All Questions

82 views

How to get the same calculation result on an untrusted computer, while withholding some information?

Consider this command on a trusted computer: result = function(public data, secret data) or shorter: r = f(p,s). How could a ...
74 views

blinding a hash vs. sending the hash directly

So with blind signatures you have two parties - A and B. A has a message that they want B to sign so A creates a hash of their message, blinds it, and then sends it to B to sign. That, as I understand ...
166 views

Generating keys with HKDF from Diffie Hellman agreement

In order to generate multiple session keys from a Diffie Hellman key agreement protocol, I'm trying to use the HKDF to generate this session keys. The HKDF algorithm uses an Extraction-Expand ...
3k views

What is the lowest level of mathematics required in order to understand how encryption algorithms work?

What mathematical fields of knowledge would be required in order to get a good understanding of encryption algorithms? Is it basic algebra, or is there a "higher education" mathematical field ...
259 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 ...
213 views

How would I make a secret notation alphabet more secure?

Disclaimer: I was looking for a place to ask this question on SE and this site seems to be the most fitting. If this question doesn't belong here, feel free to redirect me. Just out of boredom and ...
124 views

Is it possible to find a preimage for a reduced size hash?

Given a message $M$ and a 256 bit key $K$, perform HMAC($K$, $M$) with a 256 bit hash function resulting in: $a$ = ...
210 views

I'm trying to design an extension to Shamir's Secret Sharing that would allow the participant to specify a password instead of remembering/storing a large integer or binary data. So far, I have two ...
143 views

What does it mean to be simultaneously hardcore?

In this paper the term "simultaneously hardcore" is defined as: "We say that a block of bits of $x$ are simultaneously hard-core for a one-way function $f(x)$, if given $f(x)$ they cannot be ...
123 views

Which encryption method supports random reads?

I have a file containing 16-bit samples and I want to encrypt it, but the problem is that I need to be able to read any random 16-bit value from the file, and be to able to decrypt it, without reading ...
2k views

Why not the one-time pad with pseudo-number generator

I am very new to cryptography (so be kind), but I have a question that may seem silly. If the one-time pad is the perfect cipher and impossible to crack, why would the following algorithm not be one ...
196 views

Which encryption method supports random reads?

I have a file containing 16-bit samples and I want to encrypt it, but the problem is that I need to be able to read any random 16-bit value from the file, and be to able to decrypt it, without reading ...
364 views

Can we design a public-key infrastructure without certificate authorities?

In a recent essay, Bruce Schneier tasks the engineering community with redesigning and rebuilding the vulnerable parts of the Internet's backbone. We need to figure out how to re-engineer the ...
331 views

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) ...
25k views

Explaining weakness of Dual EC DRBG to wider audience?

I have an audience of senior (non-technical) executives and senior technical people who are taking the backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG and considering it as a weakness of Elliptic curves in general. I can ...
322 views

How to choose keys for a block cipher?

AES and DES are block ciphers. Mathematically, its the mapping from plaintext space to ciphertext space using the keys i.e. $\{{0,1}\}^k$ x $\{{0,1}\}^l \longrightarrow \{{0,1}\}^l$ I know that these ...
487 views

Encrypting 8 times with 8-bit key beneficial?

I was trying to understand cryptography from the book Information Security by Mark Stamp and I am confused by something. Suppose that Alice has a secure block cipher, but the cipher only uses an ...
161 views

PKCS1 and blind RSA signatures

Wikipedia's article on RSA blind signatures says that you need to raise the message $m$ to the secret exponent $d$ modulo the public modulus $N$. Implicit within that, it seems to me, is that m needs ...
780 views

Estimating bits of entropy

Best ways to estimate average bits of entropy in a byte stream. I know there are different statistical tests out there (NIST, Dieharder, etc), which all do different ways of analyzing entropy. What ...
504 views

How much entropy is lost via hashing when you add known or low entropy data?

(I updated the title, as I think there was some confusion as to the question) Here's the question: For example, if I have a bit stream that is 64K bytes long and there is about 16 *8 bits worth of ...
497 views

probability of N hash digits colliding

What is the probability of the first N hash digits colliding? for example i made a script that appends the first 5 digits of the file's sha1 hash to the name of the file. So will the probability of ...
498 views

Proper way of doing encryption and authentication (PBKDF2 + AES)

I'm currently in the planning phase of an authentication and storage-ish service. The client needs a file ("ENCFILE") which he will work with. This file will be encrypted with AES256, and stored on ...
167 views

Fast post-processing for broken RDRAND

Let's assume that the Intel RDRAND instruction does not return fully random numbers, e.g. because it has been engineered with a backdoor for the NSA. If the Intel RDRAND instruction is used directly ...
70 views

what is PFS game?

when i reading about this paper, in the Setup of SIM section 5.2, it says that "According to the definition of PFS game", i wonder what the definition of PFS game ...
1k views

DSA vs. ElGamal vs. Schnorr

It has been well known for a long time that NSA played a primary role in the development of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). DSA is a sort of hybrid of the ElGamal and Schnorr signature ...
2k views

Who uses the RSA BSAFE library?

Who uses RSA's BSAFE library? Does anyone know what products use it, or have any statistics on how many end users use something that is built on BSAFE? Background: BSAFE is one of the oldest ...
354 views

Using SHA3 as an entropy pool

Has any work been done on analyzing the SHA3 sponge construction for use as an entropy pool (e.g. /dev/random)? All the use cases I've heard of consts of a ...
440 views

How to protect from Silver–Pohlig–Hellman algorithm

I read that Silver–Pohlig–Hellman algorithm solves the discrete logarithm with prime module $p$ in $O(\log^2(p))$ if $p-1$ is a smooth number. This seems pretty fatal for cryptography, since it is a ...
43 views

one-time key, zero IV in stream cipher (e.g. AES-CTR) [duplicate]

Say I am using a random key to construct a stream cipher with, say, AES in CTR mode, which will never be used to encrypt more than one data stream. Is there any advantage, no matter how small, to ...
141 views

Precise meaning of various terms related to universal hash functions

I've been reading about universal hashing, but I'm confused by all these different terms and notations. Could someone help me understand the precise meaning or relation between the following terms: ...
385 views

Is SSH public key authentication weakened by 'none' cipher?

As far as I know, SSH2 first does a key exchange based on the server host key and brings up transport authentication and encryption derived from this kex. The real authentication (password or public ...
1k views

How is the key shared in symmetric key cryptography?

Symmetric key cryptography is an encryption system in which the sender and receiver of a message share a single, common key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the message. Is the key public or it is ...
145 views

After looking at this security issue at DjangoProject, I started to think in a password-based authentication that places the burden of PBKDF2 (or whatever is the hashing function) on the client. So I ...
1k views

Inverting the encryption equation of a symmetric cipher

I've just started a cryptography course. I am beginning to understand the concepts (I'm only in week 2) but I just can't get my head around the theories and principles when written as equations. I've ...
274 views

bcrypt and pbkdf2 double hashing

If I want to protect myself from implementation of algorithm issues and inherent design flaws of algorithms in password hashing, what would be most secure way to combine two hashes? ...
2k views

What stops the Multiply-With-Carry Random Number Generator from being a Cryptographically Secure Pseudo-Random Number Generator?

Despite the fact that Marsaglia's MWC PRNG (multiply-with-carry random number generator) is considered to be "the mother of all RNGs", it does not seem to be considered to be a CSPRNG ...
431 views

AES with different modes of operation

I'm taking up a cryptography class and this is for an assignment. We're asked to find the differences between AES/RSA in the different modes of operation vs the one timepad method. From wiki, I can ...
117 views

Is it dangerous to use plaintext as IV in CBC?

Is it dangerous to use plaintext as IV in CBC? For example: I want to encrypt $p1$, $p2$ with CBC. However I use $p2$ as the IV for CBC purposes. What would be the risk of not using a IV based on ...
333 views

Why does openssl BN_generate_prime return only a fraction of the safe primes within the given bit range?

I went into prime generation issues the last week and eventually calculated 10^7 primes using erik tews safeprimegen python wrapper for openssl. (https://github.com/eriktews/gensafeprime) (System: ...
231 views

HMAC construction based on the combination of two hash functions

I would like an $\operatorname{HMAC}$ that's based on two different hash functions ($H_1$ and $H_2$), so that a break of the combined $\operatorname{HMAC}$ would imply a break of ...
1k views

What is the ideal cipher model?

What is the ideal cipher model? What assumptions does it make about a block cipher? How does it relate to assuming that my block cipher is a pseudo-random permutation (PRP)? When is the ideal ...
4k views

Difference between linear cryptanalysis and differential cryptanalysis

What is the main difference between linear cryptanalysis and differential cryptanalysis? For example in relation to DES?
330 views

Zero knowledge proof of possession of key

Suppose Alice has at some point in time produced ciphertext $C$ from message $M$ with key $k$. Suppose Alice has then passed $C$ to Bob, and also made a commitment to her key $k$ (thanks to ...
192 views

Salsa20 in Davies-Meyer mode with a fixed key (message): is it one-way?

Say I have a function that calculates a pseudo random permutation and this function is easy to invert. For example $P(i) = AES_k(i)$ where $k$ is a publicly known key. So anyone can compute $P(i)$ ...
548 views

Combining multiple symmetric encryption algorithms - implications?

I was just wondering if I add more security by combining two or more symmetric encryptions on a plain text. For example: Plaintext → AES → Twofish → Serpent Of ...
371 views

Proof of correct construction of a private key in distributed cryptography

In an exponential ElGamal encryption scheme where the key generation is done in a distributed way among $n$ trustees we have that each trustee $i$ (where $1 \leq i \leq n$): Selects a private key ...
343 views

Can I dynamically calculate an appropriate number of iterations for PBKDF2 based on the system time, rather than using a fixed value?

Could you choose the number of PBKDF2 iterations based upon the system time? I've heard a few people recommend that the number of iterations for PBKDF2 should be doubled every two years (starting ...
248 views

What exactly could be accomplished with a backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG?

Assume that some entity really holds the private key corresponding to the recommended/dubious constants of Dual_EC_DRBG. According to this presentation, they would be able to reconstruct the internal ...