# All Questions

106 views

### When to prefer exchanging cryptographic certificates over exchanging only public keys?

Let's think of the following case: A group of peers want to exchange messages with each other. They use public-key cryptography to sign and encrypt messages. Anyone with any name can join the ...
222 views

### Algorithm to securely exchange identities

Say four people each have a public/private key pair that they can use to encrypt or sign messages. They have an anonymous way to post messages such that the others can see them. Malicious entities can ...
195 views

### Public Key Encryption with forward secrecy

Is there a known non-trivial system with plausibly secure public key encryption where: 1. $\;\;$ the $\:$ time $\:$ function is efficiently computable 2. $\;\;$ [pubkey,privkey] $\:$ pairs are ...
203 views

### How are the primes used to generate RSA keys?

I am confused about how keys in RSA asymmetric encryption are generated and what the implications for open communications are. Textbooks say the one-way function is merely two primes (with some ...
426 views

### ECC algorithm pollard's $\rho$ complexity

One of the methods to break a ECDLP is Pollard's rho algorithm. When ECDLP is defined over a finite field $F_p$, and given a relation $S=w.T$, where S and T are a member of $F_p$. Then ECDLP is to ...
124 views

### Can the premaster secret generated by SRP be used as a secure private key?

It seems like the pre-master secret generated during the SRP protocol would make a good source to generate a shared private key using a secure hash to compress it down into a 128/256 symmetric key. ...
528 views

### RC4 : Keystream reconstruction?

First up: it's a step in some challenge found on the Internet, where we get an application and a file. The application must be feed with that file and a password (the password is the flag for the ...
106 views

### Secure Remote Protocol - Are these 2 equations equivalent?

I'm implementing the Secure Remote Protocol that is specified to have this equation for the parameter S, the premaster secret. ...
195 views

### Shannon entropy calculation: is $H(A|R·A) = H(A)$?

Suppose I generate a random $m×m$ matrix $R$, where each of its elements belongs to $\mathbb Z_n$. I ensure that $R$ is invertible in $\mathbb Z_n^{m×m}$. Now I take a non-random $m×m$ ...
212 views

### Seeking special-use fingerprinting/hashing algorithm

For a project I wonder if there exists some kind of fixed-size checksumming/fingerprinting function in which based on this fingerprint given data block 1, it is easy to generate more data blocks that ...
130 views

### Signing a GCM MAC

If I encrypt a message with AES-GCM, is it safe to use the MAC as the hash in a DSA/RSA signature? That is, if someone knows the AES key and nonce, will they be able to generate a different message ...
152 views

### synchronization of counters in HOTP

How is synchronization of counter values achieved in the HOTP protocol? As I understand it, the server increments its counter value only if a match (of the OTP value) is found. What happens at ...
260 views

### Can one group the SHA-256 outputs depending on partial inputs?

Is it possible to predict a hash key based on half key? Let's have some example: I have 100000000 hash results, and they are generated by either ...
434 views

### DES Crack simulation

I wish to simulate an implementation of a DES Cracker using verilog. But every paper I read give only abstract hints but no concrete steps or how really to go about it. How is it usually done? For ...
775 views

### Obtaining the key length from the ciphertext of an auto-encipher

I'm revising for a cryptography exam at the moment and I'm having some problems with a question. The question looks for the key length of a cipher given that the word "earthquake" appears in the ...
224 views

### AESManaged Trade Compliance Issue in United States

I am currently using AESManaged encryption for my silverlight application. Does AESManaged encryption have a severe trade compliance issue in Bureau of Industry and Security in terms of shipping the ...
452 views

### Is there an effective way for public key generation in homomorphic encryption schemes?

Is there any way to effectively generate valid distributed public key in schemes like ElGamal or Benaloh for a number of participants? There's no need in private keys since there's no intent to ...
137 views

### Elliptic Curve Encryption Ciphertext Size

I'd like to know how much bigger is the ciphertext when encrypting a message using ECC encrytpion? ECIES (or ElGamal)
35 views

### Weaker Notion of Target Collision Resistance

I'm reading the paper “Collision-Resistant Hashing? Towards Making UOWHFs Practical” which states: While it might be easy to find a collision $M,M'$ in $F_K$ by making both $M,M'$ depend on $K$ ...
88 views

### Is there a name for this 'enhanced' caeser shift and if so, is it trivial to break?

This cipher shifts the letter that it will shift to, after each shift... I used to play with this when I was a kid. I was thinking about it recently and realized that it wasn't as simple as I ...
74 views

### Good Encryption Exponent

I have placed a bet that I can create a public key such that my adversary will not be able to crack (decrypt) it for at least one week. For my primes $p$ and $q$, I chose very large numbers that are ...
77 views

### How to design a cryptographically secure file hosting service

How one would go about design something like Google Drive/Dropbox providing the following features: files are encrypted and decrypted on the client files can be synced between devices the service ...
90 views

Alice has two secret numbers, a and b. She publishes c1=E(a), c2=E(b) and c3=E(a+b). Is there an encryption system E such that anyone would be able to prove that the c3 as published by Alice is ...
148 views

### ID-based key exchange protocol with PFS

The traditional authenticated DH protocol with PFS against active adversaries, ensures that the compromise of both party's long-term private keys after the session is completed will not help the ...
183 views

### Prime number theorem - RSA

I am having trouble understanding the prime number theorem. As part of some revision for an exam, I am trying to answer the following questions (but seeing as I don't understand the concept of the ...
55 views

### Since it gives negative power, how is rcon(0) calculated in AES?

I'm trying to calculate Rijndael key schedule "Rcon" values manually. I know how to calculate each value with the equation ...
66 views

### Random session key + predictable IV

I'm using Blowfish in a toy Diffie-Hellman communications scheme. Random session keys are generated for each connection. In this case I can simply feed a null array to the IV right? The same ...
116 views

### Is OTP useful in modern electronic communication?

I have seen from time to time questions about various OTP schemes and "OTP" (i.e. stream cipher) schemes. The most common OTP troubles appear to be: How to extend size of previously generated key or ...
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### Bandwidth and block size for Paillier cryptosystem

Can someone clarify what is meant by the terms cryptosystem bandwidth and block size for public key cryptosystems; The context is the Paillier cryptosystem and its Damgard-Jurik generalisation. My ...
155 views

### Is it safe to use GZIP to avoid padding related attacks

I am designing a library that supports encrypting some in-memory data using AES in CBC mode. Now I need a padding but it seemed to me that Apple's CommonCrypto library and OpenSSL have different ...
426 views

### Inverting the encryption equation of a symmetric cipher

I've just started a cryptography course. I am beginning to understand the concepts (I'm only in week 2) but I just can't get my head around the theories and principles when written as equations. I've ...
102 views

### Why does openssl BN_generate_prime return only a fraction of the safe primes within the given bit range?

I went into prime generation issues the last week and eventually calculated 10^7 primes using erik tews safeprimegen python wrapper for openssl. (https://github.com/eriktews/gensafeprime) (System: ...
56 views

### Should I use distinct MACs for each user, or should I use a *direction* flag when communicating?

Alice and Bob want to communicate using a stream cipher. At the beggining, they create a session key $K_s$ and exchange it via some secure channel (using some asymmetric algorithm). After every ...
150 views

### What key exchange do OpenSSL and CryptoAPI prefer by default?

Here is what I know. When I connect to a brand-new Linux Web server with Chrome and click the "lock" icon, the key exchange algorithm is described as "ECDHE_RSA". (Yes I know what that is.) When I ...
71 views

### Storing Credentials for a Third Party

(Originally posted to SOF, but I got no answers) I am designing a small application for use inside my company. My application needs to connect to a third party website on behalf of my application ...
111 views

### random number generator and seed

I'm working with openssl cryptographic libraries, I'm new to all these cryptographic stuffs and slowly I'm learning all these. I have a doubt regarding random number generator, I'm using ...
91 views

### Generating an IV for ESP 3DES-CBC

I have an application written in C, running in Linux. It uses IPsec (ESP) (manually putting the IPSec packet together) to send certain packets. The algorithm used ...
279 views

### Do companies like CipherCloud really have the option to use homomorphic encryption?

I was reading How is CipherCloud doing homomorphic encryption? and was wondering: Is there a technically feasible way for companies like CipherCloud to use homomorphic encryption (HE) while ...
1k views

### How does DES decryption work? Is it the same as encryption or the reverse? [duplicate]

If DES decryption is the same as encryption done in reverse order, then how can the reversed S-Box convert 4 bits into 6 bits?
247 views

### Converting Ed25519 public key to a Curve25519 public key

I understand that: $$x_{montgomery} = \frac{1 + y_{edwards}}{1 - y_{edwards}}$$ Using the libsodium ed25519 implementation, I have tried to write the following: ...
124 views

### a possibly stronger type of attack on identity-based encryption

What is known about the security of identity-based encryption schemes against attacks that involve seeing multiple ciphertexts and then receiving the private keys corresponding to some of those ...
171 views

### Digital Signature size requirement

What is an approximate length for a digital signature (SHA) given the following? Using RFID tags, size ranging from 100 to 2000 bytes (8000 bits), our project is setting aside a portion for a digital ...
151 views

### Primality testing (deterministic vs. non-deterministic)

I noticed that non-deterministic primality testing algorithms are more commonly used in practice while there is a deterministic algorithm e.g., AKS which runs in polynomial time? I am right? if so, ...
85 views

### The probability of finding a limited set of collisions for HMACSHA256

I need some input on the use of HMAC-SHA256 in an open source project, any help appreciated. The problem I'm solving is session fixation. We have a username, for that username we'd like to generate a ...
124 views

### plaintext and its encrypted version known [duplicate]

I have a (long) text in two versions, encrypted and plaintext. I think it was encrypted using a substitution cipher method (I'm pretty sure, indeed). I'm not good in this matter, I know little about ...
188 views

### Is OpenPGP vulnerable to the “crypto doom principle”?

From reading RFC 2015 (MIME security with PGP), and from looking at the raw format of (GnuPG) encrypted and digitally signed email messages, it seems that first a signature is calculated from the ...
156 views

### Quantum resistance of Lamport signatures

The Lamport-Diffie signature scheme is said to be quantum-resistant. Why is that? What would a quantum attempt to attack this signature scheme look like, and how does it fail?
77 views

### Is Triple-DES a group?

I know for a fact that DES is not a group, but are any of the Triple-Des versions a group? Why, or why not?