All Questions

243 views

Can you really insert the text you want in one-time pad?

The Wikipedia article "One-time pad ~ Authentication" says : For example, an attacker who knows that the message contains "meet jane and me tomorrow at three thirty pm" at a particular point can ...
981 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 ...
929 views

CBC-MAC , fixed length, all blocks returned

CBC-MAC, with fixed length message. Is it safe to return all ciphered blocks instead of the last? My intuition says it is less secure, since is gives an attacker more information. But how could one ...
1k views

Tamper-proofing log files

Problem Overview I want to securely store log files so the contents are secret, and they can't be modified without detection. The files will be encrypted using authenticated encryption (AES in GCM ...
907 views

Can we replace the XOR operation in DES with some other operation?

Can we replace the XOR operation in the DES algorithm with some other operation? If so, does it work for both encryption and decryption?
3k views

Why does WPA-PSK not use Diffie-Hellman key exchange?

Is there a reason, why in pre-shared key mode, Wi-Fi session key is not secured with something like Diffie-Hellman but instead is derived from PSK key and some information exchanged in clear during ...
296 views

A situation where security by obscurity might be the best solution - or am I wrong?

Imagine the following situation. There is an application for a microcontroller-driven system. The profits are made from manufacturing and selling the device itself. However, it is expected, that the ...
284 views

How to generate a random integer in interval $[1, 2^n-1]$ from random integer in interval $[0, 2^n-1]$?

For a project I am working on, I have access to a CSPRNG that outputs a random integer in the interval $[0, 2^n-1]$ for any integer $n$ greater than 0. I cannot use the zero values, so I have my RNG ...
661 views

Randomized algorithms and the one time pad

The way I understand it, an algorithm is said to be randomized if it uses randomness as part of its logic (quoting Wikipedia). Now, in the case of encryption algorithms, I assume this means that for ...
699 views

Is there a symmetric-key cryptography based on key establishment techniques?

Most of the current key exchange techniques are based on public-key cryptography. Are there any key exchange/establishment techniques based on symmetric-key cryptography too? In my setup primary ...
713 views

What's the main difference between Pohlig-Hellman and RSA?

Both Pohlig-Hellman and RSA perform encryption and decryption by exponentiation modulo some integer ($p$ prime for PH, $n$ composite for RSA). They both use a key $e$ as the exponent to encrypt a ...
665 views

Calculating cycles per byte

Cycles per byte seems to be a critical concern in designing and choosing stream ciphers. For example, from Wikipedia, RC4 has 7 cycles/byte on original Pentium chips. How is this calculated? Do they ...
312 views

What is the name of this kind of protocol

There is a communication protocol that I believe creates the equivalent of a one time pad, with the downside that the secret message must be transferred multiple times. The protocol is so simple that ...
415 views

Can a “pattern” in a series of passwords be detected from their hashes (and maybe a single raw password)?

Let's say I'm a lazy user of a system with annoyingly frequent password change policies. I may have a "good" password I used initially that is only used for this system but since I have to change it ...
346 views

Is there any recent cryptographic algorithm especially designed for low-level processors?

Most modern algorithms require relatively large amount of resources. Is there any recent (and freely usable) encryption/decryption algorithm which is specially designed for low-level microcontrollers ...
474 views

Key space size when either of two public keys are valid for authentication?

If for authentication a user can own either A OR B public key instead of just one specific key is that equivalent to halving the key space. i.e. it it theoretically twice as easy to brute force and ...
537 views

How can I encrypt more than 64 bit with the Data Encryption Standard?

The Data Encryption Algorithm is designed to encipher and decipher blocks of data consisting of 64 bits under control of a 56-bit key. If my data is more than 64 bits, (suppose 66 or 67 bits), will ...
53 views

Should the most significant byte of a cryptograhic key be nonzero?

Is it safer to give a non zero value to the most significant byte (MSB) of a cryptographic key to ensure its length (not 31 instead of 32 for an EC private key on a 256-bit curve for example)? Or is ...
808 views

Generating unbiased numbers with a biased six sided die?

Eve takes a fair six-sided die and adds some heavy paint to the side of the die with the 6 on it. This results in a biased die that rolls a 6 with probability 2/7, and each other number (1-5) with ...
105 views

Is it safe to initialize secret keys by just reading /dev/random on Linux?

For a software, I don't want the user to choose weak keys, so I plan to just read the needed number of bytes from /dev/random to create the needed secret keys. Is it safe to do so?
51 views

Do $v_1=\alpha\cdot r_1$ and $v_2=\alpha\cdot r_2$ leak information about $\alpha$

Please consider we have finite field $\mathbb{F}_p$ for large prime number $p$. We have a fixed field element $\alpha$. By $r_i\leftarrow \mathbb{F}_p$ we mean we pick $r_i$ uniformly random from the ...
347 views

Encryption of 8 bit of block data

I'm looking for a cryptographic algorithm that allows encrypting only 8 bits of data in a block. Is there any such algorithm that is considered secure? The reason I'm asking is because I have to ...
113 views

Chopping off SHA256 entropy?

I have a NoSQL key-value database. I want to insert couple million of records to it. For the key generation, I'm, using a prefix (something like data-one-) and ...
109 views

Why is Rabin encryption equivalent to factoring?

I don't understand the proof of equivalence I've read everywhere (e.g., in Rabin's paper or on Wikipedia). Here's my objection: let's say you have a Rabin decryption oracle that takes ...
141 views

Meaning of entropy of a bitstring in NIST SP 800 - 90A

From NIST SP 800 - 90A from January 2012 (see http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-90A/SP800-90A.pdf), page 6: For the purposes of this Recommendation, an n-bit string is said to have ...
328 views

Why isn't CTR mode (counter mode) used more often?

For the CTR mode, the design is good for parallelization, yes, it seems the benchmark of the program downloaded from crypto++ proves that on an Intel I7 CPU. My question is that as most of CPU on ...
204 views

Why would an Initialization Vector be supplied externally?

My software uses a 3rd party encryption appliance. One of the capabilities they allow is for the client software to supply an IV while doing CBC encryption. Why would they not generate a random ...
122 views

Strange MAC algorithm

I'm working with a payment provider which uses the following algorithm for signing messages: The merchant is securely given a secret key k, known to them and the ...
484 views

AES VS PRNG+HASH+XOR

I was thinking of doing symmetric encryption using just hashing and simple XOR encryption. It would work as: Alice and Bob share a symmetric key Alice manages to send an (authenticated) IV to Bob ...
291 views

Practical (and secure) PRGs

Does anyone know if there exists a PRG construction which takes as input an (RSA-sized) integer seed and outputs a fixed number of bits? There are number-theoretic PRGs such as the RSA, ...
700 views

What was the problem in the SSL version 2.0?

What is the main reason (attacks) the appearance of the protocol SSL version 2.0 to replace version 3.0?
217 views

Attack against modular inversion operation using side-channels?

I'm building a device that performs a modular inversions using a secret modulus. I would like to know if it is possible to recover all or part of this modulus by side-channels (timing, power, EMR, ...
142 views

How does secret sharing solve the partial exposure problem?

I have been trying to understand how secret sharing methods like Shamir's secret sharing solve the problem of a share revealing information about the secret. I guess there are some random numbers ...
301 views

Public-key cryptosystems without poly-time quantum attacks

It's well-known that Shor's algorithm can solve integer factorization, discrete logarithm and discrete log over elliptic curves in cubic time. This implies that cryptosystems like RSA, ElGamal, and ...
272 views

Isn't the deterministic property of (EC)DSA a security problem?

From what I read in Wikipedia's article "Elliptic Curve DSA ~ Security", the "deterministic" generation of $k$ can help prevent certain type of attacks (such as the one happened to Sony). However, ...
185 views

Is this really the correct way to do an IND-CPA test?

In a description of IND-CPA (indistinguishability under the chosen plaintext attack), I have been reading the following, simple test: The adversary can generate as many messages as he wants. Then, ...
367 views

Elliptic Curve Cryptography Encryption Results

I'm playing around with a package that does Elliptic Curve Cryptography from http://jecc.sourceforge.net/ Every time I encrypt a value it produced a different result (same private key). However I'm ...
675 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 ...
126 views

How difficult is it to find the “pre-image” of a block cipher?

Say that I have $$C_1 = AES_{k_1}(M_1)$$ How difficult would it be to find a key, K2 and plaintext M2 $$C_2 = AES_{k_2}(M_2)$$ such that $$C_1 == C_2$$ How would using a block cipher ...
98 views

Can CBC-encrypted files be modified in-place?

When changing a (small) part of the plaintext of a CBC-encrypted file, how much of the file will have to be rewritten? My suspicion is that everything after the modified block will have to be ...
360 views

Relation between attack and attack model for signatures

I would like to know: What is the relationship between an attack and an attack model. For example, let $\Pi$ be the Lamport signature scheme. This signature has it's security based on the one-way ...
273 views

Composition of block ciphers and 3DES

There is some intriguing things about DES and 3DES. Now, I know that DES is weak and 3DES was an attempt to construct a more secure block-cipher from a deprecated one. Having this in mind, what ...
964 views

Are block ciphers used in public key crypto?

I was reading about block ciphers and most articles state they are being used in symmetric key cryptography. Are they also being used in public key cryptography? if not, what alternative pkc use? ...
659 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 ...
473 views

Case insensitive verification of HMAC / Base64 signature

I am signing a short message using the base64 of an HMAC, like this (python): ...
778 views

Simple RC4 key generation scheme

I would like to ask you about your opinion on the following scheme of combining a master key and a nonce and stretching the result to the full 256-bytes RC4 key. Master key $K_m$ is a pre-shared ...
2k views

Which categories of cipher are semantically secure under a chosen-plaintext attack?

I am trying to get my head around the circumstances under which a cipher is (or is not) semantically secure under a chosen-plaintext attack. I can't seem to find a good reference explaining this. I ...
565 views

A proof-of-work random number generation system for Pokémon [closed]

(The original question that was here was considered too confusing, unclear, and rambling. You can still view it in the edit history, but the content is no longer useful by itself, and cannot be ...
203 views

Does zero-padding the secret in Shamir's sharing scheme increase security?

When performed in binary Galois fields $GF_{2^n}$, Shamir's threshold secret sharing scheme produces shares that are each the same bit-size as the secret. Though the scheme is "perfectly secure" in ...
611 views

How can I add more rounds to AES?

I'd like to understand a bit more about the AES key schedule if anyone would mind explaining that. For instance, why is the way the schedule generated (with recursive xors and occasional ...

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