All Questions

2k views

Unpredictability of X.509 serial numbers

About X.509 certificates serial numbers the RFC 5280 says: The serial number MUST be a positive integer assigned by the CA to each certificate. It MUST be unique for each certificate issued by a ...
995 views

Why are the constants so simple in Keccak?

Keccak, the construction selected for SHA-3 is very interesting. It seems unlike other primitives and has chosen very simple constants. (Keccak talk PDF) The initial values of the state in Keccak is ...
708 views

Is it possible to distinguish a securely-encrypted ciphertext from random noise?

Say I have a bunch of data encrypted with a secure block cipher (such as AES). An attacker has unlimited access to this encrypted data. The attacker doesn't know whether the data is encrypted or if ...
3k views

What is pre-image resistance, and how can the lack thereof be exploited?

What is "preimage resistance", and how can the lack thereof be exploited? How is this different from collision resistance, and are there any known preimage attacks that would be considered feasible?
2k views

What is the difference between a stream cipher and a one-time-pad?

A (synchronous) stream cipher is an algorithm which maps some fixed-length key to an arbitrary-length key-stream (i.e. a sequence of bits): $C : \{0,1\}^k \to \{0,1\}^{\infty}$. This key-stream is ...
379 views

How random are commercial TRNGS

I'm thinking about buying a USB TRNG. How do I evaluate its randomness? I'm sure some are better than others but which is which? Are thermal-noise better than radio-noise TRNGs?
542 views

What is a hard-core predicate?

I read this article on Wikipedia: Hard-core predicate. Still I don't understand what exactly is a hard-core predicate. Is it possible to put this in simple English terminology, and perhaps with a ...
342 views

Can we ensure the security of a crypto-algorithm and -implementaton against acoustic cryptanalysis?

Like people always say: “Attacks only get worse…” — which is why I'm asking early. I have been reading the paper “RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis” published December 18, ...
518 views

Counter mode secure hash algorithm

Ever since the SHA-3 competition, I've been wondering if it is possible to create a hash algorithm that is easier to parallelize. The current algorithms all seem to require building a tree of hashes. ...
424 views

Is it reasonable to assure that p-1 and q-1 aren't smooth?

I came across the requirement that, in RSA, $p-1$ and $q-1$ shouldn't be smooth, shouldn't consist of lots of small factors. Therefore my question: How complicated is it to check whether $p-1$ is ...
545 views

UMAC: to what extent is it in use today?

Inspired slightly by the Encrypt-then-MAC question. The most obvious message authentication code is probably HMAC or RFC 2104 which is basically a hash of the input, an xor with a key... you get the ...
2k views

What to watch for with openssl generating weak keys? (low entropy)

(Disclaimer: I am regular software engineer with only basic crypto knowledge, so helpful if can be explained for a layman.) I am concerned about generating weak keys on a shared linux box with ...
402 views

RSA leak bits to factor N

Suppose you randomly generate large primes p and q as in RSA, and then tell me N=pq but not p or q. Then, you would like to actually let me factor N, except you should tell me as few bits of ...
3k views

How strong is the ECDSA algorithm?

Some cryptographic algorithms are as strong as the size of their key is, while other have some weaknesses that limit their strength (such as SHA-1). How strong is the ECDSA algorithm, and does that ...
1k views

Is it possible to validate a Public Key in RSA?

If I have a 1024-bit number, and someone is telling me that it is in fact a valid RSA public key, is there any way I can quickly validate that it is indeed so (without cracking RSA)? (I suppose I am ...
880 views

Is it okay to use a hash of a timestamp as the IV for AES?

The message format includes a datetime field in the clear. Is it okay to also use this field (or some hash thereof) as the initialization vector? In this case, CBC is the mode being used.
175 views

Is the inverse of a secure PRP, also a secure PRP?

If a block cipher is a secure PRP, is it's inverse a secure PRP as well? My intuition says yes but I'm not exactly sure. On a related note, if a block cipher is a secure sPRP, is it's inverse a ...
433 views

Is a small size block cipher usable?

Consider a block cipher with a key of size 128 bits but a small block size, say 32 bits. Is this kind of block cipher secure? I would like to know to what extent I can use a small block cipher, like ...
1k views

What's is the main difference between a key, an IV and a nonce?

What are the main differences between a nonce, a key and an IV. Without any doubt the key should be kept secret. But what about the nonce and the IV. What's the main difference between them and their ...
978 views

Generating Random Primes

Although this has been extensively discussed around here, I'm curious whether my approach makes sense, or I should just stick to "the standard version". I'm implementing some homomorphic encryption ...
767 views

How do you find a cheater in Shamir Secret Sharing?

If there are 4 people involved, and every two of them should be able to know the secret (the polynomial is just a line) and you are given f(x) and x for each of those people, and you know one of them ...
852 views

Desirable S-box properties

What desirable properties should an S-box have? My current standard selection process is to just pick them at random and verify that they fit the following criteria: The probability that any random ...
633 views

Diffie-Hellman: choosing wrong generator “g” parameter and its implications of practical attacks

In traditional DH one chooses two shared parameters: a large prime "p" and base "g", which is primitive root mod "p". Suppose generation algorithm is broken and "g" generates only a subgroup (group ...
6k views

When to use RSA and when ElGamal asymmetric encryption

If i am not wrong in cryptography there are 2 basic cryptographic schemes for public key cryptography. RSA encryption whose security is based on the infeasibility of solving the factoring of big ...
408 views

Compressing EC private keys

For reasonable security, EC private keys are typically 256-bits. Shorter EC private keys are not sufficiently secure. However, shorter symmetric keys (128-bits, for example) are comparably secure. I ...
2k views

Why do we need special key-wrap algorithms?

Wikipedia says: Key Wrap constructions are a class of symmetric encryption algorithms designed to encapsulate (encrypt) cryptographic key material. We are using these algorithms to encrypt ...
1k views

Strength of multiple hash iterations?

Is it correct that increasing the iteration possibly decreases the cipher strength but increases the amount of time it would take to find the original hash values if using brute-force on a given hash? ...
742 views

How should I store passwords that need to be available in plain text?

Suppose I need to store login information for a third-party website for a few users, how would I go about doing it? Since I am logging into a third party website, I need the password in plain-text, ...
4k views

What are the advantages of TOTP over HOTP?

HMAC-based One Time Password (HOTP) was published as an informational IETF RFC 4226 in December 2005. In May, 2011, Time-based One-time Password Algorithm (TOTP) officially became RFC 6238. What ...
896 views

Should I salt an AES password at each encryption?

I saw a sample code where the same password is salted with a different value (using PBKDF2) for each encryption. That means that the salt must be stored for each encrypted message. I don't understand ...
243 views

Is there an algorithm to find the number of intersections of two sets?

Suppose both I and my friend have a set of integer numbers. We want to know the number of common elements in our two sets but without knowing elements of the sets of each other. So I don't want my ...
565 views

Change in probability of collision when removing digits from MD5 hexadecimal hash values

I am aware that MD5 has a known collision vulnerability and should not be relied upon when uniqueness is required, but in the environment I am working on I only have access to MD5 hash function. ...
200 views

Did NIST verify “post-quantum” claims in the SHA3 proposal papers?

I have been reading Bernstein’s “Quantum attacks against Blue Midnight Wish, ECHO, Fugue, Grøstl, Hamsi, JH, Keccak, Shabal, SHAvite-3, SIMD, and Skein” paper from 2010… This document disproves ...
388 views

Why restricting SHA3 to have only two possible capacities?

I just read the presentation slides of John M. Kesley (from NIST) for his invited talk at CHES 2013 about SHA-3 and learned that NIST is going to standardize Keccak with a possibly modified padding ...
451 views

Using SHA-256 with different initial hash value

FIPS 180-3 defines the initial hash value for SHA-256 as the first 32 bits of the fractional parts of the square roots of the first 8 primes 2..19. What would be the risks of using a different value ...
717 views

Measuring entropy for a ciphertext only attack

When bruteforcing a password (e.g. the common attacks on DES), where you have ciphertext only, you need a way to assess whether a decrypted plaintext is the right one. I believe the EFF DES machine ...
461 views

XSL on serpent and rijndael - which is most affected?

So I've often looked at serpent and thought it was a very strong contender in AES. Not so long ago I was looking for evidence as to why it didn't beat rijndael. So far, the closest I've got answering ...
146 views

Any problems with this secure time synchronization scheme?

I have a time authority and I want to securely set a client's time to this authority's time/date within a precision of $\delta$ seconds. The authority's public key is known to the client. This was my ...
273 views

What current authenticated key exchange standards exist?

If neither of the 'big two' of TLS Handshake and IKE are appropriate in a given situation, what alternative Authenticated Key Exchange (AKE) standards exist and are recommended? Many protocols have ...
309 views

Authenticated DH, what protocols are secure?

I read about STS + variants being insecure in the SIGMA paper, which then proposes SIGMA as a replacement. Are the SIGMA variants still considered secure or are there some other protocol that's ...