All Questions

37 views

Question about OR operation in fully homomorphic encryption

This page (which won't let me post a comment, sadly!) describes how the original FHE paper by Craig Gentry describes FHE. (Other references to this stuff can be found on this question.) It mentions ...
72 views

Combine two sha512 hashes to a single hash

Assume I have two data fragments: $Frag_1$ and $Frag_2$. I can build sha512 hashes the usual way with $SHA512(Frag_1)$ and $SHA512(Frag_2)$ and then hash the two fragments appended to each other: ...
45 views

Is there a standard for public key encrypting and signing short messages?

Some systems, that operate over flaky bearers, need to send signed, encrypted messages that are entirely self contained - i.e. send a single 300 byte UDP rather than have a 10Kb, two-way, certificate ...
49 views

How to formally prove that a given hash construction is collision resistant or not?

Is there a precise procedure or strategy to follow in order to prove in a formal way the (not) collision-resistance of a certain given hash construction? I.e. let $H_1$ and $H_2$ be two hash ...
32 views

Is it possible to generate backdoored DH parameters?

I know it has been already asked and answered whether it's possible to generate weak DH parameters. But "recentely" we experienced the Logjam attack, which makes use of the pre-computation ...
23 views

RC4 via nonlinear mixer — sound?

We implemented a rc4 (ARC4) variant for creating a cryptographic stream - question is: Is this sound? (I'll give an example for 32 bit variant, though 64 bit/larger is possible) Algorithm is as ...
22 views

Diffie-Hellman in the wild

Say we have a public network and lots of peers. Each may need to communicate with another peer. Would there be any huge security issue to each peer making the the public part of their key openly ...
80 views

Digital Signature Attack

In a typical digital signature scheme in which in order to sign we compute: hash of the message: $h(m)$ resulting hash signed with the private key $[h(m)](private key)$ If there were a collision ...
37 views

Is a 256 bit HMAC-SHA256 key compromised if the tail is used for identification?

Using a truncated hash of a key seems to be a safe way to identify the key (i.e. key fingerprint), but what about truncating a key itself in the case of HMAC-SHA256? Example: ...
40 views

SHA512 vs HKDF key expansion

I'm working on a secure file storage server. This server allows users to upload and download files based on a "seed". This "seed" is a 128-bit value. From this 128-bit seed, we run SHA512 to derive a ...
46 views

How does the birthday paradox apply to random keys?

I'm developing a web app where I wish to use pseudorandom keys for items, perhaps akin to Imgur. I was thinking about how many combinations I need to reduce the chance of someone guessing any random ...
30 views

Using scrypt to generate key + IV/nonce together

Is there any security issue in using scrypt for Key + IV/nonce generation? In other words, can I safely use only a salt for scrypt and derive the nonce along with the key? For example: I have data I ...
107 views

Is entropy being lost when the hash of a secret has a specific format?

Bitcoin's mini private key format works by brute forcing random data to produce a secret so that when appending ? and then hashing with sha256 it will produce a ...
354 views

Combining several symmetric ciphers using XOR

I have seen a talk by Rüdiger Weis, where he says that you can combine two symmetric ciphers using XOR. According to him, that has the effect that its sufficient if only one of the ciphers is secure. ...
84 views

Hashing a Diffie-Hellman result

In many implementations, the result of the Diffie-Hellman algorithm is hashed. I read that: Hashing the shared secret point prevents an attacker from gaining more information about the EC private ...
22 views

Possible to detect if a message is PGP encrypted/signed (ciphertext)

Let's say I have a text field somewhere (i.e. an interactive user submitted text field on a PHP script, or a console application. Basically anything that accepts user input.) How can I detect if said ...
99 views

Is full Homomorphic encryption quantum resistant?

Since most of our asymmetric encryption algorithms are going to be out-of-date in a couple of year due to Shor's algorithm, I was wondering about the future of FHE schemes. I have found this paper, ...
81 views

Calculating $\mathbb F_{p^2}$-rational points of an elliptic curve defined over $\mathbb F_p$

How can I calculate points on an elliptic curve defined over $\mathbb F_p$, for example $y^2 \equiv x^3 + 1 \pmod p$, with coordinates in $\mathbb F_{p^2}$? (points might have complex number format in ...
31 views

Small subgroup attack on Diffie-Hellman

I am trying to understand the small subgroup attack on Diffie-Hellman. I will present the attack and try to explain why it works. Let be a group $\mathbb{Z}_p^*$ where $p$ is a large prime, so the ...
25 views

How ECDH algorithm selects modulus value?

I am curious to know how an ECDH algorithms select a module value, if both ends A & B can generate same shared key using the public key of each other ? If I understood DH correctly, both A and B ...
49 views

Let $G$ be a PRG. Are the following $G'$ constructions based on $G$ necessarily PRGs?

$G$ is a PRG where $|G(s)| > 2 \cdot |s|$. $G'(s) = G(s0^{|s|})$. $G'(s) = G(s_1...s_{n/2})$, where $s = s_1...s_n$. My question here is whether my own proposed solutions are correct and do ...
65 views

What is this encryption system called?

Let's say you want to break down a message, for simplicity it is just a bit $0$ or $1$, $m$ into two messages $(m_1, m_2)$ as follows: If $m =0$, then $(m_1, m_2) = (0, 0)$ with probability $1/2$ and ...
47 views

variant of Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol

Motivation Consider the following variant of Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol for two parties: Assume Alice and Bob share $\mathbb{G}$ of order $q$ generated by $g$ Alice samples $a$ ...
30 views

Testing PRNG quality from ECC public keys?

Having a large set of ECC public keys $P_i = n_iB$ on a fixed curve $E$ over a prime field, is there a way to determine if coefficients $n_i$ were generated using a bad PRNG? In other words, can a ...
24 views

Small n attack, how it works

I'm studying the Lamport's Hash one-time password scheme. This is the scheme: Alice wants to authenticate herself to Bob from a workstation that knows nothing about her. Alice only knows her ...
919 views

What is the difference between Shannon entropy and saying that tossing a 6-sided die 100 times has more than 256-bit entropy?

I'm confused. I thought that tossing a 6-sided die 100 times had a greater than 256-bit entropy because $6^{99} < 2^{256} < 6^{100}$. (A similar concept appeared in this XKCD comic, where ...
10 views

keytool -genseckey -alias TDES -keyalg DESede -keysize 128 works within jre/bin folder but not when the keytool.exe is on another location [migrated]

I would like to create a TDES key with size 128bits and 2KTDES key with 192bits for authentication in a Desfire smart card. Hence I have used the keytool to generate the jceks with the following ...
52 views

File encryption with AES CTR mode

I understand that encrypting files in CTR mode is not perfectly safe, because it potentially leaves the files open for cryptanalysis, if the attacker has access to previous versions of the same files. ...
10 views

Javascript equivalent to new SecretKeySpec(bytes[], “HmacSHA512”) [migrated]

what javascript equivalent code for following java code. SecretKeySpec key = new SecreatKeySpec(Bytes[], "HmacSHA512"); how can i acheive this in javascript ?? ...
131 views

Cryptography and FPGA

I see a lot of papers about FPGA implementations. For what kind of "concrete" application should we implement cryptographic algorithms on FPGA ? Which secured application require such a huge data ...
91 views

Why isn't a table used to solve the large number factoring problem?

Lots of modern encryption (RSA comes to mind) are based on the fact that factoring large numbers is hard. However, multiplying large numbers is much easier, and table lookups are very easy. Since ...
56 views

Usage of Zero-knowledge proofs for NP-complete languages

It is well known that if OWFs/PRGs exist, then there is a zero knowledge proof for any NP-complete language, say G3C (graph coloring in 3 colors). The zero-knowledge notion maintains that any ...
293 views

Is calculating HMAC from hashed input a good idea?

Original HMAC algorithm is as follows: H(K XOR opad || H(K XOR ipad || text)) What if text would replaced with H(text)? ...
36 views

Prove that H(s) = G(!s) is a CPRNG if G(s) is one

Given a cryptographic pseudo-random number generator $G$, prove that $H$ with $H(s) = G(!s)$ is also a cryptographic pseudo-random number generator. Here $s$ is a binary string; $!s$ is its ...
43 views

bare metal crypto library [migrated]

I am writing an application that will be run on bare metal, i.e. it will not run on a kernel and therefore cannot invoke system calls. There will also be no C runtime. Is there a crypto library I can ...
111 views

Can it ever be impossible to invert a PRNG?

I've read about the possibility of inverting the Mersenne Twister after 624 numbers of output. 624 matches the state size of my implementation of the Twister. Coincidence? If the generator only ...
69 views

Why not to use curve over field of $p^m$ with $p > 2$ for ECDSA?

I'm reading the ECDSA paper and they say you can only use ECDSA with odd-power fields $p$ or with binary fields $2^m$. Why not other power prime fields?
187 views

Is it possible to get an RSA encryption key by comparing the unencrypted and encrypted file?

Exactly what the title says. If I have a RSA encrypted file, and the exact same file but decrypted, can I tell the key that was used from that information?
83 views

Is there a formal definition of what a distinguisher is?

I've often been reading about (polynomially bounded) distinguishers in books or papers. Although by name and intuition it is somewhat clear what a distinguisher is and does, but i am asking myself ...
45 views

Triple-DES DUKPT CBC PIN variant vs Data variant

Does any know the difference between triple des dukpt decryption algorithm with PIN variant and Data variant? I have done Triple DES DUKPT PIN variant, which generate session key from KSN and BDK. ...
31 views

how many pairs of plaintext-ciphertext are needed before we break AES? [duplicate]

Imagine a set of words ($plaintext$) each are encrypted using AES-ECB mode and due to some leakage in the system an attacker could gain access to some pairs of $plaintext$ and $ciphertext$. But once ...
36 views

Strong LRSW assumption for type 3 pairing groups

Why does the "strong LRSW" assumption by Ateniese et al. [Untraceable RFID Tags via Insubvertible Encryption, CCS'05] hold ONLY for type 3 pairings and NOT for symmetric pairings? Whereas, the LRSW ...
81 views

Would the encryption of bigrams and trigrams weaken the code?

Supposing a rotor machine of the 1940s or 50s, with 36 characters instead of 26. Would the encryption of the ten additional characters as the most frequent bigrams or trigrams weaken the code? What ...
82 views

DES hardware implementation of substitution lookup table [ ReWorked ]

I'm a crypto enthusiastic and student of cryptography. I'm developing a project with other students titled "A hardware implementation of a DES cryptography for educational purposes", our idea was to ...
49 views

public key cryptography and authentication for cross-platform network application

I'm developing network based application for control and telemetry on Linux based embedded system. I'm using ZMQ network library and Google Protocol Buffers serialization library for communication ...
73 views

Why must we generate the signature before any compression being done at PGP?

I have done some research on PGP and I found out there are of two reasons why we must generate the signature before doing any compression. Yet, I am not sure I really understand them both. One ...
23 views

Details related to the ZIP algorithm used in PGP message encryption? [closed]

I am very new to PGP. PGP encryption works with hash function, asymmetric encryption, symmetric encryption and a zip algorithm (LZ77). What I know is that the zip algorithm is used to reduce the ...
157 views

How to verify the integrity of RSA encrypted messages?

I need to encrypt messages using PublicKeyCrypto and send it to the server, where the message should be decrypted. I'm aware of the Padding Oracle Attack and want to apply a server side integrity ...