# All Questions

118 views

### Proofs by reduction and times of adversaries

I have some difficulties to understand, when we construct a reduction, how we determine the time for the constructed adversary to break a target security property. In general these details are not ...
97 views

### One-time digital signatures

Are there digital signatures for which, given two documents signed by the same key, one could derive the key? With such one-time signatures, one may be able to design a cryptocurrency based on ...
182 views

### Safe elliptic curve point addition using projective coordinates: How do I tell if the points are the same?

I am trying to implement elliptic curve point addition in hardware for NIST p256 and p384 curves. I have noticed the following issue with the suggested NIST routines: Routine 2.2.7 of ...
148 views

### Is SHA-256 safe when used in this way?

I am wondering whether an attacker can gain any useful information from having several hashes of an unknown plaintext that differs in relatively few bits. For example, if provided with: ...
124 views

### AES: Is it safe to encrypt same cleartext with same key but with million diferent IV?

The encryption mode that I am using is CBC. Algorithm is AES and the key size is 128bit. I will be encrypting a 36 byte string over 1.3 million times with the same key but with a random IV. My ...
543 views

### Good entropy source for generating openssl keys

I need to generate a CA (4096-bit RSA) and server keys for openvpn and I want them to be "top quality". Here is my plan: gather entropy from multiple sources (saving individual files): FreeBSD ...
51 views

### Oblivious Transfer where neither party learns the index of the message

In a traditional Oblivious Transfer setting, the sender has a list $(x_1, x_2, ... , x_n) \in G$ where $G$ is the chosen group. The receiver has $b \in \mathbb{N}$, such that engaging in the protocol ...
240 views

### What are the advantages of CBC over ECB?

From this question I understand that, for a block cipher, using CBC is better than ECB. It seems that if one only has part of the cipher text, then decryption is difficult because the decryption ...
118 views

### ECB weakness and its exploitation

Lets say that I have a server which encrypts information at the server side using ECB mode with the blocksize of 16. If the server appends data that I control with a secret and sends back the ...
203 views

### Is the following authentication protocol insecure?

I am a student taking cryptography this semester. I was just wondering why can't we use this simple protocol? Alice → Open Connection → Bob Alice ← Cert$_b$ ← Bob Alice → {K$_{AB}$}$_{Bob}$ → Bob ...
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### What vulnerabilities would open up if PGP authentication didn't have integrity checking?

It is my understanding that PGP has both an integrity check and an authentication check. What vulnerabilities would open up if it didn't have that integrity check? It seems like the authentication ...
138 views

### Increased security weaknesses when truncating SHA1

Given the following preconditions: A plaintext A (~512bit length), that is hashed by using SHA-1 and truncated to (the first) 64 bits. I know both, the plaintext and the truncated hash, and want ...
179 views

Consider the pairing $e: G_1*G_2 \to G_t$. Why we are mapping element from group $G_1$ and group $G_2$ to an element in $G_t$. How are they used in cryptography? What advantages do they provide?
212 views

### File Hash of Encrypted File

Simple question. I have a source file and I have encrypted it with a certain public key. If I take this exact same source file, encrypt it with the exact same key a few hours later would the file hash ...
90 views

### Block Cipher Mode Amicable to Fast Key Change/Rotation Like XOR?

I'm working with documents encrypted in long term storage. When a client requests the document, the document should be delivered encrypted under a distinct key (distinct from the long term storage ...
180 views

### How is an AES Encrypted Message Decrypted with Random Padding?

One thing I was surprised to learn about AES is that random padding can be added to the message to make it a multiple of block size. What I can not wrap my head around is how this random padding can ...
278 views

### What are the pros/cons of using symmetric crypto vs. hash in a commitment scheme?

In a commitment scheme, are there any differences on using a symmetric cipher versus using a hash? If at the "opening", I have to reveal $r$ (a random number concatenated with the messaged at the ...
91 views

### Asymmetric Cryptography Confusion - 'Sign' a file to guarantee its source

What I want to do is use asymmetric crypto to guarantee that a file comes from a source. I have software that runs on lots of wireless devices, and each of those has a license file with an encrypted ...
85 views

### What is the impact of the Goppa code distinguisher on the CFS and McEliece?

What is the impact of the distinguisher for the high-rate Goppa codes (as published in "A Distinguisher for High Rate McEliece Cryptosystems") on the CFS signature scheme and the McEliece/Niederreiter ...
120 views

### Why is $-1$ an illegal message in the Goldwasser-Micali Encryption Scheme

I'm not sure why in the Goldwasser-Micali encryption scheme with a Blum integer $N$, the message $-1$ is always a illegal message. Can you give me some direction for starting? What is illegal ...
276 views

### Serpent cipher : Osvik S-Boxes confusion and test vectors

I'm having hard time with the implementation of the S-Boxes by Osvik found in this paper: Speeding up Serpent. At the end of the paper, all the s-boxes are given and then, I just implement them. ...
271 views

### How difficult is it to brute force d in RSA: d = (1/e) mod φ in a CPT attack?

Given that RSA key generation works by computing: n = pq φ = (p-1)(q-1) d = (1/e) mod φ If I was an attacker who wanted to brute force d, could I brute force d given just the public key, the ...
127 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 ...
291 views

### Making counter (CTR) mode robust against application state loss

Counter (CTR) mode, which is a block cipher mode of operation, has some desirable qualities (no padding, parallel encryption and decryption), but at the cost of failing badly when non-unique counter ...
133 views

### What does it mean to be simultaneously hardcore?

In this paper the term "simultaneously hardcore" is defined as: "We say that a block of bits of $x$ are simultaneously hard-core for a one-way function $f(x)$, if given $f(x)$ they cannot be ...
168 views

### Salsa20 in Davies-Meyer mode with a fixed key (message): is it one-way?

Say I have a function that calculates a pseudo random permutation and this function is easy to invert. For example $P(i) = AES_k(i)$ where $k$ is a publicly known key. So anyone can compute $P(i)$ ...
243 views

### Proof of elliptic curve difficulty

Are there any proofs that cryptographic functions on an elliptic curve are any more difficult than the analogues over modulo arithmetic? While at present, ECC appears to be more difficult, as it is ...
139 views

### Feedback requested on a method of posting a message without revealing the author

So I was thinking about variations on the Dining Cryptographers problem - In some cases, it's useful to be able to post a message without revealing the source, but with the additional constraint of ...
74 views

### ASN.1 OID of bcrypt

What is the ASN.1 OID associated to bcrypt (the key derivation scheme)? For instance, PBKDF2 has 1.2.840.113549.1.5.12 and it is therefore possible to store a ...
133 views

### salting with password hash to improve security?

Would something like the following improve security (against rainbow attacks, not brute force)? Assume that $P$ is a user-chosen password, and the objective is to obtain a hash $H$ for password ...
139 views

### Finite fields in elliptic curve

I have an elliptic curve defined over finite field where $S_1=aP$ . Is it valid to say that $S_1P$ can also be computed. $P$ is the generator of the group. What my real question is that. Should '$a$' ...
169 views

### How to Compute C^2 in AES MixColumns Matrix?

In mix Columns we have: $$C(x) = \{03\}X^3 + \{01\}X^2 + \{01\}X^1 + \{02\}$$ In Viktor Fischer's Paper on MixColumn and ...
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### Does there exist a two-pass AKE protocol that is secure in eCK model and also has PFS?

As we can know that the best two-pass AKE protocols with DH message can achieve is the weak form of perfect forward security (wPFS) which guarantees security against the passive adversary. But ...
125 views

### Are there any good examples of Contemporary Mechanical Cryptography?

Are there secure mechanical cryptosystems in use today? Not necessarily alphabetic either, ie digital but mechanical?
117 views

### How to compute the attacker's probability?

Given a random bit string $R=r_1r_2\cdots r_n$, let us encrypt each bit $c_i=E(r_i,k_i)$ where $k_i$ is taken from the stream of encryption keys. Suppose that an attacker can guess the correct $r_i$ ...
238 views

### How does partial key escrow work?

It is being speculated that one of the ways that NSA leaker Edward Snowden may have created his "insurance policy"--distributing sensitive documents to various individuals with instructions to ...
174 views

For a stream of packets, where each packet is individually encrypted with a block cipher, it's desirable to have each encrypted packet only valid for that position in the stream. A message number ...
283 views

### Given a private RSA key, how do we get the public key?

Is it possible to pre-choose a private RSA key, then obtain a public key from it?
369 views

### Can you identify the public key used to encrypt something?

If I encrypt a string with a public key, does the encrypted ciphertext reveal the public key I used to encrypt it? Basically, I don't want anyone to know who the ciphertext is addressed to. I'm ...
242 views

### Can i modify data “protected” by a CRC16?

There are 100 bytes with a CRC16. However I only know the first 50. I want to change byte 5 from a known value X to another value Y, and fix up the CRC16 to be valid - without knowing bytes 50-100. ...
279 views

### Difference entity authentication and implicit key authentication

From the Handbook of Applied Cryptography, in discussions of key sharing algorithms, I see definitions: Implicit key authentication is when one party is assured that no other aside from a ...
452 views

### Hill-cipher, disordered alphabet

I am going to apply a simple substitution cipher to my input, then encrypt the result with a Hill cipher. How can this be broken, in a chosen-plaintext threat model? In other words, instead of the ...
806 views

### Winzip AES256 vs PGP

If I use the AES256 option in Winzip to encrypt a file, is it any less safe or less secure than using pgp encryption?
461 views

### Recommended way of adding a pepper/secret key to password before hashing?

There have been several questions regarding password hashing here and on Security.SE. A "pepper" is sometimes mentioned – an application-specific secret key. The canonical answer on password hashing ...
267 views

### Counter Mode: static IV but different keys [duplicate]

Given we are using AES counter mode, suppose we randomly generate several keys, all of them are using same IV (say, zeros). Does this lead to any security issue? I know that in CTR mode, same key-iv ...
296 views

### Attacking historical ciphers methodology

It's more a theoretical question of how would you approach it. All you know about the ciphertext it's was generated with a historical cipher. The ciphertext appears to be random, BUT it's divided into ...
155 views

### GPG and PAR2 error correction data from the plain archive, will it compromise security?

I have the following scenario: Archives compressed with 7z, hundreds of MiB in size GPG to encrypt the archives (binary, without ASCII armor) PAR2 to create error correction data Question 1. ...
543 views

### Why are the Davies-Meyer and Miyaguchi-Preneel constructions secure?

The Davies-Meyer compression function $h(H, m) = E_m(H) \oplus H$ is said to be secure. So too is the Miyaguchi-Preneel compression function $h(H, m) = E_m(H) \oplus m \oplus H$. Why are these ...