# All Questions

4k views

### Is modern encryption needlessly complicated?

RSA, DES, AES, etc. all use (relatively) complicated mathematics to encrypt some message with some key. For each of these methods, there have been several documented vulnerabilities found over the ...
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### 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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### Security Consideration on The Use of Random Number in Digital Signature

key-exchange protocol allows two parties to establish a shared key over public network. Lacking of authentication the original Diffie–Hellman key exchange is insecure under man-in- -the-middle ...
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### What is the security loss from reducing Rijndael to 128 bits block size from 256 bits?

As you know in the past few weeks it has emerged that NIST/NSA have been involved in weakening encryption standards over a long period of time so that they can retain the ability to break encryption ...
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### How is the initial permutation of DES created?

I am creating a program in C language with DES (Data Encryption Standard) functionality, but don't know how to apply the initial permutation. Is it achieved by swapping the values? If "yes", then ...
882 views

### GPG symmetric encryption and javascript

I have a use case where I need to encrypt some text in the browser using javascript. Only the encrypted text will be stored on the server. The user should then be able to take the encrypted result and ...
2k views

### Which one of the Block Cipher modes is the best?

I have two questions regarding the Block Cipher Modes: Which one of the modes is considered the best? I know CBC has a problem of IV since the next block of the plain text is XORed with the result ...
519 views

### Counter mode secure hash algorithm

Ever since the SHA-3 competition, I've been wondering if it is possible to create a hash algorithm that is easier to parallelize. The current algorithms all seem to require building a tree of hashes. ...
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### Can you help me understand this “Message Modiﬁcation by Meet-in-the-Middle” related to Tiger Hash?

I found this paper that explains how to attack a reduced round tiger hash, but I'm having a hard time understanding some of the mathematical notation. Could someone explain the section "Message ...
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### Algorithm for sharing secret information with redundant keys [duplicate]

I have an information that I would like to encrypt and give it to someone else. I would like to encrypt it using N separate passwords (say 5) and give each password to some other persons. However the ...
172 views

### Is this a structural weakness of Feistel networks?

I'm doing a lot of reading about Feistel networks. Something occurred to me a bit ago that I hadn't realized previously, namely that in any Feistel construction there are bits of the plaintext that ...
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### Is there any existing analysis for this construction to turn a tweakable blockcipher into a PRF?

I'm basically looking at this construction to turn a tweakable blockcipher $E_c(x)$ taking a key $k$, nonce $n$, counter $c$ (forming tweak $t = c||n$) and an input $x$ into a PRF on an ...
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### Can a nested block cipher avoid the meet in the middle attack by using a secret initialization vector for the inner encryption?

It seems to be believed that encrypting twice with a block cipher using an independent key each time is not as secure as you might expect because of the "meet in the middle" attack. This is an attack ...
409 views

### Verify product without revealing multipliers

Situation: Several participants contribute encrypted random numbers. These numbers will be used to generate community-agreed random (by simple multiplication). Question: Is there any way to detect ...
378 views

### Are there public slow-but-strong algorithms out there that resist brute-force attacks better?

I'm reading that AES uses 4x4 bytes (4*4*8 = 256 bits key) matrix for performances matters (since it's a requirement for common standard encryption algorithms), but are there implementations with ...
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### Dual_EC_DRBG and OpenSSL on a Mac

Since there is not much info anywhere on the Internet related to this: Does anyone know if OpenSSL's default CSPRNG is Dual_EC_DRBG or not? Their wiki is not very clear… Related to the first ...
400 views

### RSA Decryption with Private Key but no public exponent

I manually set the RSA private key, given the private exponent and modulus. When I use this key to decrypt a message encrypted using a public key (also set with public exponent and modulus) seems to ...
1k views

### Counter Mode in Advanced Encryption Standard(AES) Algorithm

In Advanced Encryption Standard, if I used "Counter Mode", how should I handle the nonce? Should I divide the nonce value into two? For example: I have 128-bit of nonce, should I divide it so I get ...
182 views

### Is it safe to use GZIP to avoid padding related attacks

I am designing a library that supports encrypting some in-memory data using AES in CBC mode. Now I need a padding but it seemed to me that Apple's CommonCrypto library and OpenSSL have different ...
1k views

### How to decode an OTP message?

First off, I'm extremely sorry if this comes off as a "homework dump", but to clarify, it isn't. I don't want the answer, I want to know how to get to the answer. My cryptography professor gave us an ...
151 views

### How does Poly1305 in the NaCl library calculate a MAC?

I've been reading about Poly1305 as implemented in the NaCl library, more specifically I've been referring to this Java implementation of NaCl. My understanding of XSalsa20Poly1305 (in this ...
1k views

### encryption and decryption time for RSA-crt in java?

I try compute execution time for encrypt and decrypt data has 1024 bit = 128 byte in RSA-crt algorithm. I need this results. But I believe this result wrong. because big diffrent between execution ...
470 views

### Achieving 256-bit encryption strength with PBKDF2 - HMAC-SHA1

I am interested in the theoretical consideration of the bit strength of an encryption key and its precursor. Assume a given environment as follows: a. My encryption algorithm is AES-256 b. My key ...
1k views

### Is it possible to make time-locked encrytion algorithm?

I'm not sure if what I'm asking is even a valid question but here goes. Would it be possible to add a mechanism to an encryption algorithm that would mean it had to be a certain time of the day or a ...
146 views

### chaining rsa with ecies

In an answer to a previous question it was suggested that one way to protect your asymmetrically encrypted AES-256 keys, from say a solution to prime factorization, would be to chain asymmetric ...
260 views

### Textbook-RSA meet-in-the-middle attack against other RSA based schemes?

A “meet-in-the-middle” (not “man-in-the-middle”!) attack on textbook-RSA was presented to me. The only requirements for it was that the attacker gets the output of RSA and the public key, and that the ...
879 views

### Cryptanalysis Affine Cipher: Brute-Force Search Vs. Meet-in-the-middle

Affine Cipher: $Enc(x) = (ax + b) \mod m$ $Dec(x) = a^{-1}(x-b) \mod m$ For a brute-force key search, we need to do $a \cdot b$ encryptions in the worst case. For a meet-in-the-middle attack, how ...
270 views

### Break double encryption

Let $E_k$ : {0,1}$^l$ be a block cipher encryption function with block-size $l$ and key-length $n$. In class, we saw that a double encryption with two independent keys $E{}'_{k_1k_2}(x)$ = ...
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### Where is the S-Box generated in Rijandel/AES?

It's rather kind of lame questions, and I can't find good and clear explanation: In which step of Rijandel is S-box generated? Is the S-box reused in every round of cipher or is generated in every ...
3k views

### Why is triple-DES using three different keys vulnerable to a meet-in-the-middle-attack?

Among other sources, this wikipedia entry states that triple DES using three seperate keys (k1, k2, k3) is vulnerable to meet-in-the-middle-attacks, while triple DES using only two keys (k1, k2, k1) ...
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### Meet-in-the-middle with checking complexity

In regards to meet in the middle type attacks, I have been considering the amount of operations in order to successfully find a key given two sets of plaintext / ciphertext pairs. All of the sources I ...
2k views

### What to watch for with openssl generating weak keys? (low entropy)

(Disclaimer: I am regular software engineer with only basic crypto knowledge, so helpful if can be explained for a layman.) I am concerned about generating weak keys on a shared linux box with ...
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### Bandwidth and block size for Paillier cryptosystem

Can someone clarify what is meant by the terms cryptosystem bandwidth and block size for public key cryptosystems; The context is the Paillier cryptosystem and its Damgard-Jurik generalisation. My ...
209 views

### List of available symmetric & assymetric ciphers [closed]

I was looking all over the Internet list of ALL existing symmetric and asymmetric ciphers. I know that there's, for example, AES, DES, Blowfish, DSA. But how about more? Where to find such list?
1k views

### Assuming a 1024qb quantum computer, how long to brute force 1024bit RSA, 256bit AES and 512bit SHA512

Assuming in the future there was a functioning 1024 qubit quantum supercomputer and it could run Shor's algorithm or Grover's algorithm to crack encryption very quickly. I'm interested in how the ...
939 views

### Does Microsoft use Dual_EC_DRBG by default?

So, as we all know, Dual_EC_DRBG contains an NSA back door. At this point, there is no reason to call it a "potential" or even an "alleged" back door; the presence is obvious even to the NY Times. As ...
304 views

### Reusing keys with AES-CBC

I heard that key/IV pairs must not be reused in AES-CTR, or when using any stream cipher for that matter. Yet the attacks described do not seem to apply to AES-CBC. Is reusing the same key several ...
1k views

### RSA cracking: The same message is sent to two different people problem

Suppose we have two people: Smith and Jones. Smith public key is e=9, n=179 and Jones public key is e=13, n=179. Bob sends to ...
997 views

### Why is TLS susceptible to protocol downgrade attacks?

A recent blog post from Ivan Ristić (expert extraordinaire on all things SSL) says: all major browsers are susceptible to protocol downgrade attacks; an active MITM can simulate failure conditions ...
296 views

### Is SSH public key authentication weakened by 'none' cipher?

As far as I know, SSH2 first does a key exchange based on the server host key and brings up transport authentication and encryption derived from this kex. The real authentication (password or public ...
135 views

### Is my understanding of CPA indistinguishability experiment correct?

Following are steps to conduct Chosen Plaintext Attack (CPA) indistinguishibility experiment $PrivK_\mathcal{A,E}^{eav}(n)$. $\mathcal{A}$ is the adversary $\mathcal{E}$ is the encryption scheme ...
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### How to get the same calculation result on an untrusted computer, while withholding some information?

Consider this command on a trusted computer: result = function(public data, secret data) or shorter: r = f(p,s). How could a ...
318 views

### Theoretical pi-based stream cipher

Let's pretend that all digits of pi are known and arbitrarily long sequences of digits are trivial to get. Further, some mathematician proves that there are no patterns in pi. We could create a stream ...
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### some of my confusions about DDH assumption

The wiki defines the decisional Diffie–Hellman assumption as follows: Decisional Diffie–Hellman assumption Consider a (multiplicative) cyclic group $G$ of order $q$, and with generator $g$. The DDH ...
293 views

### Can we design a public-key infrastructure without certificate authorities?

In a recent essay, Bruce Schneier tasks the engineering community with redesigning and rebuilding the vulnerable parts of the Internet's backbone. We need to figure out how to re-engineer the ...
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### 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. ...
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### Can someone explain how this unpadded RSA formula works?

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption, $\mathcal{E}(x_1) \cdot \mathcal{E}(x_2) = x_1^e x_2^e$ $\bmod\; m = (x_1x_2)^e \;$ $\bmod\; m = \mathcal{E}(x_1 \cdot x_2)$ What is ...