All Questions

283 views

If PGP and GPG both follow the OpenPGP standard, are they 100% compatible in all use cases?

If someone gives me their PGP key, can I use it with GPG, and vice versa, all the time (100% interchangeable)? Or are there times when they are not compatible, when only PGP can be used with a PGP ...
216 views

Chance in cryptography

I was just thinking about my own chance and the way chance can defeat even the most advanced algorithm. My thought was : you can make a strong session id, but what if by chance, a hacker set this ...
238 views

unique one-way hash

For a 10-digits numeric domain (swedish social security numbers), is there a hash function with the following properties? no two numbers result in the same hash it is not possible to deduce the ...
199 views

Why is time-lapse cryptography not popular?

Time-Lapse Cryptography has been introduced by Michael Rabin and Christopher Thorpe in the paper “Time-Lapse Cryptography”, but it does not seems to be popular. It is a really good paper with an great ...
455 views

Keeping IV secret for AES CFB mode

I'm developing a security/encryption software and I'm using AES CFB (block size: 16 and key size: 32 bytes). I want to know, if I also keep IV (32 bytes) secret like the key itself (32 bytes), would ...
100 views

Attack against modular inversion operation using side-channels?

I'm building a device that performs a modular inversions using a secret modulus. I would like to know if it is possible to recover all or part of this modulus by side-channels (timing, power, EMR, ...
470 views

How to break AES/CBC/PKCS5 when key and IV are reused?

I'm doing a code review for a crypto solution that reuses the same key with a constant IV. I want to demonstrate that this is not the right way to do things by figuring out the key and decrypting all ...
95 views

Difference between computational and statistical indistinguishabilities

What is the difference between the two notions of computational and statistical indistinguishability?
255 views

Is it true, that non-military cryptography appeared in 50's and 60's only thanks to leaks from the NSA? [closed]

I'm not talking about scytale, but encryption like RSA, DES, etc... How did exactly civil cryptography evolve after WWII?
1k views

Can an RSA private key have several public keys?

Ok, so my crpto lecturer in Uni posed this question at the end of the RSA key generation lecture as a brain teaser. I have been thinking about this and I think I have come up with a way ( I am aware ...
366 views

Hide a weakness in ECC by choosing the prime or one of the curve coefficients

Suppose you are given a value $c$. Can you find a prime $p$ and an integer $b$ such that the elliptic curve $$E: y^2 \equiv x^3 -3x + b \pmod p$$ is cryptographically weak? You need to choose ...
171 views

Can S/MIME be still considered secure?

Previoulsy I had asked this question at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18235983/can-s-mime-be-still-considered-secure but I feel this forum is topic-wise the right place. Recently there has been ...
278 views

Elliptic Curve Cryptography Encryption Results

I'm playing around with a package that does Elliptic Curve Cryptography from http://jecc.sourceforge.net/ Every time I encrypt a value it produced a different result (same private key). However I'm ...
252 views

How to hash a list of multiple items?

In some protocols, a key is derived from a hash of many parameters (K=H(param1,param2,param3)) Is there a hash function that takes many parameters as input ? Or we can simply use a function like ...
486 views

HMAC-SHA1 input size

I know that the HMAC is a message authentication code that uses a cryptographic key in conjunction with a hash function (SHA1 , MD5, etc.). The HMAC output is 160 bits for HMAC-SHA160 and 256 bits for ...
232 views

Relation between attack and attack model for signatures

I would like to know: What is the relationship between an attack and an attack model. For example, let $\Pi$ be the Lamport signature scheme. This signature has it's security based on the one-way ...
523 views

If RSA is limited to 117-200 bytes or so, is that a very limited use case?

Am I missing something, or is RSA very very limiting when it comes to ecrypting data when it comes to the actual message size? I have read that you can only encrypt a message of around 117 to 200 ...
532 views

Proper Way to Encrypt Data with Two Keys?

I'm going to develop a system that will have two keys. One supplied and generated by the system that's specific to an individual user and one from the user. I plan on using AES. Does it make sense ...
234 views

Why is the discrete log problem easy when the exponent comes from a binomial distribution?

I read in http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/7219/2/esorics06.pdf that in exponential El Gamal the discrete log problem for recovering $m$ from $g^m$ can be made tractable when $m$ is drawn from a binomial ...
175 views

Are digital signatures secure for signing lots of small messages?

I need to sign the numbers from 1 to 1 billion (literally this, it's not an analogy) using a digital signature and then send these numbers in a particular order to someone. The message is not private ...
301 views

Why do we assume un-security of communication channel on every cryptography system

While reading about a few cryptographic systems, I noticed that we always assume the communication channel is not secured. Why is this assumption made? And, why the effort is being put into designing ...
371 views

Blind quantum computing and fully homomorphic encryption

I am somewhat familiar with current research on fully homomorphic enryption schemes and their possible application to Cloud computing. I've just noticed (somewhat late) that a marketing-savvy group ...
476 views

Reason(s) for using a KDF for encryption keys

Assuming I already have a 256-key (32 char password) for AES encryption, comprised of random alpha-numeric characters and punctuation (95 possible ascii chars), generated by a decent PRNG, is there ...
158 views

Does zero-padding the secret in Shamir's sharing scheme increase security?

When performed in binary Galois fields $GF_{2^n}$, Shamir's threshold secret sharing scheme produces shares that are each the same bit-size as the secret. Though the scheme is "perfectly secure" in ...
132 views

iterated discrete log problem

Consider the following problem: given $g_1 \ldots g_i,h_1 \ldots h_i \in G$, $\forall i$ find $x_i$ such that $g_i^{x_i}=h_i$ For $i=1$ this is the discrete log problem and is assumed to to have ...
606 views

Implementing AES in C++: 4x4 Array of unint8_t, or 4x1 array of uint32_t?

I'm implementing AES in C++, and, inspired by the way words are handled in SHA, I decided this time to handle the state as a one dimensional array of 4byte unsigned integers as opposed to a two ...
1k views

Cryptanalysis of Linear Feedback Shift Registers

It is well known that simple m-sequence linear feedback shift registers have a linear algebraic structure and therefore the generator seed can easily be deduced using the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm. ...
10k views

Possible ways to crack simple substitution ciphers

We had a quiz in class today where we had to break the ciphertext with the key given, but not the algorithm. Suffice to say that I wasn't able to decrypt it within the alloted time of 12 mins and will ...
245 views

Is just a bit of random, “fully random”?

I understand that hashing a datetime is a pseudo-random number, and not good in a security context. But what about hashing a datetime plus a truly-random but constant string (just a string that an ...
417 views

Adaptive Hash Functions: How to tell how many iterations were used?

If an adaptive hash function like bcrypt or PBKDF2 is used in hashing passwords, the number of iterations used in the hashing process can be configured. For a penetration tester or a malicious ...
410 views

Multiple Hash Functions that work in either nesting

Are there any hashing functions that, if two are used in conjunction (with the same salts) will return the same response regardless of ordering? I.e. are there hash-functions $H_1$, $H_2$ such that ...
401 views

How does the cyclic attack on RSA work?

I am trying to get the idea of cyclic attacks againts assymetric RSA encryption. Taken from Handbook of applied cryptography . Let $k$ be a positive integer such that c^{(e^{k})} = c\mod n ...
290 views

Does omitting the first two lines of RC4's pseudo-random generation algorithm weaken the cipher?

A particular educational software program published by a U.S. government agency uses a variant of RC4 to obfuscate its data files (see Stack Overflow question). The variant of RC4 in question is ...
485 views

Do Cryptographic Hashing Algorithms operate only on Integers?

Do all the Cryptographic hashing algorithms operate only on integers (32 bit or 64 bit)? Is there any operation performed on Floating Point Numbers as well? The reason I ask this is because I read ...
1k views

Difficulty of breaking RSA for a given key size

Is it true that breaking a 1024-bit RSA key is as difficult as breaking a 128 bit symmetric key (e.g. AES)? I know that breaking a RSA key is equivalent to factoring the modulus $N$. To factor it, you ...
235 views

What challenge should I use in a challenge-response proof-of-work?

In order to guard against denial-of-service attacks, I want to require clients to do some work (more work than the server does fulfilling the request) before talking to them. Client connects Server ...
379 views

What is the best way to send two floating point numbers to a server on the internet from a small device such as an arduino?

I was thinking about sending some sensitive data (temperature) from an arduino (AVR 8-bit processor) to a server on the internet. But I would like to make sure that it would not be possible for Eve ...
3k views

How to distribute session keys in public key cryptography?

In public key cryptography we can also use session keys which are symmetric. How do the sender (say a server) provides this session key information to its clients? If the sender (here server) ...
188 views

Simple proof that shows AES is not a uniform permutation on any n-bit string?

Is there a simple proof that shows AES is not a uniform permutation on any $n$-bit string? Since I'm just starting with crypto, I'd like to see a simple yet elegant proof for the said property. ...
204 views

Security equivalent to Diffie–Hellman problem?

I've been doing the security proof for one of my Theorem. Basically, given $g^a$, $g^b$, $g^{cb}$, $g$ and $c$ as known values. Is the problem of computing $g^{acb^{-1}}$ equivalent to the Diffie ...
275 views

Is there a standard way to use a nonce with HMAC?

Many protocols use HMAC on messages that include a nonce, but they don't seem to do it in a consistent way. For example, in OAuth the nonce is in the middle of an URL-encoded key-value string, like ...
169 views

Generate a unique 64 bit numeric database key from a string without collisions at $2^{32}$ birthday threshold?

What is the best way to generate a unique 64 bit numeric database key from a string? For example: if the string is a URL, you could generate a 64 bit key using SipHash or by truncating a SHA256 hash ...
166 views

Does ECIES imply authenticity?

Assume: Alice and Bob both generate separate EC keypairs Alice obtains Bob's public key, and together with her private key creates a shared secret key Alice encrypts a message using the shared key ...
346 views

ECDSA vs RSA: Performance on Android platform and surprising results

For our privacy-preserving protocol, an encrypted channel is established. In order to protect our system from man-in-the-middle attacks, signature-based approach is used. After we've implemented it ...
110 views

Is the strength of RSA over quadratic or other cyclotomic fields as strong as over the integers?

If we assume the strength of RSA is based on the difficulty of factoring (which I know we can't guarantee) and we compose the modulus of some other quadratic ring that is a unique factorization domain ...
174 views

security in the standard model → random oracle model?

Can a protocol proved secure in the standard model be considered secure in the random oracle model?
236 views

Why does Openssh use only SHA1 for signing and verifying of digital signatures?

I am learning SSH protocol. With my current understanding of SSH protocol, I think that message digest algorithms for using in digital signature should be derived from Key Exchange. But Openssh ...
75 views

Signing the hash of a key with the same key

Given a private signature key sk and a public signature key SK, does revealing sk(H(SK)) (in ...