All Questions

156 views

Predicting Google Authenticator OTP Codes [closed]

I use Google Authenticator to generate OTP codes for logging in. As you know, the numbers change every 30 seconds or so, and (AFAIK) use an RSA key to generate those numbers. If someone were to ...
52 views

Will the complement of a 64-bit key and message produce the complement ciphertext if ECB is used in DES?

Say I have a 64-bit message/key: P1: 1011....... K1: 0101....... I run this message/key pair through DES in ECB mode and obtain some cipher that looks like the ...
45 views

Recombination thresholds in degree reduction of multiplied Shamir shares

Shamir's secret sharing can be considered multiplicatively homomorphic, if one is aware of the fact that multiplying two shares of a (n,t)-threshold shared secret yields a share of the same secret, ...
402 views

Is Chaocipher a secure cipher under ciphertext-only attack?

Chaocipher was invented by John F. Byrne in 1919. The algorithm was recently revealed – see Moshe Rubin's Chaocipher Revealed, the Algorithm (PDF). While a known plaintext attack successfully finds ...
3k views

128 bit 3DES Key and AES Key: what's the difference?

Apologies if this is really basic but I couldn't find the answer to this. I have heard some Info Sec colleagues talking about creating an AES key in preference to a DES or 3DES key but I don't know ...
124 views

Is format preserving encryption suitable for use with words or names?

Is it possible to use FPE to encrypt names and language words like 'Bob' 'the' 'tree', in order to preserve both length and format (like keeping characters within a certain range like A-Z a-z) The ...
280 views

Creating serial key generator using ECDSA, how to get signature short enough?

I've written some questions in this stackoverflow and got great responses but now I'm trying to wrap it all together. I have for the last couple of weeks been building a serial key generator project ...
179 views

ccrypt and its security

I would like to know how secure is ccrypt to encrypt files (like images, videos and other non-plain text data) using single password of 20+ chars length. It uses Rijndael with 256-bit block size and ...
15k views

How does RSA signature verification work?

I understand how the RSA algorithm works for encryption and decryption purposes but I don't get how signing is done. Here's what I (think) I know and is common practice: If I have a message that I ...
134 views

Drawback of ElGamal encryption

I am trying to find out some disadvantages of ElGamal cryptography but I'm not able to figure out what's wrong with the algorithm. The only one I found is that a known-plain text attack is possible in ...
79 views

What are the steps to decrypt a TLS 1.1 record?

My question is related to another question in Cryptography about TLS 1.1 and 1.2. I have read both RFC 2246 The TLS Protocol Version 1.0 and RFC 4346 The TLS Protocol Version 1.1. What I know is that ...
101 views

How does ccrypt work?

On many Linux/GNU distributions CCrypt (ccrypt) by Peter Selinger is available as a command line utility to encrypt files. How does the protocol work and is it ...
68 views

Are there cryptographic schemes that mask as unencrypted traffic?

Are there cryptographic schemes that make encrypted traffic look like unencrypted traffic?
163 views

Possible hashing scheme

Plaintext(binary) : 10101100 //very short for easy understanding Suppose we have 4 predefined schemes/functions, rotate (101 -> 011) flip (1101 -> 1011) exchange (11011 -> 10111) stretch (1100 -> ...
82 views

Why would cryptography fall apart if there were a finite number of primes? [closed]

I vaguely know that prime numbers are very important in cryptography, but I assume for most encryption methods, they tend to stay rather 'small'. Are we really using massive prime numbers for ...
185 views

How secure is it to use password as AES key?

I am developing a steganography app where user encrypt any file into an audio file. The user can enter a password to protect the hidden data. The same password is converted as a 256 bit key and the ...
94 views

How obvious is it to decrypt numerics encrypted with a reused one time pad?

For instance say you encrypt text using the one time pad and you end up with some scrambled text that appears illegible. If you reused the key for multiple times for enough text, someone could ...
2k views

Twofish vs. Serpent vs. AES (or a combo)

I've seen some posts and info online, but they are from 2009, 2010, 2011 or 2012, which is 3-6 years ago, which is a very long time. So I'm looking for an up-to-date answer about which of these is the ...
170 views

Calculation of time needed to crack DES with my CPU

I have a laptop that has the CPU and the RAMs shown below in the images. My question is that, using this CPU and the RAMs, how much time would it take for me to crack an old school DES algorithm ...
102 views

What are the well known protocols that offer perfect forward secrecy? [closed]

As far as I know these are the well known protocols that offer PFS TLS/SSL (with DHE-RSA, DHE-DSS, ECDHE-RSA or ECDHE-ECDSA) SSH (RFC4253) OTR (Protocol Version 3 Spec) IPsec (with IKEv1 and IKEv2) ...
134 views

Is there any existing cipher capable of scaling from a 1 bit key up to a one-time-pad?

We have ciphers that handle small amounts of entropy, such as a 256 bit key for AES; and we have one time pads for enciphering 1:1 entropy, such as a 1GB key for a 1GB file if you could ever harvest ...
1k views

Shannon confusion and diffusion concept

I read the document(not the whole document) from Shannon where he speaks about the concepts of confusion and diffusion. I read in many places(not in the document but around the internet) that ...
106 views

Multiple keys for the same ciphertext [duplicate]

Say you have a plain text: How are you today? and you encrypt it so it becomes: LKD03Loel03skj1Q03 Now you have multiple people that need to know the plain text of this cipher text but ...
77 views

I am currently working on my diploma project, a high security NFC door lock and need to exchange very sensible data. That's why I thought of PGP encryption, which is as far as I know one of the ...
126 views

Differences between Work Factor and Time Complexity

I am interested to know if work factor means the same thing as time complexity. Quoting Work Factor : Uncovering keys in cryptosystems The Work Factor of a cryptosystem is related to its ...
161 views

Are there any known weaknesses with ElGamal algorithm?

I am working on a messaging system and plan to use ElGamal asymmetric encryption to protect the message contents during storage and transmission. (This would be in addition to TLS used during ...
115 views

Zero Knowledge Non Interactive Proof with random oracle

I am trying to write an assay about Non Interactive Zero-Knowledge proofs and would like to take the simple discrete logarithm problem example fallowing the Feige-Fiat-Shamir heuristics. I understand ...
2k views

How exactly is “true randomness” defined in the realms of cryptography?

Especially in relation to stream ciphers, I frequently read about (sometimes theoretical, sometimes practical) attacks that are able to "distinguish a ciphertext from a truly random stream". What's ...
2k views

The exact difference between a permutation and a substitution

I've noticed confusing definitions about permutation and substitution, preventing to make the difference. A permutation changes the order of distincts elements of a set, but this can be writen as a ...
94 views

What would a backdoor in symmetric key cipher look like? [duplicate]

Pretty much what the title says. DES was suspected of having one, but I couldn't imagine what it could possibly look like if only the NSA knew how to use it. Dual_EC_DRBG's backdoor is asymmetric, but ...
92 views

Why is C_digest defined in PKCS#11?

Digesting doesn't require any key and can be performed on the client side. Why does the PKCS#11 token interface standard have a C_digest method? For example, why should I send my data to a PKCS11 HSM ...
678 views

If we can find prime numbers larger than 17 milion digits, why can't we find all 1024bit primes? [duplicate]

"Largest Known Prime Number Discovered; Has 17,425,170 Digits" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130213225424.htm If we can find prime numbers larger than 17 milion digits, why can't we ...
488 views

decrypt numbers multiplied by a certain floating point number

A friend has about 10K numbers in a an excel sheet. He wanted to encrypt these numbers in order to share the file with a 3rd party that will help him reorganize the tables. What he did, to hide the ...
100 views

Standard serialization format for libsodium-based messages

Does anyone know of a standardized serialization format which can be (or already is) widely used for encrypted messages? For a variety of reasons (mostly complexity, age and poor support across a lot ...
64 views

GCM implementation

I want to write GCM implementation myself (only for research purposes). So far, I have successfully written CTR implementation (for AES), but now I ran into few problems with GCM. If I'm not wrong, ...
229 views

How to choose an algorithm

I have some understanding of Cryptography and I would like to know if there is a tool or website to help me choose an algorithm based on my own needs (I'm being vague in purpose). I'm looking for a ...
67 views

Is this JS library using openssl genrsa -rand improperly?

pem, a JS wrapper around openssl, has the following code in it: var params = ['genrsa', '-rand', '/var/log/mail:/var/log/messages', keyBitsize ]; Am ...
71 views

Exponentiation with fully homomorphic encryption [duplicate]

I have often heard that because a fully homomorphic encryption scheme allows for both additions and multiplications on encrypted data, most other operations can be simulated. I don't understand how ...
138 views

Why can the last block contain a full block of padding in CBC Encryption?

I'm trying to understand the SSL Poodle Attack and I'm wondering why the last block of a CBC Record can be full of padding? Wouldn't that mean that the useful data was already a multiple of the key ...
70 views

Hashes and Ciphers [closed]

So I'm brand new to cryptography, I'm confused on a few fundamental issues, and my normal avenues of research aren't bearing any fruit. I'm hoping someone can describe the relationship between ...
309 views

How does an oblivious test of plaintext equality work?

Assume an ElGamal Cryptosystem. Assume a set of three players, $P_1$, $P_2$ and $P_3$. The private key $x$ is shared among the players. The player $P_1$ has a piece of the private key $x_1$, $P_2$ has ...
55 views

Are there any asymmetric composite order group bilinear pairings?

Are there any asymmetric composite order group bilinear pairings? Is there a drawback of asymmetric over symmetric bilinear pairings of composite order either in efficiency or in security ?
79 views

Send an encrypted question and return answer without decryption

Oke bear with me for a minute. Once upon a time someone mentioned a hypothetical way where you would send an encrypted question to Google and Google would return an answer without decrypting it. As ...
701 views

Cryptool - DES (ECB and CBC ) - double encyption

So, I uploaded a text file in Cryptool and encrypted it with DES-ECB with the key FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF. I encrypted the cipher text again, with DES-CBC using ...
118 views

PBKDF2 for login key, scrypt for encryption key

I need to derive two keys from a single password client side. One for in-browser login, the other for encryption. Is the following secure ? ...
52 views

Reduction of a modular exponentiation's base does not change the result

Can anyone help me to prove this property used in the RSA correctness theorem? $a^b\bmod{n}\equiv (a\bmod{n})^b\bmod{n}$ Specifically, here is what I have done: this is what i mean. i can't ...
2k views

How to communicate by email with forward secrecy and deniability?

My correspondents and I would like to communicate privately by email. We used to employ PGP but that might have been shooting ourselves in the foot. PGP doesn't have forward secrecy. If any of our ...
80 views

Solve the congruence using Pohlig-Hellman algorithm

Use the Pohlig-Hellman algorithm to compute a solution to: $3^x\equiv 2 \pmod {65537}$ My attempt: $p-1 = 65537-1 = 65536= 2^{16}$ $x= 2^0x_0+2^1x_1+2^2x_2+...+2^{15}x_{15}$ For $x_0$: ...
Let $e: \mathbb G_1 \times \mathbb G_1 \rightarrow \mathbb G_T$ be an efficient bilinear pairing. Note that the pairing is symmetric (i.e., Type 1). The problem is, given $g \in \mathbb G_1$ and ...