# All Questions

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### Schnorr signature security level as compared to AES/RSA

As per the Schnorr's original paper (1991), The Security Complexity $2^t$: We wish to choose the parameters $p$, $q$ so that forging a signature or an authentication requires about $2^t$ steps by ...
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### Practical lattice based signatures and key exchange with strong security reduction

I am looking for practical lattice-based signatures and key exchange with strong security reductions. Specifically: Provable security under the relevant standard assumptions. Fast in software while ...
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### Is there any IND-CPA secure stream cipher with a “standard” hardness assumption?

I've read our recent question: "One-time pad using RSA and Diffie-Hellman functions" which asks about the security of a particular way to convert RSA and discrete exponentiation into a stream cipher. ...
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### Why doesn't this operation reveal the voter's message?

I am working my way through this paper. I am trying to figure out the OR zero knowledge proof in figure 2. The prover is verifying that she has correctly voted, and that her input satisfies ...
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### Is this SHA256 hash implementation secure from rainbow table, brute forcing attacks?

So I have an implementation where by we have an $8$-byte random input (entirely random, not user defined) which we hash with $\text{SHA256}$. The hash is shared with many parties to the point that we ...
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### Is this session start protocol secure?

I am working on a password manager application that saves the user's passwords in a remote server. I need to use AES in CTR mode to encrypt the passwords before sending them to the server. The client ...
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### Which compound algorithms would weaken cipher, not strengthen it?

OK, in school, some of the lecturers always say "if you compound the crypto, it may make the cipher weaker". So, which combinations of algorithms would do this? Why? Can anyone show the mathematical ...
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### Is WPA2(PKS) AES vulnerable to 4 way hand shake and brute force attack?

I can easily crack a WPA TKIP using a dictionary/brute force method, provided that I collect the four way handshake. Is the same method possible on WPA2 AES? I cannot find any articles about '4 way ...
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### Anonymity problem after voting with blind signatures

In a distributed voting system (all the messages are public, but signed and maybe encrypted/blinded), having: $d$, $e$, $N$ — registrar key params $m$ — msg $r$ — random blinding factor $m'$ ...
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### Why inversion and multiplication operations are costly in elliptic curves?

There are several algorithms for efficient scalar multiplication of an arbitrary point P(x,y) by some positive integer k in elliptic curves defined over $F_{p}$ or $F_{2^{m}}$. The scalar ...
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### how is the rsa $publickey(n ,e)$ transformed into a textfile allowing its public distribtution?

wikipedia says about the keys itself: The public key consists of the modulus n and the public (or encryption) exponent e. The private key consists of the modulus n and the private (or ...
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### Is rubberhose cryptanalysis a sidechannel - formally?

I recently was engaged in a discussion in Sec.SE where somebody used the term "sidechannel" to actually mean "circumvent the encryption". By what he said it was clear, that he wanted to not bother ...
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### How to encrypt a symmetric key with a shared secret?

I am reading this article (pdf) on the Diffie–Hellman key exchange. It states the following: At this point, the Diffie-Hellman operation could be considered complete. The shared secret is, after ...
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### How can we define division operation by using Fully homomorphic encryption

Last fews months, I'm working with homomorphic encryption. Now I am dealing with some computational problems with integers or real-numbers (like arithmetic mean, standard deviation) where division is ...
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### How do substution-permutation networks work?

I understand what's going on in higher level. But i don't understand what's really going on in page 3 and 4 of this slide. Specifically, How S0 and S1 is used? What goes in what goes out? How ...
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### Are there any practical methods of steganography?

There isn't a whole lot of information on steganography in the modern age, from what I can tell. A google search for steganography usually brings up a list of very impractical methods (e.g. tattooing ...
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### Determining Involutary Keys in Substitution Ciphers

How would I be able to show that a key $K=(a,b)$ is involutary for an Affine Cipher over the integers modulo n? Similarly, is there a way to generalize the conditions for a key to be involutary for a ...
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I realize it's generally considered bad idea to use the same password everywhere. I can use icloud / lastpass to generate my passwords for me, but that leaves me clueless when I don't have access to ...
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### Is it okay to send an encrypted key using XSalsa20-Poly1305, and send subsequent messages using ChaCha20-Poly1305?

I am looking at a cryptographic protocol in a somewhat unusual environment: the communicating parties can share arbitrarily long secret keys over a secure channel. If forward secrecy is not required, ...
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### Can a book cipher be cracked without key?

Book cipher works this way : Choose a reference book. For each word find its position in the book. replace each word by its coordinates (ie: 2,3,4 = page 2, 3rd line, 4th word). How would ...
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### Problem with this authentication protocol

Consider such authentication protocol: Alice and Bob share a key. Bob sends alice a nonce. Alice encrypts it with shared key and sends to bob. Now assume Alice was successfully authenticated. ...
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### Security analysis of this one time password based scheme for copy protection

Imagine such protocol. Client and server initially share secret K[0]. When client wants to contact server she sends server K[0] and her ID. Server accepts request, and generated new random K[1] and ...
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### Randomness and increment of nonce in GCM

2 questions about nonce usage in GCM: Is it safe to use non-random nonce in GCM? Say I use 0x1 for m1, 0x2 for m2, so on. How much should a nonce increased for a file? Say I use 0x1000 as a nonce to ...
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### Limit the length of AES encoded output to certain value

First let me be clear upfront that am not Crypto expert. I'm having a problem where I will have to use NFC card. Now given the limitation of NFC cards memory sizes, I will need to constraint my system ...
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### RSA enc/decryption with multiple prime modulus using CRT

Every information I found on internet about RSA-CRT encryption/decryption uses only two primes. I'm interested in my project in doing that using multiple (up to 8) primes. The general idea is to ...
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### May I use Random Oracle for Inversed Look-up?

Consider there is a protocol in real world calling a random oracle $\mathcal{H}$ for a priavte input $k$. Then in the ideal world, after the calling of $r \leftarrow \mathcal{H}(k)$ by a honest party, ...
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### More rounds after AES related key attack?

In his blog Schneier discusses that there is a new related key attack on 10 rounds of AES-256 "Another attack can break a 10 round version of AES-256 in 245 time, but it uses a stronger type of ...
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### paradox on fully homomorphic equality checking

Imagine, a client encrypts a corpus of data (say documents of text) with the public key of a Fully Homomorphic Encryption scheme (FHE) and outsources the data to an untrusted server.Now the client ...
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### RSA: Most significant key bit always 1?

Is it possible to say that the most significant bit of an RSA private exponent is always 1? Wouldn't that weaken the key strength by exactly that one bit? I refer to the paper "Timing Attack: What ...
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### Multi-Party Encryption for a Shared Document

Is there an encryption algorithm/protocol where any of a pre-defined set of keys/passwords will succeed in decrypting a document? The number of keys can be fixed, say, 10 or 20 possible passwords. ...
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### Memory hardness of key derivation function through XOR-ring multiple matrix values

For theoretical purposes in order to enhance my own understanding, and NOT in order to create my own cryptography, I am asking a question about the memory-hardness of a key derivation function ...
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### Can Pseudorandom values be used as secure keys?

I want to derive $n$ keys from a master key. I pick a master key $mk$ and use pseudo-random function (PRF) to generate $n$ pseudo-random values, $v_i=PRF(mk,i)$ where $1\leq i \leq n$. Next, I use ...
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### Symmetric encryption using RSA for random generated password

I'm fairly new to encryption, so I wanted to check the logic for a .net solution I'm working on that encrypts data between two parties. the receiving (decrypting) party will have an RSA key pair ...
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### A (current or soon-to-be) NIST-recommended alternative to ECC?

So this comes from the professional rumor-mill, and I'm wondering if anyone might either debunk or shed light on this. My understanding is ECC is generally now preferred over RSA simply due to how ...
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### Is there a standard notation for a message concatenated with its signature?

I'm wondering what's the standard (or canonical) notation for "a message along with its signature", i.e. $$\mathit{Message}~\Vert~\sigma_k(\mathit{Message}) \text.$$ Here the duplicated ...
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### Is XTS basically the cheapest form of (secure) double-encryption?

XTS, as given by the below equation, is a mode of operation primarily targeting full-disk encryption scenarios. By the way it works it also doubles the keylength although a meet-in-the-middle attack ...
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### How to compromise the privacy of NaCl encrypted messages, when nonce is reused?

I want to know to how break NaCl encryption when a nonce used more than once for a given key private key. According to PyNaCl docs: It is VITALLY important that the nonce is a nonce, i.e. it is a ...
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### Deciphering “easy” ciphers without hints

I've been keen on IT Security for a long time now and I've learned a lot about networking & security. However trying a "decryption challenge" I'm lacking what I think is basic ...
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### HMAC key storage for a web app?

If one is going to use an HMAC, I.E: http://php.net/manual/en/function.hash-hmac.php, where exactly are they storing the key? Without some sort of secure storage (i.e not in a local file or code), I ...
158 views

### Concrete example of Weil Pairing

I am trying to find a concrete example of the Weil Pairing. What I have done until now is that I took $E=(x-1)(x-2)(x-3)$ over $F_5$. I took $E[2]=\{\infty,(1,0),(2,0),(3,0)\}$. I know that there ...
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### How to clock a linear feedback shift register?

I have some trouble understanding what happens when a LFSR is clocked. I have tried many examples but I do not get the correct result. Can anyone point out my errors? I have the following polynomial: ...
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### Why is GCM only usable for ciphers with a 128-bit block size?

All block cipher modes of operation that I understand are generic schemes. They are not restricted by key size or block size. So why is GCM restricted to 128-bit block size?
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### converting finite field elements to octet strings

I need to convert elements of the finite field $GF(p^k)$, where $p$ is an odd prime, to octet strings. To be more precise, I want to include elliptic curve points over $GF(p^2)$ in a Subject Public ...
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### Is there a standard format for compact 56-bit DES keys?

DES keys are traditionally stored as 8-byte blobs, with only the high 7 bits of each byte being meaningful to the algorithm; the low bit of each byte is set so that the population count of the byte is ...
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### Attacks on WinRAR volumes reusing same password?

I have quite a few WinRAR volumes that are all encrypted with the same password. The password is long and unbruteforceable, but I recently read that WinRAR uses PBDKF2 as its key-derivation function ...
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### Is this a proper PBKDF2 key derivation function algorithm?

I've started implementing PBKDF2 algorithm recently and since I'm new in crypto, I would like to ask if my implementation is good. I looked up some documentations and I tried to follow many of them ...
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### Is it possible to encrypt data points but still be able to select the ones “near” a given value?

We have an application where we would like to store "encrypted" data points (as in, not being able to know the original - plaintext - data just by looking at the stored - encrypted - version of it) ...
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### What procedure to use to verify a raw public key (TLS ECDHE_EDCSA ciphersuite)?

Contrary of verifying a certificate which is a well-known procedure, I am wondering what the procedure is to verify a raw public key 'certificate' (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7250). This ...