# All Questions

462 views

### Why must curve25519 shared secret be hashed?

When using the curve25519 DH function, D.J. Bernstein recommends hashing the shared secret before using it as a session key for a symmetric block cipher. Why is that? Hashing won't increase the ...
503 views

### Textbook-RSA meet-in-the-middle attack against other RSA based schemes?

A “meet-in-the-middle” (not “man-in-the-middle”!) attack on textbook-RSA was presented to me. The only requirements for it was that the attacker gets the output of RSA and the public key, and that the ...
117 views

### How difficult is it to find the “pre-image” of a block cipher?

Say that I have $$C_1 = AES_{k_1}(M_1)$$ How difficult would it be to find a key, K2 and plaintext M2 $$C_2 = AES_{k_2}(M_2)$$ such that $$C_1 == C_2$$ How would using a block cipher ...
92 views

### 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 ...
240 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 ...
550 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? ...
624 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 ...
343 views

### Case insensitive verification of HMAC / Base64 signature

I am signing a short message using the base64 of an HMAC, like this (python): ...
567 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 ...
537 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 ...
152 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 ...
3k 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 ...
314 views

### Why pairing based crypto is suitable for some particular cryptographic primitives?

Why pairing based crypto is being widely used in some special crypto primitives as ID based crypto and variations of standard signatures? I mean taking as deep as possible what makes it suitable for ...
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: ...
369 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 ...
1k views

### What does SSL use? RSA? El-Gamal? Elliptic curves?

I'm not sure what SSL uses to share the symmetric key to both end users, i.e. at the beginning of the communication. Is it RSA? Or El-Gamal? Or something else?
204 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 ...
335 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 ...
113 views

### Why does consecutive permutations or consecutive substitutions not enhance security?

My professor stated that permutations which are done repeatedly does not further enhance security than just one permutation. He also stated that fact this applies to consecutive substitutions as well. ...
235 views

### Composing two one-way functions such that the result is not a one-way function

Is it possible to have two distinct one-way functions (called, say, $h$ and $g$) such that their composition $h \circ g = [\, x \mapsto h(g(x)) \,]$ is not one-way?
119 views

### Finding strong primes

Wikipedia lists the following conditions for a prime to be strong: $p-1$ has large prime factors. That is, $p = a_1 q_1 + 1$ for some integer $a_1$ and large prime $q_1$. $q_1-1$ has large prime ...
184 views

### Why would an Initialization Vector be supplied externally?

My software uses a 3rd party encryption appliance. One of the capabilities they allow is for the client software to supply an IV while doing CBC encryption. Why would they not generate a random ...
289 views

### How to perform frequency analysis of a substitution cipher using a Base64 alphabet

Let's imagine a cipher that works like the following: Plaintext is encoded to Base64. The characters in the encoded plaintext are substituted with a randomly shuffled character set(A-z, 0-9, -, _, ...
355 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 ...
152 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 ...
163 views

### Simple proof of work example?

Can anyone show me a simple proof of work algorithm that I can use to stop spammers? I've looked at hashcat, but i think there's a bit too much specialized hardware for bitcoin mining. That is, the ...
750 views

### AES256-GCM - can someone explain how to use it securely (ruby)

I am looking into using AES256-GCM for encrypting some database fields. I know that for AES256-CBC, I need to generate a new IV for each encrypt, but I can use the same key. The IV can be openly ...
309 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 ...
634 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 ...
236 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 ...
318 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?
194 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 ...
507 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 ...
145 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 ...
353 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 ...
694 views

### Can curve25519 keys be used with ed25519 keys?

Can curve25519 keys be used with ed25519? I'd prefer to use ed25519, but there isn't a fast java version. For my application, I'd like to use curve25519 until I can get a faster ed25519 for java. ...
226 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 ...
353 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 ...
266 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 ...
122 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, ...
207 views

### Can one use a Cryptographic Accumulator to efficiently store Lamport public keys without the need of a Merkle Tree?

One of the problems of one-time Lamport signatures is that public keys are disposed after use, so you must generate many keys and store them in a Merkle tree. The root is the "real" public key and ...
1k 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 ...
105 views

### Difference between computational and statistical indistinguishabilities

What is the difference between the two notions of computational and statistical indistinguishability?
279 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

### Attacking 2DES efficiently

Meet in the middle on 2DES uses $2^{56}$ memory. Given the fact that the attacker has only $2^{45}$ memory. How can the attacker adjust the attack so even with this memory limit, it will still be more ...
312 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 ...
436 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 ...
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 ...