# All Questions

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### Why do new versions of TLS use an explicit IV for CBC suites?

SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 used an insecure scheme to generate implicit IVs when encrypting records in CBC mode: they used the last part of the previous record, a value that can be predicted by the attacker. ...
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### Solution with high decryption cost and low encryption cost

I am looking for any cryptographic solution that will meet those requirements : Only known method to get the encrypted string need to be brute force. Decrypting on modern computer not more than ...
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### How would you encrypt-then-MAC when using pen-and-paper and a Caesar cipher?

I'll probably get shot for asking this, but I've got some kids (aged 8-10) in my neighbourhood that I've been showing/teaching the simple pen-and-paper Caesar cipher and they're successfully playing ...
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### Good challenges for a crypto competition for teenagers

I'm holding a cryptography workshop for teenagers (around 16 years old) at our university. As part of the workshop, I'm planning to run a crypto competition with prizes: there will be different tasks, ...
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### Proving HMAC collision probability bounds?

Could someone point to results or proofs about the probability of $$HMAC(k, m_1) = HMAC (k, m_2)$$ assuming the underlying hash function is SHA-256? Would those probabilities be higher/lower if $m_1$ ...
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### How can finding a collision help an attacker with tampering messages with HMAC

As stated in the HMAC RFC (RFC 2104): The strongest attack known against HMAC is based on the frequency of collisions for the hash function H. How can a collision benefit an attacker? I would ...
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### How does Random Oracle and Standard Model differ? [duplicate]

I am new to Crypto field. Many papers are boasting of not using Random Oracle model. Instead, those prove security in Standard Model. I am surprised how do these models differ. Can anyone please ...
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### RSA was rejected by which journal?

Is it true that first time RSA algorithm was rejected by a journal?
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### Why are some key stretching methods better than others?

I'm trying to understand why some key stretching methods are better than others. The wikipedia article presents 3 different key stretching methods: A collision prone simple key stretching ...
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### Understanding Genkin-Pipman-Tromer's ground potential, side channel attack on RSA

I'm pretty sure that by now folks might have come across this research from Genkin-Pipman-Tromer (GPT) on extracting the RSA key used by GnuPG (GPG) just by measuring the ground potential. I'm going ...
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### Security of very simple XOR with random? [duplicate]

I am currently trying to implement a very fast and simple encryption algorithm in Lua for the purpose of using it with ComputerCraft. The main problem is that bitwise operations in Lua (5.2 at least) ...
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### Are variable-length crypto hash functions still susceptible to collisions?

I just recently learned that the SHA-3 finalist Keccak allows for variable length output. As the only answer to this question states, "[it] need to have an output length at least equal to the input ...
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### Is hashing a list of hashes safe?

I have an arbitrary long list of hashes (e.g. git tree hashes), and I'm wondering by how much I am increasing the risk of hash collisions by condensing them into a single hash, like so: ...
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### PBKDF2 Salt and Password Ordering

I am currently reading about PBKDF2, and understand that the salt is used only once, while the password is used multiple times in the computation of the final key (see this question). How would the ...
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### Possible CPA or CCA attack when using AES-CBC mode under the following situation?

Both client and server know a shared key in advance. Both sides us EVP_BytesToKey() derive a pair of same key and same IV. Then, client and server start transferring data encrypted by AES-CBC mode ...
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### What's the point of a Meet In The Middle attack using i.e. double AES with throw-away keys?

What's the point of a Meet In The Middle attack while using, for example, a double AES encryption and using one time keys? You can recover the keys for a secret message already known and you can't use ...
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### Partial hash code protocol for security tokens providing signatures

I've read the following two sentences within a beta protocol specification, which references ISO/IEC 7816-8 for PSO:HASH which already contains notions of a "partial hash". The off-card entity is ...
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### Comparing Difference Distribution Tables

I have been studying the Diff. Cryptanalysis and finding it hard to do a problem. The problem is I have calculated the tables programmatically and found that the second table has a max value of 6 ...
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I recently came across an interesting paper detailing the use of hardened session cookies. Each cookie includes a preimage of the password hash, and the preimage is hashed once more and compared to ...
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### Is it secure to derive an AES key from a MAC?

I'm working on a project where we need to encrypt a large number of files and store them on the cloud. And I'm wondering if the following process would be secure (we have a “Hardware Security Module” ...
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### What's the consequence of having a short IV? Is one mode better in that case?

I've read lots about null-length IVs being bad for most modes. In a scenario where passing a 128-bit IV along with each message isn't feasible, how would generating the IV from a smaller passed-along ...