# All Questions

103 views

### Why should one prefer Salsa20 over ChaCha?

We are all aware of Google's approach to introduce ChaCha/Poly1305 as TLS cipher suite. The rationale seems clear: ChaCha is newer and seems to provide better security (and maybe speed?) gained from ...
55 views

### Is authenticated encryption basically a lockable box?

I recently used a custom construction as a commitment scheme, which was taken from the standard picture you give people while explaining commitment schemes. Basically commitment schemes can be ...
46 views

### How does DPA work on AES?

I am really not much of a crypto guy so I don't really get how a differential power analysis on AES works. Can somebody explain it to me how it basically works?
78 views

### Does authenticated encryption add any protection to a signed digital envelope?

The general scenario of hybrid encryption is to use public key cryptography for the exchange of a one time session key that can be used for the encryption of the plaintext with a symmetric encryption ...
113 views

### Proof that two parties can communicate

Suppose we have three parties, Alice, Bob, and Carol. Alice can receive messages from Bob and Carol individually, but can only send messages to both simultaneously. Additionally, Alice cannot tell if ...
134 views

### How to generate own secure elliptic curves?

I know that the algorithm used to generate the Brainpool curves and the NIST curves is published. The algorithm should be this one (RFC5639 Appendix A). From what it looks like it's rather slow to ...
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 ...
98 views

### Do hand-based hash functions / MACs exist?

Is there research on a hash function or a MAC that can be executed without computers? I know there's a lot of history on hand-based ciphers and the OTP can easily be excecuted by hand. (By using ...
77 views

### Paillier cryptosystem preserve ordering of sums for two integer sequences

According to Paillier cryptosystem the product of two ciphertexts will decrypt to the sum of their corresponding plaintexts. I have two separate integer sequences X and Y that have same number of ...
103 views

### Is it ever unsafe to compress an EC point?

I am working with a library that outputs EC points in uncompressed form. To save space, I'm considering modifying said library to use compressed EC points. Assuming that I keep track of the sign bit ...
101 views

### Is it possible to combine true streaming with AEAD?

It seems there is a difference between "streaming" in cryptographic sense (as in CTR) and "streaming" in general programming sense (as in "accept a file larger than RAM from socket and save it on ...
188 views

### Achieving 32-bit verification code with 16-bit CRC? [closed]

I am programming an embedded chip that has a hardware 16-bit CRC module. I have to protect some data bytes $d_0,d_1,...,d_{n-1}$ against corruption caused by sudden loss of power; a 32-bit CRC would ...
178 views

### Smart Card - Entropy during on-board public key generation

I know that some (advanced) smart cards or tokens allow generating key pair directly on the device, but I wonder how the card can gather entropy during the process. Any idea ?
97 views

### Security concern about reducing hash value using modulo operation

As stated in the title, what I am looking for is information about a "technique" that I would like to use in some of my algorithms. Sometimes I need to map a hash function's result into a range of ...
112 views

### How many times can a key be used for HMAC-SHA256 before it needs to be rotated?

If I wanted to use hmac for proving that a value hadn't been tampered with, how many times can I use a key before it needs to be rotated?
97 views

### Secure multiparty computation of conjunction

Suppose Alice and Bob each have bits a and b, respectively. How can Alice and Bob compute the function ...
222 views

### Real life systems that use concepts of crypto computing [closed]

Are there any working cloud/internet solutions/products that operates on encrypted data such as systems using homomorphic encryption, secure multiparty computation, electronic voting, private ...
87 views

### NIST implementation of the Lucas primality test

The NIST standard FIPS 186-4 describes an implementation of the Lucas primality test in section C.3.3. I can follow the algorithm but I am puzzled by step 6.2: ...
92 views

### Use of ElGamal encryption for signature generation

If RSA (textbook RSA that is) generates a digital signature by using the sender's private key, couldn't any cryptosystem (the only two that come to mind are RSA and ElGamal) capable of asymmetric ...
323 views

### What is the difference between “secp…” and “sect…”?

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommended elliptic curve domain parameters to have names such as “secp…” and “sect…”. For example: “secp224k1” and “sect571k1”. What is ...
132 views

### What is the technical name for a public key container in DER format?

I have a public key in the following (format-neutral; the type is specified by the DER bytes) format: ...
156 views

### Last Round in DES

I am studying DES for my Cryptoexam .As far as I understood , the initial plaintext is permuted and then the left half is called L0 and Right half is called R0. After that for each round the process ...
447 views

### Why does FIPS 186-4 require specific sizes for keys?

In FIPS 186-4, page 32, about FFC crypto it is required that the length of $p$ will be exactly 1024 bit and the length of $q$ will be exactly 160 bit. Why is the requirement not stated in terms of ...
66 views

### Is using SHA256 to extract entropy from a p-rand nonce a good way to create keying material?

Using $SHA256(N)$, where $N$ is 64 bytes of output from the Microsoft Windows CryptGenRandom function. Are there any known vulnerabilities with using this method to ...
133 views

### Which public key encryption scheme is re-randomizable? How can I re-randomize an encryption scheme?

Which public key encryption scheme is re-randomizable? Is there any library for re-randomizable encryption scheme? If not, how can I re-randomize a given public key encryption scheme? I cannot find ...
165 views

### PBKDF2 Salt and Password Ordering

I am currently reading about PBKDF2, and understand that the salt is used only once, while the password is used multiple times in the computation of the final key (see this question). How would the ...
154 views

### Proving Non-Existence of ECC Backdoors

In light of the NIST Dual EC DRBG scandal, I was intrigued by a NIST slide (slide 9) that said the two points P and Q can be chosen so that the chooser can prove they don't have a backdoor. This ...
190 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). ...
115 views

### Is this an acceptable All-or-Nothing Transform?

I was thinking about AONTs, and designed the one below, I call it CHANT for Chained-Hash All-or-Nothing Transform; it's my very first shot at something of the sort, and was hoping I could get your ...
440 views

### True Random Number Generator by milliseconds per keystroke (TRNG-Kms)

The simplest way to generate truly random numbers for OTP keys is to measure the time in milliseconds between each keystroke on a keyboard. The randomness depends on the user typing in various speeds. ...
111 views

### Indistinguishable encryptions in the presence of an eavesdropper equivalence

I'm trying to prove that definition 5 and definition 6 in this document are equivalent. This is what I've done at the moment: Asume that the scheme has Indistinguishable encryptions in the presence of ...
131 views

### What is the quantum-resistant signature scheme with the smallest signature + pubkey?

After playing cat and mouse with an number of quantum-resistant signature schemes and coming up with nothing with small enough signatures, I'm turning to Crypto.SE. I need a quantum-resistant ...
227 views

### Using PBKDF2 twice with different argument order

I'm pretty sure this is a really bad approach (in theory), but one of my clients is doing this and I was wondering… How bad it is to perform pbkdf-2 in this way (with 2000 iterations)? ...
149 views

### Twisted curves in protocol

I've come to understand that twisted curves, as for instance defined in the Brainpool specifications, are $F(p)$-isomorphic to their regular $F(p)$ equivalents. So brainpoolP256r1 is isomorphic to ...
145 views

### How to handle the GCD(V,P) != 1 case when doing point addition or point doubling in elliptic curve cryptography

The equation for a finite field Elliptic Curve is of this form: $$y^2 \equiv x^3 + a * x + b \pmod{P}$$ When we do common EC operations like point doubling or point addition we need to calculate the ...
568 views

### Cryptographic hash function for 32-bit length input keys

Since I'm unfamiliar with cryptography area I haven't been able to find cryptographic hash functions for 32 bit integer keys. It seems all such functions (as I saw here) are designed to digest a ...
558 views

### Number of keys when using symmetric and asymmetric encryption?

Quoting part of my homework/assignment: How many keys are required for secure communication among 1000 person if: Symmetric key encryption algorithm is used? Asymmetric key encryption ...
220 views

### Is ISAAC Cipher Cryptographically Secure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISAAC_(cipher) This question was asked before but the answers seem vague, and I want to know about ISAAC specifically, not ISAAC+. It seems some cryptanalysis was ...
237 views

### Can XEX or XTS modes be used with only one tweak?

XEX Mode (with two tweaks) is the following scheme: $X = E_{k}(I) \otimes \alpha^j \\ C = E_{K}(P \oplus X) \oplus X$ where $I$ and $j$ are both tweaks (sector number and block number respectively). ...
269 views

### Nonlinearity of the J-K Flip Flop

In Encryption Schemes for Computer Confidentiality, Pless describes how to use the J-K flip flop as a nonlinear combiner for linear feedback shift registers. This generator was broken because the J-K ...
119 views

### Is it possible to track down copies of WW2-era codebooks?

I've got an academic curiosity regarding some of the old Japanese naval codes used during World War II specifically. I'm wondering if any of the codebooks from this era have been made available, or ...
78 views

### Does displaying HMAC hashes of user inputs compromise the HMAC validation?

Here is the scenario: "SECRET" is a secret key that is kept private and only used in this one application. The application allows users to enter in any "VALUE" (within various open-ended limits such ...
279 views

### Convert m-Sequence into a de Bruijn Sequence

In his paper Alternating Step Generator Controlled by de Bruijn Sequence, C.G. Günther states on page three that a de Bruijn sequence (..) can easily be obtained from an m-sequence (maximal length ...
116 views

### Key-dependent encryption in TAHOE-LAFS

TAHOE-LAFS uses a form of "key-dependent encryption", in that a private key SK is encrypted with the truncated hash of the private key: ...
232 views

### secure integer comparison

I have been going through a huge amount of papers to find a simple and a practical method to compare integer numbers without revealing their original values. I know that this falls within the area of ...
404 views

### Entropy test for AES Key Schedule

According to the article "Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys" there is a quick and dirty entropy test that can help to find possible AES Key Schedules in memory dumps. Although ...
134 views

### Sextic twist optimization of BN pairing - cubic root extraction required?

I found the following paper really interesting: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220378229_A_family_of_implementation-friendly_BN_elliptic_curves/file/79e4150b3a773beecd.pdf It allows ...
3k views

### Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange with Authentication: Man-in-the-Middle query

I have been reading up on MiTM attacks, and the prevention of them using public key certificates. Recently I learnt about Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange with Authentication, and how it uses signed ...