# All Questions

154 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 ...
3k views

### Why is the P-521 elliptic curve not in Suite B if AES-256 is?

In the NSA's document, "The Case for Elliptic Curve Cryptography" (archived), we have ...
82 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 ...
71 views

### Proving security of TLS handshake with ProVerif

Background For my dissertation I am working on an application protocol for which I require a TLS session. I am looking to achieve Perfect Forward Secrecy, which means I have selected ephemeral ...
437 views

### Understanding a Blowfish cryptanalysis

I'm reading a cryptanalysis on Blowfish, and I've come across something that I don't quite get. Let's denote $$\delta = a \oplus a'$$ where a and a' are bytes that cause a collision in some S-box ...
65 views

### Are digital signatures using preprocessed paper pads possible?

My idea was, given that a computer could produce some sort of lookup tables on paper, could then a human use those lookup tables to create a system for digital signatures? This was really an idea for ...
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 ...
11k views

### HMAC-SHA1 vs HMAC-SHA256

I have three questions: Would you use HMAC-SHA1 or HMAC-SHA256 for message authentication? How much HMAC-SHA256 is slower than HMAC-SHA1? Are the security improvements of SHA256 (over SHA1) enough ...
80 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 ...
69 views

### Cryptography in wireless medium

How do I implement asymmetric key algorithm into wireless medium using NS 2.35? For example: node $A$ is a sender and $B$ is a receiver. Now, $A$ is sending a packet using $B$s public key ...
59 views

### Collision probability of MD5 over different attacks

I am researching the collision probability of MD5 and various attacks against it. Can someone help me how to learn the least probability that there will be a collision in a specific attack on MD5? ...
69 views

### Why is it good to split a CTR-mode counter into nonce and counter?

When discussing the CTR mode of block ciphers, Wikipedia says the following: Simply adding or XORing the nonce and counter into a single value would completely break the security under a ...
55 views

### Perfect secrecy with n-time key

How can you encrypt $n$ messages with the same key, and have the same theoretical security you'd have encrypting a single message with a one time pad? For example, how can you encrypt two messages ...
89 views

### How hard is the Solitaire cipher to crack?

Assuming your deck is completely random and that it is not retrivable, how hard would it be for a casual person to decrypt a message encrypted with the Solitaire cipher?
62 views

### Hash and salt or salt and hash?

People say "hash and salt", but aren't you supposed to salt password the first, and then hash it? So that means its called "salt and hash" right?
72 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 ...
41 views

### Is RSA vulnerable to the padding oracle attack?

I know that AES in combination with CBC mode is vulnerable against the Padding Oracle Attack. RSA also uses some kind of padding, hence can this attack be apply to RSA encrypted messages too?
660 views

### How useful is NIST's Randomness Beacon for cryptographic use?

NIST have just launched a new service called the NSANIST Randomness Beacon. It has been met with some initial skepticism. Perhaps the cryptography community would have used it before June 2013 when ...
80 views

### Mathematically / statistically “safe” way to differentiate between crypto and random blob?

I assume the United Kingdom will impose (as opposed to just talk about it) restrictions on crypto software that may be used within it's borders. Me, quite the border clown (yes, I always bring a up ...
114 views

### EC: Why does $h>200$ need to hold?

From BSI-TR-03111 (PDF), on page 15: The class number of the principal order belonging to the endomorphism ring of E SHOULD be at least 200. This value commonly is referred to as $h$ in that ...
22 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 ...
64 views

### Anonymous offline digital cash scheme

Can a digital cash scheme exist that is anonymous and offline using blind signature and anonymous signature?
111 views

### Attacking RSA signature verification that ignores padding

I am looking at a RSA signature verification that is quite obviously flawed and am wondering if there's a way to exploit that flaw in practice. Signature is generated using RSA with PKCS 1.5 padding, ...
55 views

### How badly does disclosing an M-bit prefix of an N-bit private key compromise security?

I apologize profusely for knowing nothing about cryptography, please go easy on me! I'm working on a project where I have a 2048-bit RSA private key and a public certificate generated from the ...
2k views

### Can someone explain the ECB Penguin?

I've seen the ECB Penguin used to demonstrate why ECB is not a recommended method of encryption, but I do not understand how this translates to text or passwords. Aren't the people who create these ...
147 views

### Attribute-based encryption for cloud storage

I'm trying to understand attribute-based encryption schemes. Almost all articles describe that they are designed for cloud storage, but as I understand, almost all computing (encryption & ...
62 views

### Is it a good practice to use plain text for derivation of Keys?

I have a question regarding the derivation of keys in crypto. Is it a good practice to use the plain text (in form of hashes) for derivation of keys ? these keys will be used for encryption of the ...
45 views

### Given just the hash of a file, can I verify that the file contains a specific data block?

Imagine I only have the hash of a file which we can call hash(file). Then a user sends me a data block (or section) of the same file, which we can call ...
39 views

### How does the HOTP dynamic truncation function generalize to longer hashes?

HOTP, the HMAC-based One-Time Password algorithm from RFC 4226, uses a "dynamic truncation" function to turn the 20 byte HMAC-SHA-1 value into a 31 bit string. The dynamic truncation (from Section ...
501 views

### Attacking historical ciphers methodology

It's more a theoretical question of how would you approach it. All you know about the ciphertext it's was generated with a historical cipher. The ciphertext appears to be random, BUT it's divided into ...
32 views

### Validate per round rather than cycle-walking in FPE

I was thinking about FPE specifically for numbers, CC, phone, SS #, etc. and I thought of some small "optimization" that could be implemented. Can I validate the string length after each round in the ...
170 views

### Why don't we use bcrypt and scrypt together?

Everyone is comparing bcrypt to scrypt. Bcrypt is proven, lots of cryptoanalysis and no vulnerabilities so far, but uses very low memory. While scrypt uses a lot of memory, but it's too early in its ...
87 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 ...
189 views

### What does “a 15360-bit RSA key is the equivalent to a 256-bit symmetric key” mean?

NIST key management guidelines suggest that 15360-bit RSA keys are equivalent in strength to 256-bit symmetric keys. If a 15360-bit RSA key is the equivalent to a 256-bit symmetric key, does that mean ...
193 views

### Why aren't zero-knowledge proofs used for authentication in practice?

I read on Wikipedia that zero-knowledge proofs are not used for authentication in practice. Instead (I think) the server is entrusted with seeing a password in plaintext form, which it should then add ...
78 views

### Secure method of encrypting data within a database

I'm designing a program which makes queries to a database stored locally which could potentially contain a lot of sensitive information. As such the information must be kept secure as possible from ...
43 views

### Same 64-bit preimage resistance security for SipHash and SHA-512/64?

If I have to chose a 64 bit preimage resistant hash function; will there be any difference in security between SipHash and SHA-512/64 (SHA-512 truncated to 64 bits)? How long will it take an ...
282 views

### Is (AES-)GCM parallelizable?

I recentely faced the issue of random access decryption while AES-GCM was being used. I said this person that the underlying CTR should allow parallelization but I have no idea how authentication ...
57 views

### What kind of operations are involved in NTRU?

I've read that lattice based algorithms involve matrix-vector products. Is this the case of the NTRU algorithm? When I've read the details of the NTRU algorithm, I've seen products of polynoms. Where ...
12 views

### Is SRP protocol a non-interactive key exchange protocol?

I request to know whether SRP authentication protocol is non-interactive key exchange protocol? Also, please explain difference between interactive and non-interactive protocols.
17 views

### Efficient and secure authenticated key exchange protocol(s)

In general, I would like to know which authenticated key exchange protocol is efficient and secure ? There may be many, but name at least a few of them.
55 views

### Are there simpler FHE methods than Craig Gentry's original paper?

Craig Gentry's 2010 paper on FHE is very cool, and I'm planning on implementing a basic proof of concept FHE. I was wondering though, are there any simpler methods that have been discovered since ...
101 views

### Is there a scheme that allows to use RSA based challenge response protocol limited to signing only 8 bytes to create a secure signature of any data?

I have a tiny device that has a challenge-response authentication mechanism where the device signs 8 bytes of any data with it's internal 2048 bit RSA key. I would like to be able to certify any data ...
86 views

### What is the meaning of h(r) in this protocol?

Could somebody tell me what the meaning is of $h(r)$ in the protocol below? ‎‎$A‎\leftarrow‎{B}\quad:{h(r)‎‎}{,B}{,P{_A(r,B)}}‎ \\A‎\rightarrow‎{B}\quad:r$
71 views

### Standard format to encode AES cipher and random IV

As far as I understood, a secret key (same length as CBC block size) and an initialization vector (IV) are needed to decrypt a AES-256-CBC encrypted string. As the IV should better be random, it has ...
59 views

### Is the key schedule of Serpent a circle?

The creation of the prekeys for Serpent works by XORing some previous values with a counter and a fixed value. Every word is 32 bits big and 4 words form a round key (after applying a S-Box, but this ...
140 views

### Does the key schedule function need to be a one-way function?

For some key schedule $e_n(e_{n-1}(k))$ (where $e_{n-1}(k)$ is the result of the previous round) , does $e$ need to be a one-way function? In the case of DES or Rijndael the key schedule doesn't ...
788 views

### What is an active S-Box?

I don't understand what an active s-box is (in reference of design criteria 8 of the DES). Because according to DES, all 8 s-boxes are used every round. But this is not what active means. So my ...
### Are there any specific requirements for the function $F$ in a Feistel cipher?
In a Feistel cipher (as shown below), it seems that the security of the cipher would be entirely dependent upon the function $F$. What requirements on $F$ are necessary for a secure Feistel cipher? Is ...