# All Questions

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### 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 ...
214 views

### Composition of block ciphers and 3DES

There is some intriguing things about DES and 3DES. Now, I know that DES is weak and 3DES was an attempt to construct a more secure block-cipher from a deprecated one. Having this in mind, what ...
397 views

### Are block ciphers used in public key crypto?

I was reading about block ciphers and most articles state they are being used in symmetric key cryptography. Are they also being used in public key cryptography? if not, what alternative pkc use? ...
490 views

### Tamper-proofing log files

Problem Overview I want to securely store log files so the contents are secret, and they can't be modified without detection. The files will be encrypted using authenticated encryption (AES in GCM ...
287 views

### Case insensitive verification of HMAC / Base64 signature

I am signing a short message using the base64 of an HMAC, like this (python): ...
439 views

### Simple RC4 key generation scheme

I would like to ask you about your opinion on the following scheme of combining a master key and a nonce and stretching the result to the full 256-bytes RC4 key. Master key $K_m$ is a pre-shared ...
513 views

### A proof-of-work random number generation system for Pokémon [closed]

(The original question that was here was considered too confusing, unclear, and rambling. You can still view it in the edit history, but the content is no longer useful by itself, and cannot be ...
1k views

### AES Key Length vs Block Length

This answer points out that certain key and block lengths were a requirement for the AES submissions: The candidate algorithm shall be capable of supporting key-block combinations with sizes of ...
145 views

### The meaning of “scheme”

This question is a bit different from other questions here, but I think it is suitable to correctly understand the terminology of cryptography. Consider the following two sets of terms: Encryption ...
2k views

### How many keys does the Playfair Cipher have?

I was just studying the Playfair cipher and from what I've understood, it is just a slightly better version of a Caesar cipher, in that it isn't actually mono-alphabetic but rather the 'digrams' are ...
757 views

### Is it possible to pick your Ed25519 public key?

Is it possible to generate an Ed25519 keypair that has a very similar public key as another keypair (fooling a casual visual comparison) or is this as hard as solving one of SHA-512 or the discrete ...
361 views

### Can I build a secure tweakable block cipher from a normal one by adding key and tweak?

Let (E,D) be a secure block cipher. Consider the following tweakable block cipher: ...
1k views

### What is the difference between these AES encryption methods

I am using AES encryption (Rijindael) with Base-64 encoding in Obj-C and VB. I am currently using the following two projects to achieve this: Obj-C: ...
321 views

### How much bigger does a precomputed lookup table get when salt is added?

I am trying to wrap my head around the benefits of salt in cryptography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(cryptography) I understand that adding salt makes it harder to precompute a table. But ...
729 views

### How do public key rings work in cryptographic applications?

I am wondering if there are any links to articles or resources available online, or explanations that you can give, that would help me to understand the concept of a public key ring, and why I might ...
1k views

### RSA: If n=35, show that e will equal d

Show that if $n = 35$ is used as an RSA modulus then the encryption exponent $e$ always equals the decryption exponent $d$? What I have so far: $n = 35$ Therefore $p = 5$ and $q = 7$ or vice versa, ...
948 views

### Is it a good idea to use bitwise XOR on a set of MD5 sums?

I have designed an SQL aggregate function in Oracle that bitwise XORs all MD5 sums of the values stored in a column. For example, if my table is: ...
434 views

### Does the XML Encryption flaw affect SSL/TLS?

A "practical attack against XML's cipher block chaining (CBC) mode" has been demonstrated: XML Encryption Flaw Leaves Web Services Vulnerable. Does this weakness of CBC-mode which is used here also ...
192 views

### Getting the encryption method and key from the encrypted data and the raw data

I have some pairs of plaintext and ciphertext data, from which I need to be able to decrypt the other passwords stored in the database. The password field typically contains something like ...
322 views

### Where can I find useful data for cryptography/coding theory?

When implementing cryptographic/coding theory algorithms one need to use data like big prime numbers, numbers in $Z_n$ and their inverses, irreducible polynomials in $Z_n[x]$ and so on... While ...
289 views

### How does MD5 process text which is shorter than 512 bits

MD5 processes a 512-bit block and produces a 128-bit (16 byte) message digest often expressed as 32-digit hexadecimal value For example if I hash the word "how" using MD5 , I get the following hash ...
111 views

### SRP-6 vulnerabilities when N is small

I'm one of the developers of an application which uses SRP-6 as the authentication mechanism. The authentication part of the code is very old and uses N with only 256 bits (all arithmetic is done in ...
166 views

### AES VS PRNG+HASH+XOR

I was thinking of doing symmetric encryption using just hashing and simple XOR encryption. It would work as: Alice and Bob share a symmetric key Alice manages to send an (authenticated) IV to Bob ...
241 views

### Is RSA key size the size of private key exponent in public key encryption?

I have implemented a key pair generation scheme for RSA algorithm. I have taken the length of private key exponent as RSA key size, but then I've got to know that RSA key size is the size of the ...
217 views

### What is a generator?

I am trying to read up on the math behind DH and ran into the word generator used a lot. I am not sure what it means. Can someone explain? I see this question where the OP talks about g as the ...
291 views

### Third-party security issues with Shamir's secret sharing scheme

In Shamir's secret sharing scheme, we are trusting a third party who generates the secret polynomial. How can we ensure security here when we are involving a third party?
169 views

### Difference between lightweight, online and low memory Authenticated Encryption schemes

What is the basic difference between the following types of Authenticated Encryption (AE) schemes? Lightweight Authenticated encryption Online Authenticated Encryption Authenticated Encryption for ...
135 views

### Does Runge phenomenon affect Shamir's secret sharing scheme?

Lagrange interpolation seems to be affected by the so-called Runge phenomenon when one tries to interpolate polynomials of high degree from a set of equidistant points. Lagrange interpolation is ...
251 views

### Hashing SHA-512 1000 times

SageMathCloud security (http://goo.gl/dCujW1) is as follows: Only the hash of your password is stored by the server, which uses 1000 iterations of the sha-512 hash function, with a salt length of ...
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 ...
257 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 ...
213 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 ...
514 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 ...
103 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, ...
556 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 ...
96 views

### Difference between computational and statistical indistinguishabilities

What is the difference between the two notions of computational and statistical indistinguishability?
258 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 ...
371 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 ...
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 ...
275 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 ...
561 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 ...
243 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 ...
559 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 ...
573 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 ...
245 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 ...
179 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 ...
307 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 ...