# All Questions

192 views

secp256k1 (the signature scheme used by Bitcoin) has the interesting property that you can add two public keys to get a combined key that requires both private keys to produce signatures for. Is ...
146 views

### Encrypt-Mix-Encrypt: Full Diffusion?

I've read "A Parallelizable Enciphering Mode" by Halevi and Rogaway about the encrypt-mix-encrypt mode for ciphers and was asking myself if this mode provides "full" diffusion. So if an attacker ...
254 views

### Anonymous Gravatar Problem

Gravatar is a service that serves avatars for users based on md5(email_address). The hash is embedded on websites, so it's public. One of the problems with this ...
691 views

### PBKDF vs HKDF for pretty long key

I'm developing a messenger application with encrypted chats. In the first version of the app I've used PBKDF2 (10000 iterations, SHA1, random salt) to extend a short user password and generate keys ...
149 views

### Formal relationship between encryption and random number generators?

Cryptographically secure random number generators seem to have similar properties to symmetric encryption: initial seed is permuted to produce a random numbers (key and ciphertext) given the seed, ...
240 views

### Adding tweak to a block cipher

I know there are XEX, XTS and other ways to add tweak to block cipher without modifying cipher itself. However they are quite slow and/or complex. If we assume we have a secure block cipher round ...
875 views

### Where did the SHAKEs come from in SHA3?

Where did SHAKE128 and SHAKE256 originate from? I am trying to find them in the original Keccak documentation but can't find them. Is it some special mode of Keccak referenced in the documentation? ...
184 views

### Is SRP post-quantum secure?

Is SRP-6a post-quantum secure? If it is not post-quantum secure, do any post-quantum secure alternatives similar to SRP-6a exist?
118 views

### Turning PRPs in PRGs with a counter

I am following the Coursera Cryptography I course and I have the following question, I am a bit perplexed by the statement, in week 2 lecture "What are block cyphers?" that a counter-mode PRF is a ...
443 views

### Is SHA256 good enough to shrink a key?

I have a key that is the combination of two shorter keys generated by PBKDF2, which together are long more or less 64 bytes. Now I need to shrink it down to 32 bytes and I'm not sure what to use to do ...
478 views

### How come Shamir Secret Sharing uses Lagrange interpolation?

I've read that Newton polynomials have better computational complexity, but Shamir's uses Lagrange polynomials instead. Does anyone know if there are particular reason why Newton polynomials aren't ...
291 views

### Which concrete applications benefit from Oblivious RAM constructions?

The main motivation for Oblivious RAM (ORAM) is that, for instance, in the "cloud" setting a client outsources his data to a server in the form of encrypted blocks. Later on, he wants to perform read ...
340 views

1k views

### What is the proper way to use a client nonce?

I've implemented an API for one of my clients, it relies on nonces and a shared secret. The structure: Client's Site (CS) requests nonce from My App (MA), posting their username MA verifies the ...
941 views

### ElGamal signature without calculating the inverse

I stumbled upon this question in some textbook. Propose a variant of ElGamal signature scheme such that there is no need to calculate the inverse $k^{-1}$ as it is usually done using the EEA. ...
2k views

### Any good file format alternative to PGP for encrypting data at rest?

I'd like to create an encrypted file that: Can be decrypted on a variety of platforms (mainly Windows, OS X, and Linux) with knowledge of the key. Can be decrypted with existing tools (perhaps ...
117 views

### How can I instantiate a generalized hash function?

I've come across a bunch of "strange" hash function notations, such as the following ones and now I don't know how to choose / instantiate them. Can you please explain me what this notation means and ...
Given two ciphertexts $c_1 = enc(p_1)$ and $c_2= enc(p_2)$ using any additive homomorphic encryption scheme (or specifically Paillier). Can we find out whether the underlying plaintexts $p_1,p_2$ ...
In ElGamal encryption $(g^r, g^mg^{kr})$, if the randomness $r$ is always chosen from even numbers, and the attacker knows about this, is it still provable secure?