All Questions

1k views

Brute forcing an HMAC

Given current technology such as GPUs and GPU cracking software I was wondering if anyone has an idea on how long it would take to brute force the key used to derive an HMAC?
284 views

Proof of the standard pseudorandom generator + XOR encryption scheme in Goldreich

Reading Goldreich's Foundations of Cryptography II, I found this proof for the security of the common pseudorandom generator + XOR encryption scheme (Proposition 5.2.12 in the book): Assume you ...
131 views

Padding always the same, problem or not?

I need to transmit long encrypted messages to a smartcard over a limited capacity link so I need to fragment the messages somewhere before sending thzm. My problem is that I split the message into ...
1k views

Which one is fastest? Karatsuba or Montgomery multiplication?

Is there any complexity analysis between Karatsuba and Montgomery multiplication algorithms? It seems that Karatsuba is more general in the sense that is not modulo tuned while Montgomery it is. Does ...
458 views

Is there a length-preserving encryption scheme?

Is there a length-preserving encryption scheme, that preserves the lengths of input sizes such that the length of the input plain text is same as length of the output cipher text ?
866 views

Do known-plaintext attacks exist for public key encryption?

In asymmetric ciphers we publish the public key for anyone, which means an attacker can encrypt any message they want and compare the ciphertext and plaintext without communicating with the owner of ...
974 views

Can a shift cipher attain perfect secrecy?

On a practice question for my intro cryptography exam, it asks the following: Assuming that keys are chosen with equal likelihood, the shift cipher provides:    A) computational security ...
526 views

Diffie-Hellman is Post-quantum secured?

If Alice and bob have a secure channel for key-exchange and mallory don't man-in-the-middle attack them but in the future eavesdrop connection and see the key exchanged, can mallory break it like RSA ...
2k views

Is it safer to encrypt twice with RSA?

I wonder if it's safer to encrypt a plain text with RSA twice than it is to encrypt it just once. It should make a big difference if you assume that the two private keys are different, and that the ...
1k views

How can I use eulers totient and the chinese remainder theorem for modular exponentiation?

I'm trying to implement modular exponentiation in Java using Lagrange and the Chinese remainder theorem. The example we've been given is: Let $N = 55 = 5 · 11$ and suppose we want to compute ...
675 views

If two parties want to communicate with securely using OTP , how is the key ( that is lengthy as plain text) shared with other party for decryption ?
117 views

When is each key used when encrypting an email using OpenPGP?

When you send an email using PGP to encrypt emails, is the recipients public key used to encrypt the email, or is your private key used? Are they both used? At what points do each of the four keys ...
432 views

What is the strength of unpadded RSA?

I would like to use unpadded RSA for homomorphic encryption in a toy P2P game, for things like fair coin flips and shuffling. How many bits of security does unpadded RSA have, in relation to its key ...
485 views

Can I combine two of SHA-3 candidates cryptography hash functions and obtain more secure Algorithm?

For example, Is possible to combine (Concatenate or Chain or XOR) Skein SHA-3 candidate with Grostl SHA-3 candidate to increase security? Note: I just want more secure output and CPU cycles does not ...
229 views

Aes encryption -The relevance of static matrix in mixcolumns operation

Can someone explain to me the relevance of the static matrix used for the mixcolumns operation in aes encryption.i.e the relevance of why the byte is multiplied by 2 + next byte multiplied by 3 + next ...
175 views

What are the dangers of predictable (repeated) plaintext structures?

When using a "good", modern cipher (specifically one that provides ciphertext indistinguishability), is it a problem at all if there is some well-known structure in all plaintexts? For example, ...
150 views

Is it possible to ensure security with zero pre-shared information?

Is it possible to secure a communications channel against both passive (sniffing) and active (injecting / MitM) attackers without either legitimate party knowing any pre-shared information? I know ...
1k views

AES GCM implementation in c#

I am implementing an AES cipher in GCM mode in c# and have a few questions. My code is based on the code found here for reference. I'll copy in the relevant portions. ...
123 views

KDF with low-entropy salts

I need to derive a key from a username and a password. These are the only two things I have access to. What I thought is using PBKDF2 with username as the salt and password as the master password. ...
441 views

Poor man's SSL - is this method as safe as SSL/TLS?

I need to send data between two applications. I've got requirement that says that data should be transmitted using secure protocol such as SSL/TLS. Data is sent using TCP sockets and I don't have ...
4k 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 ...
179 views

How hard is to find the operators of an addition knowing the sum of them?

I want to learn whether or no there is a cryptographic primitive,scheme assumption that is based on the following hard problem if it is hard . By hard we mean that we have a polynomial adversary: The ...
238 views

Using compression to test encryption

Is the uncompressibility of encrypted data a necessary property for a good cryptographic algorithm? To make a crude experiment, I encrypted an 8K file with all 'A' and then compressed both the ...
341 views

How do I demonstrate that a PRNG not designed for cryptography is not suitable for generating passwords?

This is a replication of this question on Stack Overflow. There's class Random in .NET runtime which is designed for use as a cheap fast source of pseudo-random ...
198 views

Can the premaster secret generated by SRP be used as a secure private key?

It seems like the pre-master secret generated during the SRP protocol would make a good source to generate a shared private key using a secure hash to compress it down into a 128/256 symmetric key. ...
242 views

Cryptographically strong pseudo-random seq. generators

If a pseudo-random sequence generator is built so that it uses an n-bit seed and outputs a string that is of length x. Let's say one wants to generate a bit string of length y and uses the previous ...
373 views

How to generate successive stream-cipher keys?

I've identified a weakness in a distributed simulation system I'm looking at, and I'm looking for some advice on how to fix it. Clients initially negotiate an authentication token with a login server ...
251 views

Seeking special-use fingerprinting/hashing algorithm

For a project I wonder if there exists some kind of fixed-size checksumming/fingerprinting function in which based on this fingerprint given data block 1, it is easy to generate more data blocks that ...
905 views

Finding CRC collisions for specific divisor

My current textbook (Information Security: Principles and Practice by Mark Stamp) discusses how to determine the CRC of data via long-division, using XOR instead of subtraction to determine the ...
152 views

How can I repeatedly prove I have data another has seen without sending the data and without the other storing the data?

I would like to know if this is theoretically possible, or impossible, and if possible, if there is any algorithm/protocol to accomplish this... I want another entity, lets call them the Auditor, to ...
420 views

What algorithm does PGP use to encrypt email?

I know it uses RSA/DSA to create keys, but does it use that same algorithm for the actual cipher?
140 views

How to collect, process, and transmit data securely?

In my question "Authenticating data generated by a particular build of an open source program", Dave Cary requested that I post a question stating my real problem on a high level rather than the ...
95 views

If a system hashes passwords with a 256-bit long hash, are passwords (which are not necessarily alphanumeric, can be any value per byte (0-255)) longer than 32 bytes useless under the context in which ...
183 views

Elliptic curve cryptography G*G

I understand how ECC works for the point multiplications and stuff. All we normally do is to multiply a scalar number (lets say d as a private key) with the base point generator ...
137 views

Hash functions to the power of two and three notation

I have found in a Wireless Sensor Networks security paper, operations where cryptographic hash functions are elevated to the power of 2 and to the power of 3 (i.e. $h^2(x)$ and $h^3(x)$). This might ...
173 views

Why is diffie-hellmangroup1-sha1 used instead of diffie-hellman?

For SSH why is diffie-hellmangroup1-sha1 used instead of just diffie-hellman? In other words, why is the hash function used?
133 views

Differential Fault Analysis of AES

Let's say: an error is induced into an implementation of the AES-128 to produce a faulty ciphertext. The error is a one-byte eror and is always induced on the last state byte, during round9, before ...
74 views

How obvious is it to decrypt numerics encrypted with a reused one time pad?

For instance say you encrypt text using the one time pad and you end up with some scrambled text that appears illegible. If you reused the key for multiple times for enough text, someone could ...
40 views

Is this JS library using openssl genrsa -rand improperly?

pem, a JS wrapper around openssl, has the following code in it: var params = ['genrsa', '-rand', '/var/log/mail:/var/log/messages', keyBitsize ]; Am ...
136 views

Using hash for one time pad key

Recently I've been delving into security algorithms, I already knew some of the (easy) math behind AES and RSA and how to and not to implement it. But well, i got a bit bored so i thought I'd just do ...
84 views

Hash “Preimage by product” resistance

Let H() be a hash function that achieves collision resistance as well as first and second preimage resistance. Let's equip the output set of H of a multiplicative group structure, more precisely a ...
132 views

Do all stream ciphers (and AES-128-CTR in particular) produce equal output size as the input size?

I'm particulary interested on knowing if the output of the AES-128-CTR ciphertext is always going to have the same size as the input plaintext, or it could be padded somehow. It seems so from my tests ...
231 views

Solving Quadratic equations in Galois Field (2^163)

Hello I am working on implementing a message to elliptic curve point mapping hardware circuit I have done some research and found out the koblitz mapping method: I will be using a field of binary ...
124 views

Is the salt used with PBKDF2 secret?

I have two network endpoints that need to use the same derived key. Can the server send the salt to the client 'in the clear'?
128 views

secure embedded/microcontroller crypto using AES-ctr with hmac-sha2

The embedded device is a low-power 8-bit microcontroller (memory usage is constrained to about 10kb code, 1kb ram). As the device is battery-powered and manual service should be minimal, more powerful ...
84 views

what are multi-primes and how are they different from semiprimes?

I came to know of semiprimes recently. The simplest explanation of semiprimes is you take any two prime numbers and you multiply them, say 3*11 = 33 in which case 33 would be a semiprime. The numbers ...
103 views

What is the difference between order of base point and curve order in EC? [duplicate]

When I was read about the elliptic curve cryptography I found some definition about domain parameter of elliptic curve like the follow. But I did not understand something $p$: prime number. $a, b$: ...
113 views

Why is this cryptosystem insecure?

Can someone help me see the flaw in this cryptosystem? Note: This is homework and it is due today at 1:30pm. An answer before that is not expected; I'd just like to understand what the flaw is. ...
I am trying to understand the Boneh-DeMillo-Lipton fault attack on RSA CRT signature. Suppose that we sign a message $m$ with RSA-CRT : $d_p = d \bmod (p-1)$ and $d_q = d \bmod (q-1)$ \$s_p = ...