# All Questions

1k views

### Cryptographic Protocol using NaCl

Why? I wanted to add some security and privacy to a chat-type server for playing various games (with a few things that are done on the server to limit cheating). Going by the "Don't implement ...
354 views

### Determining the algorithm used to generate a digital signature

I have a string "abcd pqrs". This string is digitally signed with an X.509 certificate (with its private key) and it produces a signature. From the signed string, is it possible to find out what ...
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### Transforming simplest protocol into a Sigma-protocol

I have some questions from previous years exams, I hope you could help me with them. :) Suppose that a protocol satisfies the properties of a $\Sigma$-protocol, except that it is only (plain) ...
94 views

### Is this a valid real-time authentication scheme?

The scenario in Alice/Bob/Cindy terms: Alice approaches someone she doesn't know, but thinks is Bob, and asks for some secret information. Bob doesn't know and doesn't trust Alice, but Alice says she ...
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### Computer appliance protocol

I build the computer appliance system that consist of software server and multiple controllers. The system I want to build must be pluggable in the sense that when I connect a controller C to the ...
154 views

### Structure of encrypted office files

I try to find out the structure of encrypted office files (I'd like to implement something like a carving tool for finding certain encrypted file types). I try to understand the Office Document ...
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### Are there any systems like SDSI / SPKI that are currently being developed?

SPKI / SDSI look interesting but appear to have fizzled out and died. Are there any modern competitors?
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### How to properly format a PGP Message Block?

As sort of a follow up to my (currently) unanswered question, if it is correct, how do i properly calculate and format the packet that actually stores the data being encrypted? I thought I knew what I ...
152 views

### Security of stream cipher based on Matrix multiplication GF(256) with randomized padding

The actual question is stated at the end of the text. Suppose you have a (grossly inefficient) confidentiality stream cipher with the following components: The keyed function ...
38 views

### Can a secret message be securely transmitted within a MAC tag?

A sender wants to transmit an ultra secret code $M$ which could be either 'go', 'stop' or 'wait'. This could be any selection of code words really and adopted for any use such as transmitting short ...
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### Modes of encryption for hard drives?

What are the currently recommended modes of encryption for large disks? Basic requirements would seem to be that you can update an encrypted sector independently of others, which rules out most ...
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### How can I start the following crypto project?

(Cryptography: encrypting files before storage in the cloud): The project consists of a software implementation of a method to pre-process a file before storing it on a cloud storage server so that ...
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### Hybrid fair exchange protocol

A gradual fair exchange (layman term) is a form of fair exchange protocol where Alice will transfer 1 bit to Bob then Bob will transfer 1 bit to Alice. The flaw with this protocol is that the party ...
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### Encryption in which ciphertext is bigger than plaintext?

Is there an encryption which would produce a ciphertext longer than the plaintext? (please ignore block-chaining IV stuff, which would result in a data being generated from the plaintext). The point ...
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### Opinion on my idea for storing credit cards securely

I've been thinking of ways to store credit cards securely, I thought of this: Take the users credit card info Put the card info in a standard format "Full Name/Card Num/Security Num/Expiry ...
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### Brute Force AES Calculations

I have an encryption service in which the user decides the length and the type of key, so I would like to build a tool that educates the user on the brute force times for the key they created if using ...
36 views

### How represent message in Menezes–Vanstone elliptic curve cryptography

I ask about represent message in Menezes–Vanstone elliptic curve cryptography I now encrypt function as follow $C_1 = (M_1 * K_1) mod P$ $C_2=(M2 * k_2) mod P$ My question is about how much the ...
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### Type of cipher used where ciphertext has no discernible pattern, spaces. Type?

What type of cipher could give ciphertext where for example random ASCII chars between say F-z (symbols and numerals inclusive), but with only a few spaces? Frequency of chars shows some similarities ...
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### Why is it hard to calculate Logarithm on Diffie Hellman?

i read something about Diffie Hellman. What i don't understand: Alice selects a randomly generated Number, calculates X = g^x mod p and sends X to Bob. If she calculates g^x, she needs to calcluate ...
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### DLOG in $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}^*$?

Assume that we are given an element $g\in \mathbb{F}_{p^n}^*$ and $g$ does not belong to any of the smaller subfields contained in $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}$. If the degree of $g$ is some number $q$, how much ...
58 views

### About the Algebraic Normal Form (ANF) of S-Box in DES

I've thought up a way to represent the transformation of S-Box in DES by ANF. Let $x_i\;(1\le i\le 6)$ be the input of an S-Box, $y_i\;(1\le i\le 4)$ be the output, for example, then y_1= 1\oplus ...
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### Infer encoding mechanism from $n$-grams distance?

I have a series of obfuscated strings which across the set of strings have regions of high variance and regions of low variance – implying some encoding mechanism as opposed to an encryption procedure ...
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### To prove $r_2$ is a uniformly at random value in $Z_n$, where $r_2=r_1 . m$

$m$ is arbitrary value in $Z_n$, where n is RSA modulo. Then we do: $r_2=r_1 . m (modn)$, where $r_1$ is a random value such that $r_1\in Z^*_n$. ** Question(1): is $r_2$ a uniformly at random ...
53 views

### Does the transposition cipher have a network application?

So I'm reading a chapter in my networking book and it talks about substitution and transposition ciphers (Transposition Cipher Wikipedia). I know that most network security uses public key or ...
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### Is there any existing cipher capable of scaling from a 1 bit key up to a one-time-pad?

We have ciphers that handle small amounts of entropy, such as a 256 bit key for AES; and we have one time pads for enciphering 1:1 entropy, such as a 1GB key for a 1GB file if you could ever harvest ...
50 views

### Does NSS fully implement PKCS 11?

I am looking towards using NSS in a Linux application that makes use of a TPM (HSM). So, I am checking the support of PKCS 11 in NSS, at least for the management of Elliptic Curve keys, signature with ...
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### What does “nonlinear mapping” mean?

Page 15 of the Keccak reference (PDF) explains that the $Chi$ step mapping of the Keccak-f permutation in Keccak is defined to be “nonlinear mapping”. Without this, the complete permutation would be ...
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### If a cipher has key length shorter than plaintext, then it is not perfectly secure

I am trying to verify the statement above. So far I only know that a One-Time-Pad is the only “perfectly secure” cipher. It has a key length which is exactly the same as the plaintext. I think the ...
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### FEAL-4 Wrong outputs of Round Functions

On page 2 of this article, there is example of FEAL-4. At round 2, the input to F (Round Function) is 0x80800000. As F accepts only 4 bytes I divide the input by 2 so that (As I assume the result ...
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### Which mathematical operations does secp256k1 point multiplication use?

To convert a bitcoin private key to a public key, the secp256k1 point multiplication math is used. Could I – theoretically – convert a private key to a public key just using the four arithmetic ...
71 views

### Serpent Cipher 128bits (Example rounds on any plaintext/key)

Is there are any possibility to see trace(example) of Serpent Encryption/Decryption on concrete plaintext/key example, (not code implementation) or at least animation of steps. During reading of ...
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### What is the (uncompressed) x,y-representation of a curve point on the P-256 NIST elliptic curve?

I am trying to understand the FIDO U2F Raw Message Format, especially the format in which a user public key should be provided. The documentation says the following: A user public key [65 bytes]. ...
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### Plaintext-aware encryption for symmetric schemes?

The notion of plaintext-awareness is well-known for asymmetric encryption, but the notion seems to make sense for symmetric encryption as well. Is this a known concept?
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### exchanging private key between service and iPhone app - digital signing

I need to do digital signing of my request data which will be sent to the server. My server sends distinct private keys to her clients after authentication and expects all responses to be digitally ...
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### Does Ciphertext policy ABE support search operation on encrypted data

Basically CP-ABE (or attribute based encryption) allows end-users to encrypt the data with desired access control structure. I was investigating the how to do keyword-search on encrypted data given ...
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### Is it possible (how difficult) to find MORE than one valid RSA signature?

Is it possible (how difficult) to find more than one valid RSA signatures for a given message m (after padded) and a public key ...
58 views

### Engima machine decoding with PC and GPU

I saw this answer at this site about decoding a 3-rotor Engima machine's settings: How cryptographically secure was the original WW2 Enigma machine, from a modern viewpoint? And did some math for ...
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### Understanding the FMS attack on WEP

I am trying to implement the Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir attack, one of the ways to break WEP. I seem to have hit on a problem. I have no idea whether or not it is a programming error, or if I don't ...
103 views

### Chi-Squared Step of Vigenere Cipher Decryption

So, I have been assigned an assignment where I had to solve a Vigenere cipher. Following along with this webpage I managed to get all the way to the chi-squared step. But, that is the problem. Upon ...
68 views

### What does “G2” mean when used with X509 certficates and certificate authorities?

For example "Google Internet Authority G2"?. I thought it was another way of specifying Class 2 (for organizations, for which proof of identity is required) but then see certificates such as "VeriSign ...
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### Privacy-Preserving Protocols and Proofs of Security

While dabbling in privacy-preserving protocols (mainly using Semi-Homomorphic Encryption) and coming up with miscellaneous ideas for comparison tests or other similar primitives, based on obfuscation ...
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### DES S-Box properties

Two of the properties that lead to the design of DES S-Boxes are: 1)For any non-zero 6-bit difference between inputs, no more than 8 of the 32 pairs of inputs exhibiting that difference may result ...
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### Elliptic curves in java

I am writing you because I want to implement the DPS signature with elliptic curves in Java. I found this library http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/security/spec/package-summary.html which ...
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### ECIES: Purpose of optional shared information?

According to Wikipedia the ECIES algorithm has two optional shared information $S_1$ and $S_2$. They are used as follows: Generate a random shared secret $Z$ according to ECIES, which will never be ...
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### What is the restriction on k, for the kth composite residuosity problem to be hard

This paper considers the exponent to be an odd integer. When k = 2, it is called the quadratic residuosity problem (mod n where n is composite) which is hard and can be solved if the factorization of ...
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### Complexity of verifying OTP secret

What is the minimum number of unique pairs of digests and inputs to a one-time pass needed to verify that a secret is equal to a ...
71 views

### Are partial hashes used in cryptographic protocols?

In my question (and answer) about a partial hash code used within a signature application I found out that partial hash codes are sometimes used within protocols with a relatively restricted security ...
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### How to distribute symmetric key between $n$ entities?

If there are $n$ servers for broadcasting a symmetric key in such a manner that following holds: No server alone can find the key $K$ alone. Any two servers can pass $k_i$ and $k_j$ such that ...