in circumstances that could not have been foreseen, such as ...
110 views

Can you explain what the AES paper means by “sharing active S-boxes”?

I am reading the "Biclique cryptanalysis of the full AES" paper. What do they mean by "sharing active S-boxes"? How can this concept can be advantageous to make a bicycle? If there is someone who ...
175 views

Secret sharing scheme with possibility to change the secret

Here's a scenario I want to handle with a secret sharing scheme: Alice wants to share the secret $S$ with Bob, Charlie and Dave. Alice generates private shares based on $S$ for Bob, Charlie and ...
226 views

Why is asymmetric encryption IND-CPA?

According to Wikipedia, the IND-CPA game is: The challenger generates a key pair PK, SK based on some security parameter k (e.g., a key size in bits), and publishes PK to the adversary. The ...
108 views

Why do fully homo-morphic constructions use 'ring' or 'lattice' structures?

Is there a significantly advantage to these data structures, or is it simply the status-quo and the easiest to use for describing constructions?
203 views

What is meant by $\tilde\Omega(\lambda^4)$?

I'm currently reading the paper (Leveled) fully homomorphic encryption without bootstrapping , and the following paragraph was near the start: What is meant by the symbol used? Is it merely to ...
80 views

Can CBC-encrypted files be modified in-place?

When changing a (small) part of the plaintext of a CBC-encrypted file, how much of the file will have to be rewritten? My suspicion is that everything after the modified block will have to be ...
429 views

Why does Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme need a finite field?

I read ampersand's question "Necessity for finite field arithmetic and the prime number p in Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme", where he asked why Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme uses arithmetic in a ...
298 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 ...
145 views

Why is it said that if we have a duplicate ciphertext block it can leak our information?

I have been recently going through a question: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/15767/what-do-key-size-and-block-size-mean-in-cryptography and it created in me a series of doubts. Referring ...
119 views

using elliptic curve point multiplication as a key stretching method

My friend came up with the following idea: assuming we agreed on curve parameters, use the following algorithm for key stretching/derivation from user-entered password. Pad the ascii representation ...
2k views

AES 256 Encryption - Is it really easy to decrypt if you have the key?

So this might sound like a crazy question but bear with me for a minute. I can't find any info on the internet and so am here, although this might have been a good place to start. I've recently ...
66 views

Modes for encrypting small binary blobs?

Suppose I am building an encrypted document storage system. Suppose each user has a "user key": a symmetric key. Suppose each document is encrypted with a "document key". So, in order to give a ...
141 views

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, ...
78 views

Send a message to an entire group of recipients

I'm attempting to send a message to a group of recipients, through an untrusted intermediary. Each of the recipients will have been invited to the group by someone who already has a trusted public ...
345 views

I would ask you some questions about users' password storage in a login system. What algorithm do you suggest me to use? bcrypt or PBKDF2? I was looking for a way to implement them client-side and ...
58 views

Applications of 3-collisions

I recently read Improved Generic Algorithms for 3-Collisions by Joux and Lucks (Asiacrypt 2009), available as http://eprint.iacr.org/2009/305.pdf. I was wondering about applications of this technique ...