# All Questions

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### Is the Couvreur et al. polynomial time attack on McEliece practical?

There's a new e-print out on arXiv titled "A Polynomial Time Attack against Algebraic Geometry Code Based Public Key Cryptosystems" by Alain Couvreur, Irene Márquez-Corbella and Ruud Pellikaan: ...
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### Derive both MAC and AES keys from same PBKDF2?

When doing password-based encryption, is it OK to create one instance of PBKDF2 from the password, and then use it to create both the AES key and the MAC key? (Or should a new instance of PBKDF2 be ...
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### Random numbers for Rabin-Miller primality tests

I've implemented a Rabin-Miller primality test fuction following Wikipedia and the book Applied Cryptography. Now I'm using it for generating primes with a string seed. The book suggests the following ...
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### How long will my encryption remain private?

This is a basic question in cryptography but I have not found a good, comprehensive answer. It is explained that our keys should expire and we should get new, stronger ones with time, reflecting more ...
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### What does $\Pi$ represents in cryptography?

I am doing a project in cryptography and while reading a tag generation algorithm for files, I got stuck with the meaning of $\Pi$. The screenshot of the algorithm is inserted below. Here KeyGen ...
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### when to do elgamal exponentiation computation

Recetly while studying about cryptographic primtives, I have come across below line in wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElGamal_encryption Encryption under ElGamal requires two exponentiations; ...
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### Are the protocols DH-EKE, B-SPEKE, A-EKE, and SRP are considered challenge-response authenticaion mechanisms? [closed]

I got confused which one is considered challenge-response mechanism which one is not.
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### Whether changing the random number selected for each message increase security in Schnorr scheme?

I was reading about Schnorr scheme and in that for signing the signer generates a random number and continues with his operation. I am trying to implement this in a scenario where the signature length ...
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### Factorization or discrete logarithm is difficult for an attacker?

I have read that difficulty in breaking many algorithms are based either on Factorization or discrete logarithm. I am reading about schemes that are similar to RSA which make use of integer ...
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### ElGamal in private set intersection: how to handle negative numbers?

I am trying to implement the Efficient Robust Private Set Intersection using Additive ElGamal. For this, from the client side, my inputs are $C = \{1, 2\}$. So, the polynomial is $(x-1)(x-2)$ which ...
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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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### Secret key model for a compression function cryptanalysis?

How do we analyze the security of a compression function in the secret key model? More formally, let $H$ be a hash function and $F(IV,M)$ its compression function. Suppose we generate a MAC as ...
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### Cryptography: Oblivious Transfer with at most one transfer?

I am trying find a transfer method for this problem. Suppose Alice and Bob both has access to a function F with two parameters. Func(x,y) randomly returns "p" to alice and "q" to Bob such that x*y=p ...
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### How can I find the prime numbers used in RSA?

I got this question in a local hacking event, but I couldn't solve it. Problem Statement ---- Continuing their snooping habit, NSA kept bugging Alice's communication. Resorting to the age old ...
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### If PGP and GPG both follow the OpenPGP standard, are they 100% compatible in all use cases?

If someone gives me their PGP key, can I use it with GPG, and vice versa, all the time (100% interchangeable)? Or are there times when they are not compatible, when only PGP can be used with a PGP ...
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### Symmetric encryption is no longer necessary?

Here is it: Symmetric encryption is no longer necessary, because all security services can be implemented with public-key cryptography. Moreover, in public key cryptography the operations for ...
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### How to protect against ephemeral key reuse in some signature schemes?

Given that some signature schemes (for instance Elgamal) use an ephemeral key that cannot be reused ever. How do people usually protect against this? I'll elaborate more: if you reuse the ephemeral ...
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### Shamir Secret Sharing Modular Reduction

Say players use Shamir's secret sharing to share a value $k$ such that each player now holds $k_i$, a share of $k$. How can they securely compute $k \bmod m$ for some $m$. Of course they can ...
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### Secure Degree Reduction

I understand the basic Shamir Secret Sharing protocol, and when two shares are multiplied, the degree of the polynomial increases. I've seen in a number of papers a reference to a degree reduction ...
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### RSA with composite numbers

It has been said that RSA uses a modulus product of two prime numbers for security reasons. But does RSA even work correctly if we allow composite integers instead? I think that the answer is "NO". ...
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### What does “Inverting the RSA function is as hard as factoring” mean (a rigorous explanation or intuitive will do)?

I was reading that a current open problem is if inverting the RSA function is as hard as factoring. Does this mean that, its an open problem whether, if given a subroutine that computes in ...
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### Impact of distinguishing between random text and cipher text?

In theory, distinguishing cipher text from random text is considered insecure for any PRP algorithm. Say for example - due to Patarin's proof with about six rounds of Feistel Network - the attacker ...
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### Question about SHA-2 (and potentially similar hashing algorithms)

I have been educating myself recently about the SHA-2 hashing algorithm, and in the midst of this pursuit, I've encountered a question: This algorithm uses a set of constant hexadecimal values, ...