# All Questions

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### Why is C_digest defined in PKCS#11?

Digesting doesn't require any key and can be performed on the client side. Why does the PKCS#11 token interface standard have a C_digest method? For example, why should I send my data to a PKCS11 HSM ...
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### Which multiplicatively homomorphic encryption scheme supports encryption of 0?

I want a multiplicatively homomorphic encryption scheme that supports encryption of 0 (e.g. Elgamal doesn't support). I also want the multiplication to be operated on the ciphertext of 0, i.e., if ...
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### Can a secret message be securely transmitted within a MAC tag?

A sender wants to transmit an ultra secret code $M$ which could be either 'go', 'stop' or 'wait'. This could be any selection of code words really and adopted for any use such as transmitting short ...
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### Efficient AES - Use of T-tables

I'm really in trouble! I'm trying to understand how the T-tables in AES encryption work. But I don't know if I get the point. What I understood is that they are used to reduce the whole computation of ...
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### Can we use numbers as a pad in the Vernam cipher - why or why not?

I was playing with the Vernam cipher on some online converter. But when I tried to encrypt my message string with numbers, it remained unchanged. Moreover, it was ignoring numbers and was encrypting ...
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### “Practical” operations supported by functional encryption?

I'm curious about what operations have been developed into functional encryption schemes. What I mean by that is: what operations can be performed over encrypted ciphertexts? Obviously homomorphic ...
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### Asymmetric algorithm for one time signing of small cleartext

I want to generate a key pair such that the private key can be used once to sign a small message (1024 bytes) at some indeterminate point in the future and the public key can be used to verify that ...
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### Repeatable crypto

Is there a safe way to do crypto that will always produce the same result for a given input? My use case is transferring deltas of huge files, to a backup server. The backup server has no knowledge ...
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### Possible CPA or CCA attack when using AES-CBC mode under the following situation?

Both client and server know a shared key in advance. Both sides us EVP_BytesToKey() derive a pair of same key and same IV. Then, client and server start transferring data encrypted by AES-CBC mode ...
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### Partial hash code protocol for security tokens providing signatures

I've read the following two sentences within a beta protocol specification, which references ISO/IEC 7816-8 for PSO:HASH which already contains notions of a "partial hash". The off-card entity is ...
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### Convergent Encryption: integrity and authenticity

I have one question about convergent encryption. Suppose I use AES-256 in CBC mode. I need a 256 bits key and a 128 bits IV. If I use SHA-256 to hash one file, then I can use directly that hash as ...
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### Computational Complexity - When is it really exponential time?

I'm currently working on the discrete logarithm problem and the relevant attacks. I'm fine on the mathematical side of things, but when it comes to estimation of running times I run into problems. ...
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### KDF based on HMAC-SHA-256

Is KDF based on HMAC-SHA-256(Hashed Message Authentication Code, Secure Hash Algorithm) algorithm a suitable option to generate symmetric key from the secret key? What is the basic funda, behind ...
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### Attack on DSA modification with bad hash function

Given a (bad) modification of DSA where the hash function is the identity ($H(m)=m$), I am now supposed to design an attack. So $(m, (r,s))$ are given and I should be able to create a legit signature ...
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### Client authentication on limited hardware

I'm developing a authentication and authorization protocol for a Bluetooth device. The device should communicate with an Android app and needs to be able to authenticate the app during the connection ...
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### Could scrypt salts contribute to entropy if passwords & salts are only stored in human memory?

I'm unsure of how exactly the salt is manipulated by scrypt and its potential contribution if any to overall password entropy if passwords & salts are stored only in human memory for a ...
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### AES-128-CTR message integrity: Construction of HMAC

(Note: This post is not about "rolling my own", but rather trying to deepen my understanding of the underlying structures.) I'm having difficulties finding clear answers to some questions about the ...
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### Need to generate new DH keys for every message in OTR

Going through the OTR specification I don't quite get why a new DH keys (and hence new symmetric key and hmac key) are generated for each message to be sent. Why is this necessary? I don't think it ...
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### Cryptographic pseudo-random generation of address subsets

Suppose I have devices which broadcast, on an insecure channel, 32-bit addresses. I want to make these devices untraceable - one way to do so is to allocate for each device a distinct subset of ...
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Skein is defined for three different internal state sizes: 256 bits, 512 bits, and 1024 bits – with Skein-512 as the “primary proposal”. Is there any advantage – other than potential memory or speed ...
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### Analyzing ECB's and CBC's resistence to a known-plaintext attack

I'm trying to analyze the strength of a block cipher with CBC mode or with ECB mode on the scenario of an exhaustive search attack with knowledge of pairs of plaintext – ciphertext (known plaintext ...
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### Why must IV be sent with each packet?

I was reading about Encrypt-then-MAC and everywhere I go it seems people include the IV with the ciphertext generated for each message then MAC that and send all the information concatenated. Why do ...
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### In Pedersen Key Distribution, can the public key be persistent?

I am implementing a key distribution protocol described by Torben Pedersen in A Threshold Cryptosystem without a Trusted Party (EUROCRYPT'91). In the protocol, the $n$ parties distribute a public key ...
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### Can I use Shamir's secret sharing scheme for multiplicative homomorphism for secure multiparty computation?

I would like to perform a dot product operation among $m$ parties using Shamir's $(m,m)$ secret sharing that is used for Secure Multiparty Computation. I am aware that Shamir's $(m,m)$ scheme is ...
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### Asymmetric key derivation – Who derives the new pub key can't know the new private key

I'm looking for a peer reviewed protocol or algorithm that can do this, preferentially I need something based on elliptic-curves cryptography. Alice know the main public key of Bob (B-PUB-1). Alice ...
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### Where did Martin Hellman acknowledge Ralph Merkle's contribution to public-key cryptography?

I am trying to find the article to reference when discussing the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. According to Wikipedia Hellman said that The system...has since become known as Diffie–Hellman key ...
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### Are RSA or ECC vulnerable to an attack where the same (unknown) plaintext is encrypted with multiple public keys?

I'm not sure what this attack model is called - it's not known-plaintext and also not quite cipher-text-only. It is similar to this question except the general case (not just two keys) and using keys ...
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### Decode message $m = p * q$, where $p ^ 5 \bmod N$, $q ^ 5 \bmod N$ and $N$ are known

I been going through some cryptography exercises and stumbled across this problem. Discover message $m$. You know that $m = p * q$. Also $p ^ 5 \bmod N$, $q ^ 5 \bmod N$ and $N$ are known ...
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### One-way permutation over a small interval?

I am wondering what concrete computable functions we know that are a permutation over an integer interval of parameterizable size $s$, for relatively small $s$ starting circa $2^{64}$, to perhaps ...
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### A fast non-cryptographic hash function that is “strong enough”?

I'm designing a simple one-time-password mechanism for authentication against a possibly-insecure server - i.e. I don't want to use symmetric shared secrets. The first idea that came into mind was ...
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### Calculating amount of time for brute forcing ciphertext depending on the size of the key

I am a graphic design student and for my information graphic project I have chosen the topic of the history of encryption and how the security level developed over the centuries. It’s basically an ...
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As the full version of HMQV is very long, I will give a graph of it below \begin{array}{@{}l@{}c@{}l@{}} \hat{A} && \hat{B} \\ (a,A=g^a)&&(b,B=g^b) \\ x\in_R[1,q-1],\quad X=g^x ...
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### Two-timing a one-time pad [duplicate]

Is a one-time pad still breakable on a depth of 2+ if the plaintext is completely random? I'm assuming this idea is wrong, mostly because it occurred to me, but let me walk you through my logic so ...
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### Why is Lamport-Diffie secure?

Why is Lamport-Diffie secure? I note that there is a demonstration based on onewayness (in the book postquantum cryptography). But a one way function is not sufficient to ensure that it can not infer ...
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### Can minimum encrypted message length be used to identify public key algorithm or derived some of its features?

Encrypting a very small message using public key cryptography always result in larger encrypted messages. Is it possible to deduce the algorithm used, key length, etc just by looking at the minimum ...
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### The exact definition of a symmetric encryption

I have doubts for the definition of the decryption algorithm $D(.)$. I think I've already seen that the decryption returns a plaintext $M$ on input the key $K$ and $C=E_K(M)$. I have also seen thet ...
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### Is $q(n)=1/n$ a negligible function?

By definition - $q(n)$ is a negligible function if for every positive integer $c>0$ there exist an integer $N_c$ such that for all $x>N_c$ : $q(n)<1/x^c$ So for the function $1/x$, if we ...
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### Generating a valid signature on El-Gamal without knowing the private key

Suppose we are given $p$, the large prime, $g$ which is the primitive root for $p$, $b$ which is calculated as $b=g^x$ mod $p$ where $x$ is the private key and $0<x<p-1$. Also suppose we know ...
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### Private Information Retrieval with a pre-prepared database

Informally, Private Information Retrieval (PIR) is a protocol between a user $U$ and a Server $S$, that meets the following conditions: $U$ obtains enough information about a database hosted by $S$, ...
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### What security differences are there between E(p',“well-known-plaintext”) vs. hash(p') where p'=KDF(p)

I am using a KDF to derive a key, p' from a password p. I would like to know if the password is correct before using the derived ...
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### Should new applications still use RSA? Is it worth going down the ECDH route for protocols?

I am currently designing an application for communication between two and more users. At the moment I am trying to figure out what methods to use for the asymmetric cryptology. With the recent ...
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### iOS Data Protection: What is the Input of the LFSR?

Every time a file on the data partition is created, Data Protection creates a new 256-bit key (the “per-file” key) and gives it to the hardware AES engine, which uses the key to encrypt the ...
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### Explain the 'Breaking 104 bit WEP in less than 60 seconds' paper

Could you explain the 'Breaking 104 bit WEP in less than 60 seconds' paper, without skipping too much technical details. Could you an answer questions, like: how is '1.24/256' a significant ...
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### Is this an acceptable authenticated encryption?

After much deliberation, I've decided to use a normal Encrypt-then-MAC scheme instead of an authenticated encryption mode such as GCM as authenticated encryption primitive. This is due to the lack of ...
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### Why do fully homo-morphic constructions use 'ring' or 'lattice' structures?

Is there a significantly advantage to these data structures, or is it simply the status-quo and the easiest to use for describing constructions?
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### Modes for encrypting small binary blobs?

Suppose I am building an encrypted document storage system. Suppose each user has a "user key": a symmetric key. Suppose each document is encrypted with a "document key". So, in order to give a ...

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