# All Questions

81 views

### Signing the hash of a key with the same key

Given a private signature key sk and a public signature key SK, does revealing sk(H(SK)) (in ...
590 views

### Why is the discrete logarithm problem assumed to be hard?

This might be a quite stupid question: since a naive brute force algorithm to solve the discrete logarithm problem will only take O(n) time for a group G with order ...
187 views

### Cryptographically secure product keys

I am looking for a scheme to generate and validate cryptographically secure product keys. My requirements are: Unforgeable. It must be impossible (or at least very hard) for users to forge a product ...
368 views

### Maximal-length LFSR with $n$ bits when the factorization of $2^n-1$ is unavailable?

There's a classical method to efficiently test if a LFSR with $n$ bits is maximal-length (or equivalently, if the feedback polynomial is primitive), when the factorization of $2^n-1$ is available. Do ...
115 views

### What's the alternative should PKI collapse?

Premises - please check it and critique if necessary: If factoring the products of large numbers suddenly becomes simple, PKI goes up in smoke. Is this correct? If it is correct, it seems to me ...
192 views

### counting points on elliptic curve

Given an elliptic curve with equation $y^2=x^3+ax+b$, and i want to find the number of points $(a,b)\in E(\mathbb{F}_p)$ where the polynomial has repeated roots, how do i do it? I have an intuition it ...
110 views

### Can we build authenticated encryption using Feistel Networks?

Most of the encryption modes of Feistel Networks especially the ones used to build fixed length block ciphers just provide confidentiality . Can we build authenticated encryption using Feistel ...
135 views

### How can two (or more) parties share and agree upon a common random seed?

I really don't know how to call this simple problem: Two (or more) parties need to establish a common (non-secret) value to be used as a seed for a deterministic RNG. The only requirement is that each ...
589 views

### Subtracting a point in elliptic curve cryptography?

I've had lots of practice adding points for my crypto class. However I've run into a situation where I need to subtract two points for decryption: ...
270 views

### Does encrypting a hash of the message yield a secure MAC?

Is $mac = enc(hash(x))$ a secure MAC for hash = SHA256 and enc AES in CBC mode or ECB mode. Normally AES-CBC is malleable. But in this case I use a hash function for the one-way property. For ...
425 views

### Why does NaCl's crypto_secretbox for xsalsa20-poly1305 require the first 32 bytes to be zero?

The NaCl web site says this is a requirement of the API, but its seems more than just an API issue. It means the first 32 bytes of the first salsa20 block are effectively ignored. I didn't see ...
501 views

### Encoding information in packet lengths to actively sidestep encryption

If you've only got an encrypted data channel can you actively sidestep the encryption and communicate with an outside party who can see the data but cannot decrypt it? Yes - if you can find some ...
296 views

### bcrypt and pbkdf2 double hashing

If I want to protect myself from implementation of algorithm issues and inherent design flaws of algorithms in password hashing, what would be most secure way to combine two hashes? ...
822 views

### Meet-in-the-middle with checking complexity

In regards to meet in the middle type attacks, I have been considering the amount of operations in order to successfully find a key given two sets of plaintext / ciphertext pairs. All of the sources I ...
145 views

### Could using sequential plaintext uncover AES key?

I am encrypting a string in a format like this: ...
255 views

### Is the polynomial reconstruction problem really “intractable”?

In the family of the believed (experts haven't come yet with a solution) intractable problems in cryptography belongs the Polynomial Reconstruction problem in which an attacker is given $n$ points in ...
278 views

### Using same AES-GCM setup for multiple packets?

Most cryptographic libraries I've encountered uses some variant of processPlaintext(...) and then doFinal() to produce the ...
251 views

### Construct a random permutation from a random function?

How can we construct a (pseudo) random permutation from a (pseudo) random function ? I've seen a method from Luby-Rackoff which allows to construct a PRP of length $2N$ from a PRF of input/output ...
538 views

294 views

### How safe is it to derive MAC key from a hashed password?

Imagine I have a blob that I want to encrypt-then-MAC. Now, what I can realistically ask my users for (out of UX considerations) is just an encryption password. Naturally, I bcrypt original password ...
148 views

### Is a using salt important when creating a hash data validator?

I am creating a service that will return an set of objects, which will be used by multiple systems. At the end of the process, one (or more) of the objects will be sent back to our system for ...
148 views

### What is sent on the initial communication with Kerberos?

When a user wants to communicate with another user (let's say Alice and Bob), what is sent over the network during the initial communication? Alice uses her Kerberos client and enters her password ...