All Questions

347 views

Will I be able to (ab)use a FIDO U2F compliant hardware token to decrypt data?

I have heard good things about the emerging "FIDO U2F" standard. I am especially interested in having a JavaScript API for cryptographic functions that I can access through a plug-in in a browser. ...
574 views

How can AES be considered secure when encrypting large files?

Why is AES considered to be secure when encrypting large files since the algorithm is a block cipher? I mean, if the file is larger than the block size, the file will be broken down to fit the ...
141 views

Perfectly secure shift cipher

Prove that if only one character is encrypted using a shift cipher, then the shift cipher is perfectly secure. I want to show that $P(P=p | C=c)=P(P=p)$. But I don't know how to relate. Can anyone ...
546 views

Entropy of the key

Suppose a $1000$-bit key used in the one-time pad is not randomly and uniformly generated. Suppose that the values of the first $5$ bits are $0$, and the other $995$ bits are randomly generated and ...
191 views

Why are some key stretching methods better than others?

I'm trying to understand why some key stretching methods are better than others. The wikipedia article presents 3 different key stretching methods: A collision prone simple key stretching ...
111 views

How to only encrypt a subset of the plaintext

I was wondering if there is a smart way for a user to only encrypt a subset of a plaintext. I'll try to be more specific. Let's suppose the user U wants to use a special cipher such that given a ...
325 views

Revealing random bit permutation

I am new in cryptography. I want to determine the complexity of revealing a random bit permutation which is used as block cipher for plaintexts (bitstrings of length n). An adversary catches different ...
272 views

Can a EC private key be derived from a public key?

I understand that the public key does not expose the private key. That is not the question. The question is: Given a EC public key, can a different, but plausible and functional private key be ...
209 views

How to calculate complexity of ElGamal cryptosystem?

How to calculate time and space complexity of ElGamal encryption and decryption as there are two exponentiation operation during encryption and one during decryption? Here is my code for encryption: ...
199 views

What is the entropy per Diceware word if a random symbol is inserted into a random position in the word?

On the Diceware page is this little gem: For extra security without adding another word, insert one special character or digit chosen at random into your passphrase... Inserting a letter at ...
337 views

Does CCA security imply authenticated encryption?

Does CCA security imply authenticated encryption?
154 views

What exactly does a key do?

I am getting to grips with cryptography as a total newbie, and am struggling with encryption "keys" and how to visualize them. From http://computer.howstuffworks.com/encryption.htm/printable: ...
146 views

Is either brainpoolP320r1 or brainpoolP320t1 a SafeCurve?

Not all elliptic curves are safe to use for cryptography, especially from an ECC safety perspective. The site http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/index.html shows that two tested Brainpool curves, ...
134 views

Pick faster private exponent

I recently tried to send 1536-bit modulus CSR to COMODO. They refused to sign the certificate. I later found out that it's because NIST mandated 2048-bit modulus on the SSL certificate. I think it's ...
97 views

One Time Pad for large changing files

i wondered what the security implications are if I do the following. If I had a large file encrypted with a OTP and want to change only a few bytes in the plaintext. what security vulnerabilities do I ...
182 views

How can I perform matching on an “encrypted- fingerprint feature matrix” using Fully Homomorphic Encryption?

I am doing a finger-print authentication process. The feature-extraction using minutiae has been done and I get an N x 6 matrix, where the 6 columns are {$x_i$ ...
289 views

How is padding oracle attack mitigated by encrypt-then-MAC?

Let us suppose Alice sends a message to Bob. As far as I know, the most popular scheme of MAC-then-encrypt is as follows: Alice computes the HMAC of the plaintext using her private key, and then ...
185 views

Is AES-256 over AES-128 weakening the original encryption?

When transfering data using TLS the browser and server agree the cipher suite to be used - so for example this could be chosen as AES-128 and is (probably) outside of my control. If I separately ...
110 views

Computing youngest person among 3 while keeping ages private

I already found a protocol to find out who is richer (older) between two parties, but Is there any protocol to find the youngest person among 3 parties, without revealing actual ages?
210 views

ECC partially blind signature scheme verification

Continued from Is there a flaw in this ECC blind signature scheme? The problem I needed a partially blind signature scheme for one of my projects, but couldn't find one on the internet, so I've made ...
440 views

PRF and hash functions

Is there a difference between PRF and a hash function? For example: Creation of a secret key is using PRF and creating a secret key is using hash function.
145 views

Can I make a PRNG that is secure even when state can be modified by user?

I am interested in making a PRNG which, after being initially seeded, can accept and incorporate client data as the only ongoing source of "entropy". It is not directly for a cryptographic purpose, ...
464 views

DES with actual 7 byte key

Do we have any library or any mechanism where we can use true 7 byte key for DES instead of 8 byte key. I need it for keys analysis in DES and 8 byte key requirement for associated library is creating ...
175 views

“Fine grain Cross-VM Attacks on Xen and VMware are possible” and OpenSSL 0.9.7

Here's a paper that just made its way into Cryptology ePrint Archive: Fine grain Cross-VM Attacks on Xen and VMware are possible!. Its a good survey of past attacks and presents a couple of new ...
83 views

Do Chosen-Chiphertext attacks only apply to public-key cryptosystems?

Do Chosen-Chiphertext attacks (CCA-1/2) only apply to public-key Cryptosystem?
469 views

How to select $g$ in Paillier Cryptosystem

For my cryptography class project in university I have selected Paillier Cryptosystem as a course project ...
153 views

What is the difference between PRF and a Random Oracle?

What is the difference between Pseudo Random Functions and Random Oracles? Is the difference only about the domain of PRFs and Random Oracles, former having a fixed domain and latter can act on any ...
337 views

Private RSA key for HMAC key

I am creating software tokens for future request authentication, and I want to use an HMAC for the token to make them tamper-resistant. To ensure I can check the HMAC later I need a secret, persistent ...
190 views

Is there a point using GCM block chiper with Authenticated DH?

I'm delivering shared secret with DH exchange, using a static key for signing and an ephemeral for session, so is there a point using GCM for encrypting the data, or is a simple CBC/CTR block cipher ...
316 views

Why the need to hash before signing small data?

I’ve got two questions: I’m doing the following: Data : uuid + int + nonce Signature: ECDSA(sha256(Data) ) To verify the signature: ...
206 views

Is there a time-space tradeoff attack for breaking symmetrical cryptos?

Is there any known techniques for using time-space tradeoff for speeding up symmetrical crypto breaking? Kind of like rainbow tables speed up breaking hashes by using huge precomputed tables. Is ...
764 views

Is it true that for RSA with no padding, the length of data must be equal to the length of key?

The question pertains not in terms of security but computing operational functionality, as it how the computation is done. Is it true that for RSA with no padding, the length of data must be equal to ...
141 views

Explanations for the complexity values for second preimage attack on GOST?

I've been reading the article "A (second) preimage attack on the GOST hash function" by F. Mendel et al (link) and I'm having some difficulty to grasp some of the values of complexities/probabilities ...
152 views

Verifying multiplicative inverse on a prime field in NIST's ECDSA_Prime.pdf

I am trying to learn about the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) by verifying the results in some example calculations. I found a PDF of example ECDSA calculations from NIST here: ...
113 views

Changing a bit Changes Hash

I am very curious on the fact that SHA, MD5 and all related Hash Functions change the output even by changing one bit in input Message. Why is that?
136 views

How can I show that the DDH problem is self-reducible?

I have trouble to understand how I can show that the Decisional Diffie-Hellman problem (DDH) is self-reducible. I found this as a description of a random self-reducible problem. ...
166 views

Do any one-key-of-many cryptographic schemes exist?

I'm pretty sure I understand how public/private key cryptography works. Anybody can encrypt a message using a well-known public key, but only the person who holds the private key can decrypt it. My ...
163 views

Given p and q of DSA how do you show they are prime?

I am given p = 4916335901 q = 88903 and am asked to show these are prime as well as q|(p-1) in DSA. I am unsure on how to ...
2k views

How to calculate the maximum output size for data encrypted with a RSA Private Key?

I have an an encryption algorithm I am working with that looks like this: prv_key_enc(sha1_hash(data)) Where, the RSA parameters are: RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding 1024 ...
391 views

What key exchange protocols give Forward-Secrecy resisting future progress?

I (wrongly) understood what I've been told as meaning DHE in TLS, PFS in IPSec do not provide Forward-Secrecy; and I'm told that common forward-secure key exchange protocols are restricted to ...
328 views

I know about PBKDF2, bcrypt, scrypt, etc. and while I'm not a crypt professional, I think I understand why are they better than just "hash(pass+salt)". But a colleague of mine surprised me with the ...
675 views

How is LUKS dm-crypt secure if the key is stored with the encrypted data?

I've posted this question over at superuser, but haven't had any success at getting answers. That's why I've posted it here. Furthermore, I believe this is a more appropriate place for it as it is ...
252 views

Is use of pre-shared key for sharing session key in symmetric key cryptography vulnerable to MITM?

Consider the following protocol: ...
138 views

Pseudo random permutation for arbitrary size domains

Popular block ciphers like AES or Twofish are keyed pseudo random permutations on the domain $\{0,1,\dots,2^{k}-1\}$ with $k\in\{128,192,256\}$ or similar. I'm interested in pseudo random ...
193 views

Is this approach to generating a “random” number from a sha512 hash effective?

I'm looking to run a small raffle but i'd like people to be able to verify that the number chosen was fair. I know some sites use a "Provably Fair" system to achieve this where user input is combined ...
366 views

How is HKDF-Expand better than a simple hash?

Why do we need HKDF-Expand if we can simply hash the pseudorandom key to make it longer? The docs (in the link) say: The second stage "expands" the pseudorandom key to the desired length... ...
185 views

Suppose I have an encryption function $e$ of a symmetric cipher with plaintext space $$\mathcal{M}=\{1,2,\ldots,2^{24} \}.$$ Now, consider a list $L$ of integers: $$67, 114, 121, 112, 116, ... 3answers 227 views Generating bilinear pairing parameters - running time of finding member of p-torsion group Update: Question completely rephrased. I want to create the parameters for a bilinear pairing (the Tate pairing in this case). In case you're interested I'm following this thesis, specifically the ... 1answer 82 views Implementation of modular arithmetic? In FIPS 186-3 appendix D.2 "implementation of Modular Arithmetic", they show shortcuts for solving$$B = A \mod m for select Curves. How would you go about determining a valid short cuts for the ...
781 views

So I have a very beginner-esque knowledge of ECDSA and I'm trying to write something in python to take a private key and output the public key (Basically from what I understand just trying to do the ...

15 30 50 per page