# All Questions

940 views

### Could an HMAC be used as a hash?

MD5 is considered broken and SHA-1 is closely following, but HMACs built around either are still considered relatively secure. It makes me wonder if MD5 and SHA-1 HMACs can be used as secure hashes. ...
4k views

### How can a Vigenère cipher be broken if the message is short?

I was watching a Stanford lecture on Vigenère cipher and in it the professor said that – to break the cipher – we assume the length of the key is known. We then break the cipher into groups of this ...
58 views

### What is the viability of a hybrid vigenere cipher?

So a vigenere cipher's main weakness is that you can use frequency analysis on each alternated alphabet, and thus crack the cipher with relative ease... But that implies that you know what the ...
87 views

### Importance of random number generation in Schnorr's signature

In Schnorr's digital signature protocol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnorr_signature), the signing process (as described in wikipedia) requires the generation of a random bit $r$. I am wondering ...
98 views

### Would it be better to use HKDF or SCrypt for deriving a child key?

Okay so I'm trying to derive a child public key from an EC public key. I've come up with a couple ideas and now I'd like to know which is more secure. Mp: The master key pair, this includes a ...
463 views

### How does RSA compute such enormous numbers?

So I have been reading and learning a lot about cryptography lately and in particular asymmetric ciphers such as RSA. One thing that I am curious about but never seems to be mentioned is how the ...
126 views

52 views

### What is the correct definition of the blowfish F-function?

The Blowfish cipher uses a so called F-function which uses S-Boxes (S[i], i=0,1,2,3) to ...
106 views

### Encrypt-then-authenticate variant used in IPsec

I am trying to understand the variant of Encrypt-then-Authenticate (EtA) that is used in IPsec. For this I have looked at this chapter. What I got so far is that the integrity and confidentiality ...
254 views

### Why is 2048-bit RSA always paired with 320-bit ECC?

You may already have noticed that most smart cards ship with 2048-bit RSA support and 320-bit ECC over GF(p) support. You may have already asked yourself "why exactly 320-bit?". Now I remember having ...
69 views

### Is it wise to use HOTP (raw bytes) as a key for HMAC?

Assume I have client and server applications with a shared master secret KEY_SECRET already in place. Also assume that the client and server have an implicit shared ...
200 views

### end-to-end encrypted chat app with symmetric + public key encryption, TLS and cert pinning

A big drawback of end-to-end encrypted messaging services is that, as soon as you lose your device, you lose all your messages. Your private key is gone after all. I was wondering though, wouldn't it ...
93 views

### Is the security of an HMAC equally important as the security of the cipher itself?

I'm a little unclear on how hash based MAC works... So I would like to know, is the security of your hash function as important as the security of the overall cipher? Basically, if you can crack the ...
101 views

### Does rsa-oaep provide or not plaintext integrity in addition to confidentiality?

My own understanding (possibly wrong of course) of RSA-OAEP encryption scheme is that it provides plaintext integrity (in addition to confidentiality) due to MGF function which for encryption ...
233 views

### What is the difference between key size and block size (for AES)

We are working on AES and want to develop a website which should provide an encryption facility but we are not understanding the difference between key and the block size. More appropriately what does ...
317 views

### Difference between Hardware implemented algorithm and software implemented one?

In the articles about cryptography I see the words Hardware implemented and Software implemented. I'm curious to know what is the difference between them? In the other words, even in the computer ...
496 views

### Convert a number to sha-1

I have a task to find a the message for which the SHA-1 hash's last 11 symbols in hexadecimal presentation corresponds to an 11-digit number. I have been given the following example solution: For ...
88 views

### Continuous stream of strong randomness from limited entropy?

I need a continuous (infinite) strong random generator, but I've only got limited entropy as seed. I know there's already a contradiction there, but I'm looking for a practical approach. Suppose I ...
174 views

### Shamir's Secret Scheme : Knowing the threshold

If I am decoding a key by applying shares, is it possible to know when the threshold has been reached, and the secret revealed, without having to be told what the threshold is? Also, is it possible ...
33 views

### Would buffering socket send resist timing attacks

I have been reading and thinking about timing attacks on cryptographic systems. The answer to this question mentions the following: "The way to defend against timing attacks is to make sure the time ...
104 views

### TPM's monotonic counters

I am reading the TPM Design Principles v1.2 §17 and do not feel I fully understand the example they give on how the counters would work. Apparently monotonic counters are used to prevent replay ...
34 views

### Multi Party System with n-1 adversaries

Novice here. Is there a MPC function where no information is leaked even if all parties are not trustworthy ?
58 views

### How does Intel TXT prevent spoofing of PCR values?

I have read some content on trusted execution environment, and I like to ask exactly how it improves hashing. What I read at Wikipedia’s “Trusted Execution Technology” article states: ...PCRs) ...
72 views

### Security of this scheme

I am developing a software and I am not sure if it is completely secure. I have 22 Mb of data to encrypt used multiple times, random IV (generated using RAND_bytes from OpenSSL lib) and password ...
118 views

### Is signing a plaintext sufficient?

If I have N bytes of plaintext, does signing it with my private key prove (to holders of my public key) that I have signed that exact plaintext messages? i.e. could an attacker use the plaintext and ...
230 views

### Additively homomorphic cryptosystem with non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of non-negativity

I need a cryptosystem that is additively homomorphic. Paillier preferably, but not neccessarily. Also, for every ciphertext the private key holder must be able to prove non-interactively that the ...