# All Questions

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### How does a backdoor in the RNG enable an attacker to break encryption protocols?

I'm wondering how a backdoor in a random-number generator (as rumored the NSA have placed), actually compromises the security of things like VPNs or TSL/SSL. What I understand is that, if such a ...
104 views

### Are IVs and salts the same and usable for each other uses?

I'm new in the crypto world and I've just discovered PBKDF (I used to use typed passeword as symmetric key). When using some crypto mode, you're required to ...
151 views

### How can one calculate the estimated RSA key life based on Moore's law?

How can someone estimate the number of years needed to factor an RSA key based on the advancement of technology if followed Moore's law?
431 views

### AES file encryption with PBKDF2. Safe parameters?

I'm developing an application that will use public key authentication to contact some webservice. So the user has his keypair on his computer, and I want that file to be encrypted using AES with a key ...
2k views

### Who uses the RSA BSAFE library? [duplicate]

Who uses RSA's BSAFE library? Does anyone know what products use it, or have any statistics on how many end users use something that is built on BSAFE? Background: BSAFE is one of the oldest ...
275 views

### How secure is this use of Ziv-Lempel encoding?

I'm reading patent application US 20120278897 A1 — “System and method of sort-order preserving tokenization”. Near the bottom they describe their token generation algorithm, which basically involves ...
376 views

### Can any one explain Circuit Privacy using fully homomorphic encryption from Gentry's thesis?

Craig Gentry's thesis talks about circuit privacy being straight forward from fully homomorphic encryption in the last chapter. Can somebody explain in simpler terms what that means ? I have read it ...
154 views

### Which version(s) of SRP are in ISO/IEC 11770-4:2006?

I am on the impression that SRP emerges as the least uncommon and best analyzed protocol for authentication and key agreement based on a short password. This states that SRP is part of IEC 11770-4, ...
225 views

### State of the art in zero knowledge proof compilers?

What is the current state of the art zero knowledge proof compiler ? I need one that can minimally handle double exponentiation by a known value E.g. $$Pok\{(\alpha):h=g^{\alpha^b}\}$$ where b, ...
148 views

### Does Linear Cramer-Shoup have pseudo-random ciphertexts?

"Linear Cramer-Shoup" is defined on pages 4 and 5 of $\:$ eprint.iacr.org/2007/074.pdf . Are the ciphertexts in Linear Cramer-Shoup computationally indistinguishable from uniform under a ...
290 views

### How do you construct a practical full-domain hash function?

I am looking for practical constructions for Full Domain Hash. I have read Random Oracles are Practical by M. Bellare and P. Rogaway, the construction suggested on page 8, under "Uniformity: a ...
244 views

### Using chi square for distinguishing between compressed and random data

I am trying to find some measurement for identifying and distinguishing between compressed and random data. I tried this first by computing the entropy of such data, the entropy value is extremely ...
233 views

### Length of data to hash for PGP

I have finally managed to verify some simple PGP signed message blocks. However, I discovered that for some reason, my implementation limits me to verifying data that is 9-16 bytes long. no less. no ...
384 views

### Comparison: complexity measures vs. security

Assume that you want to compare several cryptographic primitives (say, encryption schemes), and choose one. You need to consider several complexity measures, such as the key length, encryption time, ...
917 views

### Can you help me understand the Common Modulus Attack in a Lucas Group?

I'm trying to decrypt a message that is encrypted using a LUC encryption scheme and running into roadblocks. I know that with RSA if Alice and Bob use the same public modulus but different encryption ...
348 views

### An Elliptic curve cryptography implementation which can be terminated

I'd like to have an implementation of elliptic curve cryptography along the lines of secp256k1 which is secure until some information is published after which it is broken. One idea would be to use ...
175 views

### Is a changing public truecrypt container secure?

I have a Truecrypt container which I want to synchronise between computers (i.e. different people, that I want to share the data with). If I used Dropbox for synchronisation and someone downloaded ...
45 views

### How to break a columnar transposition cipher?

I'm currently studying for a cryptography exam. I've been given ciphertext that has been encrypted by a columnar transposition cipher. I've been given no shift key length or key word, the only thing I ...
51 views

### Elliptic curve point addition with $Z_1 = Z_2 = 1$

Elliptic curve point addition and point doubling operations using Projective and Jacobian coordinates require fewer field multiplication operations when considering $Z$ coordinates of input points ...
14 views

### Memory ownership in PKCS #11 C_FindObjects where ulMaxObjectCount != 1 [migrated]

The authors of PKCS #11 v2.40 utilize a common pattern when an API returns a variable length list of items. In APIs such as C_GetSlotList and ...
30 views

### Are there any test vectors for the CMS content type AuthEnvelopedData (for AES-GCM)?

I am looking for CMS AuthEnvelopedData test vectors for AES-GCM mode. I haven’t seen any ready-to-use test vectors for it. There are test vectors for AES-GCM mode but not for its CMS support. I even ...
27 views

### Safe generation of $k$ points on a curve such that the mutual discrete logs are hard?

I have a multiplicative group $G$ of prime order $p$ implemented using a twisted Edwards curve (similar to Ed25519). I want to compute a set of $k$ distinct points $P_1,...,P_k$ that generate $G$, ...
56 views

### Symmetric key in homomorphic encryption over the integers

Much like this question: Public key in fully homomorphic encryption over the integers I am also reading I'm reading Fully Homomorphic Encryption over the Integers, but I'm working on implementing the ...
44 views

### Additive homomorphic encryption scheme without change in operator

I'm looking for an additive homomorphic encryption that the addition operator (+) in its plaintext space be the same as addition operator in its ciphertext space. (Schemes like Paillier do addition in ...
92 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?
93 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 ...
68 views

### Better lower bound on min-entropy

In “Randomness Condensers for Efficiently Samplable, Seed-Dependent Sources” by Dodis, Ristenpart, and Vadhan (PDF), I have seen the statement that: any tuple of distributions $(X,Z)$ is $ε$-close ...
75 views

### Rationale for use of right-shift (rather than rotate) in SHA-2?

The SHA-2 hashes in FIPS 180 define $\Sigma$ and $\sigma$ bijections of words, with $\Sigma$ used in the round function, and $\sigma$ used in preparing 48 words of message schedule from 16 words of a ...
68 views

### Missing public exponent

Using LUC RSA, I have a list of 8 public keys $(R_1,n_1)$ through $(R_8,n_8)$, and a list of $8$ messages $M_1\dots M_8$. The messages have all been double encrypted. However, one of the public key ...
69 views

### Is the reverse of the “discrete logarithm problem” equally dificult? [duplicate]

It is not easy to understand why this becomes a hard problem. The discrete logarithm problem as defined here: “any integer k that solves $b^k = \{g\mod{n}\}$ is termed a discrete logarithm” i.e.: ...
86 views

### Under what conditions did a Bletchley bombe stop?

I am trying to understand the conditions necessary for one of the Bletchley Park bombes to stop. Let me give an example. I have been experimenting with Enigma machine and bombe simulators to try to ...
198 views

### Looking for C++/Python Open Source code library for cryptanalysis of classical ciphers [closed]

I've done a significant amount of coding over the years working on classical ciphers (e.g., Chaocipher, D'Agapeyeff). My main programming languages today are C++ and Python, although there was a time ...
91 views

### Anonymisation resilient to key leak

Problem statement Elbonian citizens have been issued a card holding a random $B_j\in\{0,1\}^b$, $0\le j<2^n$, $b\ge n+20$ (representative example $b=64$, $n=28$). The habit has grown to use this ...
109 views

### What are the current limitations (and capabilities) of Functional Encryption used for access control?

I'm trying to make my way in Functional Encryption used for access control. I read a lot of papers such as "How to Run Turing Machines on Encrypted Data", "Functional Encryption: New Perspectives and ...
98 views

### Build set with PKI from reliable broadcast / random beacon

I am trying to build a protocol (or find an existing one) for creating a set $S_2$ with PKI from a set of parties $S_1$ that initially does not know anything about the other parties. We assume ...
124 views

### Is it safe to derive a password from a signature provided by ssh-agent?

I'd like to use a password-based system on a remote host (accessed via SSH) without having to copy-and-paste the password and without storing it on disk. Using the system with some other form of ...
73 views

### Homogenous and heterogeneous Unbalanced Feistel Networks

Unbalanced Feistel networks can be homogenous (F-function identical in each round), or they can be heterogeneous (F-function not always identical in each round). The advantage of heterogeneous UFNs ...
138 views

### understanding the proof of knowledge

Recently I've been reading the paper “A New Family of Implicitly Authenticated Diffie-Hellman Protocols”. It's very hard for me to go further. Especially when it comes to the proof of knowledge. ...
69 views

### Feasible way to check n-dimensional equidistribution of PRNGs

I am currently gathering some test methods and test suites for random number generator qualities, and am a bit stuck at finding something feasible to test for n-dimensional equidistribution. As input ...
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### How has the “power” of cryptography evolved from its beginnings till today? [closed]

I'm looking for a historical overview for the change in cryptographic power, which I hereby define as How far state-of-the-art cryptography is ahead of state-of-the-art cryptanalysis. In other ...
97 views

### What informal indicators exist for estimating the computational infeasibility of cryptographic problems?

When assuming a block cipher primitive is secure, or a number theoretic problem is hard, this assumption is usually based on how far we are from breaking the primitive or solving the problem using ...
297 views

### Is there a “brainwallet” for GPG keys? [closed]

“Brainwallet” is a program that takes a passphrase (hopefully a good one) and deterministically creates a Bitcoin wallet. This wallet can be used for transactions, then deleted from the computer. To ...
292 views

### Complexity class of an idealised version of Bitcoin's proof-of-work (hashcash)? [closed]

To formulate this question precisely, I will define an idealized hypothetical "perfect" hash function $H(n)$ which has nice scalability properties, and will formulate a problem PERFECT HASHCASH in ...
792 views

### Reasons for Chinese SM2 Digital Signature Algorithm

In the IETF RFC draft named "SM2 Digital Signature Algorithm" a signature algorithm is specified. The RFC does however not mention why this signature algorithm has been defined. Nor does it specify ...
323 views

### AES-CTR with ephemeral keys vs IV

Let's say that we have a key exchange of some sort, which leaves A and B sharing the long-term secret $S$. Then, A and B want to use AES-CTR for the communication, which leaves us with several ...
156 views

### Unique GCM/CCM initial counters without recipient side message counters

I am implementing the encryption layer for a communication protocol. The bulk encryption method used is either AES-CCM or AES-GCM. Due to implementation details, encryption of packets is usually, but ...
2k views

### Are there any standards of multi-prime RSA key generation?

FIPS 186-3 specifies a method to generate DSA parameters. Is there anything similar (official standard or widely-accepted recommendation) that shows how to generate the primes for multi-prime RSA?
187 views

### Ring Signature - paper/code difference in trying to solve inverse trap door function?

there is a paper on ring signatures and a python implementation of it here. The Step 4 in the paper describes $y_s = v =C_k,_v(y_1, y_2, ... y_r)$ for all $1 \leq i \leq r$ where $i \neq s$. The ...