# All Questions

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### IND-CCA2 secure schemes without Plaintext Awareness?

I have been reading up on IND-CCA2 security and was wondering: Are there efficient IND-CCA2 secure schemes that do not require plaintext awareness? I'm guessing yes - could someone point me to these ...
142 views

### Regular MACs vs Carter-Wegman MAC

Carter-Wegman MAC variants (VMAC, UMAC etc) are known to be very fast and efficient when compared to MAC algorithms that are based on block ciphers and compression functions (like HMAC, CMAC etc). ...
81 views

### Private Key - Memory Lifecycle

I often heard about private key storage, but rarely about key life cycle in memory. For example, when SSL is used from one peer, the private key is used to sign messages or decrypt other peers' ...
636 views

### A patched SHA1 attempt for password verification

This is a classical scenario: For our web based authentication platform we have a username and a password field. User enters these values and presses Log In. The browser gathers the user data, ...
1k views

### Cryptography vs Security

This may sound a little bit of basic but here it goes… Which of the following is correct? “Cryptography is under the security field”, or “Security is under the cryptography field?” Cryptography ...
85 views

### Entropy Loss of KDFs

Am I losing any entropy when using KDFs, such as the ones in NIST Special Publication 800-108? For example, can I derive 128-bit session keys from a (uniformly random) 128-bit master key?
52 views

### Detect desynchronization in HOTP authentication [duplicate]

In HOTP authentication, is there a way for a system to detect that the token has been desynchronized? If so how does it know that the OTP was generated from a desynchronized (but valid) token and is ...
83 views

### Parallel variant of Carter-Wegman MAC with incremental property

Is there any variant of the Carter-Wegman MAC algorithm that is fast, parallel and has the property of incremental crypto?
163 views

### GPG & Mcrypt - difference?

in short I'm learning GUI programming in python and thought it could be interesting to make a small GUI for symmetric encryption. Not being mad/mathematical/experienced (take your pick) enough to try ...
174 views

### SRP-6 vulnerabilities when N is small

I'm one of the developers of an application which uses SRP-6 as the authentication mechanism. The authentication part of the code is very old and uses N with only 256 bits (all arithmetic is done in ...
234 views

### How are secure hashing and encryption algorithms proven?

Given that: You should always use proven secure hashing and encryption algorithms, rather than attempting to write your own. What's the process for criteria for an algorithm being proven? Is ...
124 views

### Rainbow tables, where have I got it wrong?

There seems to be some error in my understanding of the concept of rainbow tables, despite going through quite a bit of articles on it. Let me show what I don't seem to agree with. My plain text is ...
3k views

### Does SHA-1024 hash exist?

Does SHA-1024 cryptographic hash function exist similarly to SHA-512? If not, what's the reason for that? Links: SHA-2 at Wikipedia
229 views

### Simple proof that shows AES is not a uniform permutation on any n-bit string?

Is there a simple proof that shows AES is not a uniform permutation on any $n$-bit string? Since I'm just starting with crypto, I'd like to see a simple yet elegant proof for the said property. ...
268 views

### Attacking a hardware AES implementation if it leaks the intermediate round states

Let's say that we have a hardware AES implementation that, on request, will encrypt or decrypt a 16-byte block of data in ECB mode using a fixed key, but refuses to reveal its fixed key. In other ...
102 views

### Encryption method with master key and user keys

I am working on a concept for a game that in the end will allow data sharing via plain text, but I would like to give the user the option of encrypting the data so that other players cannot modify it, ...
96 views

### Construct block cipher from a smaller one with mixing function

I read about the AEZ encryption scheme as presented at the CAESAR competition. To me it seems like a construction of an arbitrary length block cipher from a smaller one. The key component is the ...
241 views

### How dead is braid based cryptography

Braid groups has drawn the attention of cryptographers for a few years, as a promising platform for post-quantum cryptographic protocols. The security of the proposed schemes mostly relied on ...
513 views

### How to encrypt a file for random access

I am a programmer familiar with C/C++ and Python. Lately, we got an assignment from a team asking us to work on one of their projects: we need to make a small program to encrypt a large file using ...
312 views

### Is my id obfuscation algorithm secure?

I'm designing an id obfuscation system. My system includes: Embedded chips, each chip has a unique 32-bit address (id). Server Insecure low-bandwidth unstable one-way channels from the chips to the ...
301 views

### Rely on NSA Suite B Cryptography?

NSA's Suite B Cryptography suggests some cryptographic algorithms for encryption, digital signatures, message digests and key agreements. The selected algorithms and their key size are suggested by ...
88 views

### public key delivery without third party

I am currently working on an anonymous P2P file sharing application and I am elaborating some already existing solutions. Some of them allegedly provide point-to-point encryption using RSA ...
366 views

### Advantages of 64-bit CPU smartphone

Advantages of having a 64-bit CPU vs 32-Bit CPU smartphone … 3. Complex Encryption. Improved Security: 64-Bit can process incredibly large numbers allowing you to better encrypt data against ...
72 views

### How can finding a collision help an attacker with tampering messages with HMAC

As stated in the HMAC RFC (RFC 2104): The strongest attack known against HMAC is based on the frequency of collisions for the hash function H. How can a collision benefit an attacker? I would ...
721 views

### Subverting the key generation step in RSA public key cryptography

I am interested in the ways the implementation of an RSA key generation implementation can or cannot be subverted so that the subverter has an advantage, but the owner of the key, and the people who ...
91 views

### Cryptanalysis of Nonlinear Table Lookup

I am trying to derive a symmetric key based on a master key, combined with a simple string. Based on my limited knowledge, it seems that something like PBKDF2 would do that for me in a well-defined ...
255 views

### Block-cipher based vs Hash based MAC

When it comes to MAC algorithms one can have many choices. CBC-MAC, CMAC, PMAC etc are some MAC algorithms that rely on block ciphers (ex AES) to generate a MAC. On the other hand HMAC is very popular ...
599 views

### Can you fake messages from recorded message-history?

Lets assume Eve has a lot of PGP conversation with Alice and records all those messages. Bob is also regularly communicating with PGP with Alice. If Bob doesn't care about not having a signature ...
64 views

### How does the signature checking work in DKIM?

As far as I understand DKIM works like this: DKIM is not used to encrypt anything, the only purpose is to mark mails that are not really sent from the claimed domain as spam. the DKIM-enabled ...
76 views

### Implementation Attacks on Hashes

So I am familiar with attacking implementations of block ciphers via side channel attacks, cache-timing attacks, etc. What implementation attacks are there against hashes or hashed based functions ...
89 views

### I am new to Cryptography and I wonder if one can Suggest me Beginner Projects [closed]

Sorry for this kind of a question, but I really like to learn and improve in cryptography. At the moment I am following online lectures from https://class.coursera.org/crypto-011 , can anyone suggest ...
599 views

### Chosen plaintext attack on textbook RSA decryption

Let $(n,d)$ be an RSA private key and $(n,e)$ the corresponding public key. Generate a secret random $r$ from $(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z})^*$ Compute $C’ = C (r^e) \bmod n$ Submit $C’$ as a chosen ...
149 views

### Is encryption mainly using Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange?

I know how Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange works. Is this the main way of encrypting with PGP, ssh, ssl (https), DKIM, ...? I wonder if Diffie-Hellman is the clue to understand how encryption with ...
2k views

### Why can't you decrypt an encrypted message with just the public key? [duplicate]

How does asymmetric crypto work? For example, if you use PGP in emails, you generate a private key that is known only to you and a public key, which is available to everyone. Is there a simple way ...
215 views

### Decrypting an Affine Cipher with known characters

I am trying to cryptanalyse multiple cipher–texts that I know are encrypted by different Affine ciphers. I have already analysed the frequency that each character occurs, and compared it to a ...
246 views

### How does Diffie-Hellman key exchange work? [closed]

I've been learning about cryptography lately and I'm failing to understand how Diffie-Hellman key exchange works. Can someone please demonstrate using mathematical notation (and if possible, ...
133 views

### Multi-key decryption

Let's assume I want to send a secret message to $N$ recipients in an asymmetric way. My message could be encrypted with $N$ different public keys $p_i$ one after another and send to each user ...
14k views

### How is SHA1 different from MD5?

On the surface, SHA1 and MD5 look pretty similar. Their diagrams include chunks of bits, bit rotation, xor and special functions. Their implementations are roughly the same length (at least the ones ...
790 views

### Luby-Rackoff theorem confusion

The Luby-Rackoff theorem states that if a round function is a secure pseudorandom function (PRF) then 3 rounds are sufficient to make the block cipher a pseudorandom permutation (PRP). PRPs are ...
431 views

### Is it possible to find plaintext from ciphertext if (n) and (a) are known for RSA?

I have a couple of questions pertaining to a RSA problem. I need to decipher some ciphertext and find out what the original plaintext was. Modulus: $n = 2537$ and exponent: $a = 11$ Encrypting ...
93 views

### Is there an encryption that is only reversible with a key?

I'm thinking about man-in-the-middle attacks during a website login, and started wondering about reversible encryption. What I'm imagining is an encryption that takes input ...
143 views

### Is XORing a SHA256 better than truncating it? [duplicate]

Let say I want to truncate SHA256 to 128 bits. What would be the best way to minimize a probability of a collision and improve collision resistance? Taking the last 16 bytes Taking the first 16 ...
80 views

### linear computations over bilinear pairings

Does this hold in asymetric bilinear pairings? $e(x_1,x_2)e(x_3,x_4) = e(x_1x_3,x_2x_4)$, where $x_1,x_3 \in \mathbb{G}_1$ and $x_2,x_4 \in \mathbb{G}_2$ for a bilinear pairing $e$
185 views

### Hash or compression function in Merkle tree nodes?

Wikipedia says about a Merkle tree: Nodes further up in the tree are the hashes of their respective children. Usually, a cryptographic hash function such as SHA-2 or SHA-3 is used for the hashing. ...
306 views

### Security issues of a MAC-then-Encrypt-then-MAC approach?

Encrypt-then-MAC does provide ciphertext integrity, but no plaintext integrity. With MAC-then-Encrypt it’s the other way around: Plaintext integrity but no ciphertext integrity. What comes to mind is ...
111 views

### CTR mode encryption using PRG

In CTR mode encryption, the encryption block is not required to be invertible. Thus, a PRF can be used instead of a PRP. However most of the implementations of CTR mode are based on AES which is a ...
866 views

### Entropy of two concatenated random values

In this Intel blog posting, the author claims: The amount of work required to brute-force predict a random value that has n bits of entropy is $O(2^n)$. If you concatenate two values together, the ...
127 views

### Are there any cryptographic flaws in my webhook signing process?

Out of band my services have exchanged secret keys. These secret keys are then used to prevent two things of the webhooks (HTTP calls triggered by Service A to Service B when an event occurs in ...