# All Questions

309 views

### Difference between collision resistance and target collision resistance

For a hash function, what's the difference between Collision Resistance and Target Collision Resistance?. I understand the definition of hash function collision resistance, but I don't know about ...
407 views

### Why must curve25519 shared secret be hashed?

When using the curve25519 DH function, D.J. Bernstein recommends hashing the shared secret before using it as a session key for a symmetric block cipher. Why is that? Hashing won't increase the ...
181 views

### How did they factor RSA-704?

I don't understand the 'Wiedemann algorithm' works. Can someone explain the factoring of RSA-704 in an easy way?
367 views

### Secure use-cases of block cipher with 64-bit block size

In what cases can we use a weak block cipher like DES ? More precisely, Are there specific situation in which a weaken block cipher can still be used, for instance for certain types of plaintext ?
502 views

### Why RSA uses {d,n} as private key instead of {e,n}?

While studying the RSA algorithm I referred to some books and some sites such as RSA (wikipedia) and all of them chose {d,n} as the secret (private) key and release {e,n} as the public key but as d ...
688 views

### random number generator 10-side dice alternative

A lot of sites (e.g. Dirk Rijmenants') refer to 10-side dice to generate random number for one-time-pad. I was thinking about new ways to generate random numbers, letters and passwords. here what I ...
659 views

222 views

### Adding points on Elliptic Curves

How do we add the integer points $P=(-1, 4)$ and $Q=(2, 5)$ on the elliptic curve of the form $y^2=x^3+17$ ?
165 views

### Polynomial representation of the affine part of the AES S-box

I have been reading up on the polynomial representation of the AES Sbox (PDF: “Essential Algebraic Structure Within the AES” by Murphy and Robshaw) and I can't get it to produce the correct output. ...
96 views

### How is this affine function a pair wise independent permutation?

Can anybody explain how the below is true ? $I_n$ denotes the set of all n-bit strings, ${\{0,1\}}^n$. (..) Let $A$ be a finite field then the permutation $f_{(a,b)}(x) = a \cdot x + b$, ...
306 views

### Is AES key length a size of the key or entropy?

While educating my self I'm having hard time to understand what an 128 bit AES key actually means? Is it a key length or entropy? Please explain to me trough following example (assuming AES): ...
529 views

### Does the secret key used in AES have to prime?

I’ve looked around this site and the web quite a bit, but can’t find a definitive answer on whether or not the secret key $k$ used in the AES crypto-system has to be a prime number? Or can you just ...
137 views

### Constants Differ in SHA1 implementation

I am trying to understand why the constants differ in this SHA1 implementation: https://code.google.com/p/crypto-js/source/browse/tags/3.1.2/src/sha1.js ...
146 views

### Perfect Forward Secrecy in TLS

I read that TLS does PFS using Diffie Hellman. However, DH can be used even without certificates - so how is DHE-RSA better than plain DHE? Is DHE a insecure algorithm, that DHE-RSA is needed?
106 views

### Do we need symmetric cryptosystems?

One question I had to answer in my crypto exam today was: Do we need symmetric cryptosystems? As it stands, that's probably a debatable question, so I'd like to reformulate this as: Are ...
207 views

### Construct an encryption algorithm using hash function [duplicate]

We know that Cryptographic hash function is generally a one-way function where we can't retrieve the original message. On the other hand, encryption is a two-way-function where we get the original ...
198 views

### How does compression before encryption leak info about the input?

Apparently current best practices recommend that you do not compress before you encrypt. For example in this blog entry (*): http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2013/07/22/applied-practical-cryptography/ It ...
101 views

### Why do we apply the concept of circuit in homomorphic encryption schemes?

I am a beginner to the concept of homomorphic encryption. One thing that makes me very confused is why we use the circuit concept or approach to homomorphic encryption. Gentry's paper does not discuss ...
288 views

### How is a public key actually used to encrypt something?

One thing cryptography articles never seem to explain is how the message actually gets encrypted. You get this long-winded lecture on number theory which ends with, Ta Da! and we have a public and ...
272 views

### Seed / reseed DRBG too often?

There are limits to how much you can use a the DRBG before you have to reseed it, but are there any limits to how much you must use it before reseeding? Take the following scenarios as an example… ...
155 views

### Impact of distinguishing between random text and cipher text?

In theory, distinguishing cipher text from random text is considered insecure for any PRP algorithm. Say for example - due to Patarin's proof with about six rounds of Feistel Network - the attacker ...
135 views

### implication of tweak on bruteforcing a block cipher

Consider a KPA attack, where the attacker gets known plain text and the corresponding cipher text. Since the encryption algorithm is known, he can brute force all possibilities of key bits. What is ...
135 views

### Is there a metric (term) for work required to decrypt a public key?

Any public key decryption can be decrypted given enough time and computing power. Is there a metric or term for this? Something like it would require on average 2^43 1024 bit hashes to find private ...
239 views

### Two-dimensional S-Box

Consider the following simple cipher: $$c_1 = S(m_1 \oplus k_1) \oplus k_2$$ Where $S$ is S-box, $m_1$ - 16-bit plain text, $k_1$ and $k_2$ is two parts of 16-bit key. If S-box is standard then this ...
373 views

### Textbook-RSA meet-in-the-middle attack against other RSA based schemes?

A “meet-in-the-middle” (not “man-in-the-middle”!) attack on textbook-RSA was presented to me. The only requirements for it was that the attacker gets the output of RSA and the public key, and that the ...
202 views

### Why restrict nonce/IV and counter to specific sizes?

When setting up a nonce/IV and counter (e.g. for AES-GCM-128), why are the nonce/IV and counter restricted to specific sections (e.g. random nonce/IV in first 8 bytes and counter in last 8 bytes)? ...
212 views

### Why is verification using DSA slower than verification with RSA?

We read in literature that verification of a digital signature is slower using DSA than if we used RSA. Why is this? DSA parameter generation: choose prime number $p$ choose prime number $q$ such ...
445 views

### What are the potential security impacts of using CRAM-MD5 for Emails, when not using an SSL connection?

Background: My current server-provider tells me it's no problem to store the passwords in plain-text in the database, saying he has to do so because they use CRAM-MD5 for email authentication. But ...
970 views

### True random numbers generated by sensors

Is using sensor raw data a good way of generating true random numbers? I mean using an IPhone's gyro/accelerometer raw output as a base for generating an array of true random numbers.
259 views

### Is the DES algorithm in OPENSSL random?

Look at the hex dumps of encrypted1.bin and encrypted2.bin . They both have same password A which was used to encrypt sampletext ...
I've come across an implementation of DH in Java that uses the Random class to generate the secret integer value $a$, as shown in in Wikipedia's description of the ...