# All Questions

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### Efficiently map $2^n$ unique 64-bit vectors to $2^n$ $n$-bit vectors where $n < 64$? [closed]

Is there an efficient way to map $2^n$ unique 64-bit vectors to $2^n$ $n$-bit vectors where $n < 64$?
584 views

### Is it secure to derive an AES key from a MAC?

I'm working on a project where we need to encrypt a large number of files and store them on the cloud. And I'm wondering if the following process would be secure (we have a “Hardware Security Module” ...
133 views

### What's the consequence of having a short IV? Is one mode better in that case?

I've read lots about null-length IVs being bad for most modes. In a scenario where passing a 128-bit IV along with each message isn't feasible, how would generating the IV from a smaller passed-along ...
257 views

### Seemingly simple decryption question

Forgive the very novice question, but... Given an algorithm which, upon inputting an unchanging 4-character string, generates a variable 6-character string, but having no idea what the algorithm is ...
274 views

### How does compression before encryption leak info about the input?

Apparently current best practices recommend that you do not compress before you encrypt. For example in this blog entry (*): http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2013/07/22/applied-practical-cryptography/ It ...
1k views

### Why does DES use exactly 16 rounds?

Why does DES use exactly 16 rounds and not more or less than 16? What is the significance of using 16 rounds?
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### Why are MACs in general deterministic, whereas digital signature constructions are randomized?

The fact is I'm not quite sure if my question statement is true, however all the MAC constructions I know of (e.g. CBC-MAC, CMAC, HMAC) are deterministic, whereas many constructions for digital ...
238 views

### How are secure hashing and encryption algorithms proven?

Given that: You should always use proven secure hashing and encryption algorithms, rather than attempting to write your own. What's the process for criteria for an algorithm being proven? Is ...
194 views

### Maximum password length in PBKDF2

Haven't found any clear cut answer in Google so its up to you guys: DK = PBKDF2(PRF, Password, Salt, c, dkLen) Here, what is the upper limit of password length? ...
120 views

### 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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### CBC-MAC key can be added to ciphertext?

I use AES both CBC and CBC-MAC to encrypt some stuff. I generate one key for CBC and one different key for CBC-MAC. Does the second key (for CBC-MAC) need to be secret? How to join such key with the ...
1k views

### Cryptography vs Security

This may sound a little bit of basic but here it goes… Which of the following is correct? “Cryptography is under the security field”, or “Security is under the cryptography field?” Cryptography ...
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### Is this a plausible PBKDF?

Background: Hello, I'm working on a hobby project in which I might want to implement a key derivation function within a somewhat resource limited embedded system. For standard crypto functions, I ...
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### What are the practical differences between 256-bit, 192-bit, and 128-bit AES encryption?

AES has several different variants: AES-128 AES-192 AES-256 But why would someone prefer use one over another?
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### Variants of AES? [closed]

Would variants of AES provide the same level of security as AES, say by just replacing the S-box with another one, MDS matrix of Mixcolumn, etc.?
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### ECC cryptography with shorter signature when not needing high security?

I am new here and fairly new to cryptography, so if I say something wrong, let me know. I am trying to set up a system where a user can receive a temporary license key over the phone, put it into ...
200 views

### Diffie–Hellman Ephemerality Nomenclature

Below is a short excerpt of available DH cipher suites available on a machine. I understand EDH is ephemeral DH, and that ECDH is for Elliptic-Curve DH which is computationally faster. ECDHE is both ...
82 views

### Private Key - Memory Lifecycle

I often heard about private key storage, but rarely about key life cycle in memory. For example, when SSL is used from one peer, the private key is used to sign messages or decrypt other peers' ...
79 views

### ElGamal signature scheme: Why is r included in s

In the ElGamal signature scheme we calculate a signature for a (hashed) message $m$ as $r \equiv_p g^k$, $s \equiv_{p-1} (m - xr) k^{-1}$ and verify it by checking $g^m \equiv_p y^r r^s$. Here ...
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So these days I see everyone using AES-GCM. What are its advantages over simple CTR+HMAC modes? Is it speed? Or ciphertext length? And what are the security tradeoffs, both in terms of practical ...
536 views

### Do I need to prepare plain text before encryption?

When I want to encrypt chat messages (in ASCII) before sending, whether it brings some bit of security if I add some extra bytes to the message or shuffle it in some way? I can even try to make data ...
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### IND-CCA2 secure schemes without Plaintext Awareness?

I have been reading up on IND-CCA2 security and was wondering: Are there efficient IND-CCA2 secure schemes that do not require plaintext awareness? I'm guessing yes - could someone point me to these ...
317 views

### Why does the SRP-6 calculation of B include a multiplier k = 3?

In SRP-6 $B$ is calculated as $B=kv+ g^b, k=3$. What is the purpose of $k$, and why was it fixed as $3$? (In SRP-6a, this value $3$ is replaced by $k = H(N,g)$, but this question is about SRP-6.)
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### How to encrypt a file for random access

I am a programmer familiar with C/C++ and Python. Lately, we got an assignment from a team asking us to work on one of their projects: we need to make a small program to encrypt a large file using ...
643 views

### A patched SHA1 attempt for password verification

This is a classical scenario: For our web based authentication platform we have a username and a password field. User enters these values and presses Log In. The browser gathers the user data, ...
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### S-box with differential uniformity = 2

I read that we do not know if there exists an 8x8 sbox with differential uniformity = 2. I suppose we cannot compute every possible sbox because there are $64!$ possible s-boxes. Am I right?
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### What is the 'Version Incompatibility" Problem in TLS 1.1/1.2 and 1.0?

It's unclear to me if there are multiple problems, or a single one, (and just what that problem is) with servers incorrectly negotiating down from a client offering 1.1 or 1.2 to something they ...
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### Encryption method with master key and user keys

I am working on a concept for a game that in the end will allow data sharing via plain text, but I would like to give the user the option of encrypting the data so that other players cannot modify it, ...
7k views

### Why is TLS susceptible to protocol downgrade attacks?

A recent blog post from Ivan Ristić (expert extraordinaire on all things SSL) says: all major browsers are susceptible to protocol downgrade attacks; an active MITM can simulate failure conditions ...
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### Entropy Loss of KDFs

Am I losing any entropy when using KDFs, such as the ones in NIST Special Publication 800-108? For example, can I derive 128-bit session keys from a (uniformly random) 128-bit master key?
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### Using HMAC-SHA256 with short passwords and sliced outputs for short-lived secure hashing

I don't have much background in cryptography, so forgive me if I'm using the wrong mathematical terms to explain my needs. Following this question, I learned that taking a random secret 16-bytes ...
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### Are there any secure commutative ciphers?

This answer lists two commutative cipher algorithms - Pohlig-Hellman and SRA. However, they don't appear to be too secure. My question is, here there any commutative ciphers out there that are secure ...
2k views

### How does SafeNet MobilePASS generate passwords?

We use MobilePASS at work but the latest version of the android client seems to be buggy so I wanted to have a go at implementing the algorithm myself. You can download the client to play with here: ...
998 views

### Difference between a nonce and IV

I know the generic difference between a nonce and an IV. I am specifically looking for a clarification on these terms as used in the "Evaluation of Some Blockcipher Modes of Operation" by Phil ...
168 views

### How HOTP values are validated according to RFC 4226

In Section 7.2 "Validation of HOTP Values" of the HOTP spec (RFC 4226) it says, in part, The HOTP client (hardware or software token) increments its counter and then calculates the next HOTP ...
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### Does SHA-1024 hash exist?

Does SHA-1024 cryptographic hash function exist similarly to SHA-512? If not, what's the reason for that? Links: SHA-2 at Wikipedia
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### SRP-6 vulnerabilities when N is small

I'm one of the developers of an application which uses SRP-6 as the authentication mechanism. The authentication part of the code is very old and uses N with only 256 bits (all arithmetic is done in ...
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### GPG & Mcrypt - difference?

in short I'm learning GUI programming in python and thought it could be interesting to make a small GUI for symmetric encryption. Not being mad/mathematical/experienced (take your pick) enough to try ...
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### Is my id obfuscation algorithm secure?

I'm designing an id obfuscation system. My system includes: Embedded chips, each chip has a unique 32-bit address (id). Server Insecure low-bandwidth unstable one-way channels from the chips to the ...
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### Rainbow tables, where have I got it wrong?

There seems to be some error in my understanding of the concept of rainbow tables, despite going through quite a bit of articles on it. Let me show what I don't seem to agree with. My plain text is ...
184 views

### Where do I truncate the bits in SHA 256 hash algorithm?

I'm implementing SHA-256 in PHP using strings. Where do you truncate in the algorithm? There are a lot of places where there's binary addition happening so the number of bits in $W(i)$ keep ...
1k views

### Is Curve25519-java secure?

I have only about 2 weeks of cryptography experience mostly in the form of questions on bitcoin.se. Is Curve25519-java up to date with current Curve25519 standards? Is Curve25519 itself secure? ...
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### Can I construct a feasible stream cipher out of HMAC and a secure hash algorithm?

I have constructed a stream cipher from a secure hash algorithm and a HMAC. Here is a brief description of the algorithm: Let: (Actually Objective-C styled pseudo code) ...
1k views

### Is there a hash function with 2048bit output?

Is there a publicly available cryptographic hashing algorithm with 2048 bit output? The standard ones are "only" up to 512 bit (SHA-512, WHIRLPOOL). (2048 bits are 256 bytes, so it would be useful ...
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### Attacking a hardware AES implementation if it leaks the intermediate round states

Let's say that we have a hardware AES implementation that, on request, will encrypt or decrypt a 16-byte block of data in ECB mode using a fixed key, but refuses to reveal its fixed key. In other ...
5k views

### What algorithm could/should be used to encrypt files for storage on untrusted servers?

I need an encryption algorithm that works fast on large files and doesn't increase the file size. It should use a key to encrypt/decrypt data. The files will be sent using REST and over HTTPS, but a ...
1k views

### Where can I get information on how to implement AES?

I want to write AES from scratch without using the built in libraries of java. I know there are hundreds of AES programs (and websites) out there but I can't seem to find a site that gives me the ...
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### 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 ...
I was wondering if there were any security implications of deriving session keys from a symmetric key using SHA256 in the following manner: $Ks = SHA256(Nonce||K)$, where $Nonce$ is the session ...