# All Questions

155 views

### The meaning of “scheme”

This question is a bit different from other questions here, but I think it is suitable to correctly understand the terminology of cryptography. Consider the following two sets of terms: Encryption ...
349 views

### Why pairing based crypto is suitable for some particular cryptographic primitives?

Why pairing based crypto is being widely used in some special crypto primitives as ID based crypto and variations of standard signatures? I mean taking as deep as possible what makes it suitable for ...
1k views

### What is the difference between these AES encryption methods

I am using AES encryption (Rijindael) with Base-64 encoding in Obj-C and VB. I am currently using the following two projects to achieve this: Obj-C: ...
3k views

### Digital Signatures, Standard Hash Functions and MACs

I'm studying Hash functions and Digital Signatures in sequence, and came up with some doubts about their usage. First of all: What is the difference between hashing a document and signing it? And ...
5k views

### RSA Proof of Correctness

Can anyone provide an extended (and well explained) proof of correctness of the RSA Algorithm? And why is it needed? I can't say that this or this helped me much, I'd like a more detailed and newbie ...
1k views

### Difficulty of breaking RSA for a given key size

Is it true that breaking a 1024-bit RSA key is as difficult as breaking a 128 bit symmetric key (e.g. AES)? I know that breaking a RSA key is equivalent to factoring the modulus $N$. To factor it, you ...
418 views

### How much bigger does a precomputed lookup table get when salt is added?

I am trying to wrap my head around the benefits of salt in cryptography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_(cryptography) I understand that adding salt makes it harder to precompute a table. But ...
2k views

### What does SSL use? RSA? El-Gamal? Elliptic curves?

I'm not sure what SSL uses to share the symmetric key to both end users, i.e. at the beginning of the communication. Is it RSA? Or El-Gamal? Or something else?
215 views

### Getting the encryption method and key from the encrypted data and the raw data

I have some pairs of plaintext and ciphertext data, from which I need to be able to decrypt the other passwords stored in the database. The password field typically contains something like ...
176 views

### What is sent on the initial communication with Kerberos?

When a user wants to communicate with another user (let's say Alice and Bob), what is sent over the network during the initial communication? Alice uses her Kerberos client and enters her password ...
354 views

### Where can I find useful data for cryptography/coding theory?

When implementing cryptographic/coding theory algorithms one need to use data like big prime numbers, numbers in $Z_n$ and their inverses, irreducible polynomials in $Z_n[x]$ and so on... While ...
47 views

### 4 x E = D in Simplified AES how it's possible ??

Can anyone explain how it's possible through hexadecimal or Binary 4 x E= D
98 views

### Why is Paillier Cryptosystem called probabilistic?

The definition of Paillier Cryptosystem says that it is a probabilistic asymmetric key algorithm for public key cryptography. Can some body explain why it is called "probabilistic"?
86 views

### What is the correct name for bytes which are to be signed?

I have some bytes, and I sign them with my private key using ECDSA. The resultant (71) bytes are the signature. But what is the name of the bytes I have signed? (If this were encryption, they would ...
105 views

### Is md5(x)&md5(y&x) secure?

I was wondering if the following hash function f(x) := md5(x) & md5('abc'&x) (with & as concatenation operator) is secure. This schema can be even ...
119 views

### Small Quantum Signatures - Reality check needed

I've been thinking a bit lately about how to get quantum resistant signatures fast and (relatively) small. One idea I've been keen on exploring is finding a crypto PRNG that allows fast-forwarding, ...
205 views

### Encrypt with one cipher and decrypt with a different cipher?

I recently installed an android app called Secret Space Encryptor and think I found a serious flaw in it. Let me explain: This app provides a variety of different ciphers to use and I used Threefish ...
151 views

### Reasons for components of AES

I started reading "Cryptography: theory and practice" by Stinson, and I am trying to understand the reason behind the choices for the different components of AES since they seem quite arbitrary. In ...
128 views

### Physical entropy source: How many bits entropy per byte is sufficent?

8 bit / byte would be perfect obviously. head -c 1M /dev/urandom | ent gives ~ 7.9998 bits per byte. Now, if I have a physical entropy source, how much entropy ...
141 views

### Why does consecutive permutations or consecutive substitutions not enhance security?

My professor stated that permutations which are done repeatedly does not further enhance security than just one permutation. He also stated that fact this applies to consecutive substitutions as well. ...
114 views

### Why can't garbled circuits be reused?

There are a bunch of papers do research on resizable garbled circuits. But I wonder why garbled circuits cannot be reused? For example, the constructor constructs a garbled circuit of "AND" like ...
531 views

### How does MD5 process text which is shorter than 512 bits

MD5 processes a 512-bit block and produces a 128-bit (16 byte) message digest often expressed as 32-digit hexadecimal value For example if I hash the word "how" using MD5 , I get the following hash ...
635 views

### Why is Rijndael key length restricted?

Why is Rijndael restricted to key length in $\lbrace 128, 160, 192, 224, 256\rbrace$ bits (and not larger)? The algorithm looks to me like it would support an arbitrary-sized key (multiple of $32$). ...
235 views

### Simple proof of work example?

Can anyone show me a simple proof of work algorithm that I can use to stop spammers? I've looked at hashcat, but i think there's a bit too much specialized hardware for bitcoin mining. That is, the ...
306 views

### What is a generator?

I am trying to read up on the math behind DH and ran into the word generator used a lot. I am not sure what it means. Can someone explain? I see this question where the OP talks about g as the ...
630 views

### Does AES-128 have the same strength as AES-256 with a padded key?

When I use the same 128-bit key for AES-128 and AES-256 with a known/public padding for the latter, is there some weakness in AES-256 that is not present in AES-128 with essentially the same key? ...
365 views

### Third-party security issues with Shamir's secret sharing scheme

In Shamir's secret sharing scheme, we are trusting a third party who generates the secret polynomial. How can we ensure security here when we are involving a third party?
247 views

### Difference between lightweight, online and low memory Authenticated Encryption schemes

What is the basic difference between the following types of Authenticated Encryption (AE) schemes? Lightweight Authenticated encryption Online Authenticated Encryption Authenticated Encryption for ...
157 views

### Does Runge phenomenon affect Shamir's secret sharing scheme?

Lagrange interpolation seems to be affected by the so-called Runge phenomenon when one tries to interpolate polynomials of high degree from a set of equidistant points. Lagrange interpolation is ...
672 views

### Hashing SHA-512 1000 times

SageMathCloud security (http://goo.gl/dCujW1) is as follows: Only the hash of your password is stored by the server, which uses 1000 iterations of the sha-512 hash function, with a salt length of ...
265 views

### Why can't hashes be reversed with toffoli gates?

This is a follow up question to this question: Crack cryptographic hash functions using Toffoli gates?. Suppose there is a hash function $$H(x)=y,$$ where $x$ is the input of the function and $y$ is ...
238 views

### Chance in cryptography

I was just thinking about my own chance and the way chance can defeat even the most advanced algorithm. My thought was : you can make a strong session id, but what if by chance, a hacker set this ...
529 views

### unique one-way hash

For a 10-digits numeric domain (swedish social security numbers), is there a hash function with the following properties? no two numbers result in the same hash it is not possible to deduce the ...
368 views

### Why is time-lapse cryptography not popular?

Time-Lapse Cryptography has been introduced by Michael Rabin and Christopher Thorpe in the paper “Time-Lapse Cryptography”, but it does not seems to be popular. It is a really good paper with an great ...
298 views

### Can one use a Cryptographic Accumulator to efficiently store Lamport public keys without the need of a Merkle Tree?

One of the problems of one-time Lamport signatures is that public keys are disposed after use, so you must generate many keys and store them in a Merkle tree. The root is the "real" public key and ...
2k views

### How to break AES/CBC/PKCS5 when key and IV are reused?

I'm doing a code review for a crypto solution that reuses the same key with a constant IV. I want to demonstrate that this is not the right way to do things by figuring out the key and decrypting all ...
328 views

### Is it true, that non-military cryptography appeared in 50's and 60's only thanks to leaks from the NSA? [closed]

I'm not talking about scytale, but encryption like RSA, DES, etc... How did exactly civil cryptography evolve after WWII?
3k views

### Attacking 2DES efficiently

Meet in the middle on 2DES uses $2^{56}$ memory. Given the fact that the attacker has only $2^{45}$ memory. How can the attacker adjust the attack so even with this memory limit, it will still be more ...
801 views

### Openssl & RSA : how many public exponents are possible?

I would like to know if it is possible to set the public exponent we want with "OpenSSL RSA" or if it is really limited to 2 possible exponents: 3 65537 If yes, why ?
1k views

### How to hash a list of multiple items?

In some protocols, a key is derived from a hash of many parameters (K=H(param1,param2,param3)) Is there a hash function that takes many parameters as input ? Or we can simply use a function like ...
390 views

### Zero-knowledge proof using quadratic residue: why two options?

In the zero knowledge proof using QR, why do we even bother with the server sending us $b = 0$ back? As I understand it, the server selects $b = 0$ or $b = 1$. If $b = 0$, then the client (Alice) ...
331 views

### How does an oblivious test of plaintext equality work?

Assume an ElGamal Cryptosystem. Assume a set of three players, $P_1$, $P_2$ and $P_3$. The private key $x$ is shared among the players. The player $P_1$ has a piece of the private key $x_1$, $P_2$ has ...