# All Questions

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### On-the-fly computation of AES Round Keys for decryption?

The usual implementation of AES first computes all the Round Keys sequentially starting from the key, and stores them in RAM for later uses. However, when enciphering a single block with a key that ...
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### Does a key derivation function always generate an even distribution of bits in the resulting key?

I am a student of crypto. During our study course, we went into the AES-128 algorithm. All the examples given used an initial key k, 128 bits and we only briefly touched on the key derivation of ...
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### How can complexity be increased or decreased in AES?

I have been studying data compression for a while. For educational purposes, after a lot of reading, I managed to create a software that performs encryption and authentication using AES256-GCM. ...
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### Security when using same salt for different passwords, compared to using different salts?

I have this question I am struggling about: For example, someone suggested improving UNIX authentication by defining 3 different passwords for a user that are stored in the shadow file. All three ...
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### How are the coefficients of the polynomial used in Mix Column stage of AES chosen?

In the book (Cryptography, Theory and Practice by William Stallings), it states: the coefficients of the matrix are based on a linear code with maximal distance between the code words, which ...
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### Encrypted comms between devices on LAN

I'm trying to encrypt a protocol that shares data between devices on a local area network (i.e.no connection to the internet). I don't want to use predefined keys because they're too easy to read from ...
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### How does BB84 fare against an attacker who can entangle qubits?

Consider the following attack on the BB84 quantum key exchange protocol (as far as I can tell, it should work similarly for E91): After Alice sends her key bits encoded in qubits with randomly chosen ...
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### Diffie Hellman Exchange Confusion [closed]

I am working on this question and I am wondering I have figured out the secret key, but my problem is I don't know how to use the secret key to decrypt the ciphertext. Thanks for the help!
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### How to select corresponding ciphertext in anonymous Identity-based broadcast encryption

In identity-based broadcast encryption, suppose the broadcast ciphertext $(r_1,r_2,\dots,r_i,U,W,V)$ is sent to the receiver. It does not describe which user corresponds to which ciphertext part. User ...
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### Is the “Hash Tree” described in this paper the same as a Merkle Hash Tree?

I'm implementing an algorithm from a paper, and part of it calls for using a "hash tree". Since I'd never heard of that data structure I looked it up on Wikipedia. It turns out that the name hash tree ...
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### What does the probability subscript mean in Shannon's secrecy definition?

Shannon's secrecy can be defined as: $$P_M (M=m) = P_{SK,M}(M=m|E(SK,m)=c)$$ What does $P_M$ means? (same question for $P_{SK,M}$) I know that is the probability space M, M being the messages; I do ...
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### Which one has better Performance?

Sending secret value in identity-based encryption Using xor : $K \oplus e(g,h)^{\gamma}$ Using symmetric key: Assuming $Key=e(g,h)^{\gamma}$ and encrypt $K$ using $Key$. Which one is better in ...
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### How efficient is OpenSSL? [closed]

It is apparent that OpenSSL is widely deployed and used, but how efficient is OpenSSL? What's some efficiency concerns of it? What kind of methods to they use to make OpenSSL efficient? Do they also ...
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### Yaos Millionaire Problem: Why distance >= 2?

I'm currently reading about Yao' Millionaire Problem: http://research.cs.wisc.edu/areas/sec/yao1982-ocr.pdf Alice and Bob want to know which of them is richer. Let $j \in \{1, \cdots 10\}$ be Bobs ...
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### TLS RSA Certificate with Elliptic Curve Negotiation

When I look at Google's Public Key in Firefox I get PKCS #1 SHA-256 With RSA Encryption Yet according to SSL Labs Google has EC 256 bits / SHA256withRSA and supports ...
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### If we know a sha256 hashed value and its message length can we find the message?

Is it possible to find the original message if we know a sha256 hashed value and its message length?
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### Encrypting user data with their password?

I had an idea once that all of the user data (including the username) could be encrypted with the user's password. Obviously, most sites would store different data, so using the same password and ...
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### Hypothetical encryption technique, is it secure?

This to me, sounds like a great idea, but with all rosy-tinted ideas it needs some grounding in reality. Here are the steps of the hypothetical system (with the hypothetical part highlighted): User ...
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### Simultaneous 2 way exchange without trusted third party

Stakeholders: Alice - has a message, M containing a secret, SA that Bob wants, where H(SA) is a hash which may be used by Bob to redeem some Bitcoin time-locked transaction sent previously by Alice. ...
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### How to set attributes to private key on PKCS#12 (key usage)

I make a certificate X509 with library Bouncy Castle on Java. I need set a Key Attribute to private key. ...
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### RC6 Key Size Understanding

I need help to understand how RC6 works. Many sites show that the maximum key size of RC6 is 2040 bits (255 Bytes). I can also have 0..255 rounds and 4 times 32bits words in the 128bit block variant ...
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### How to calculate how many trials I need to guess the plain text if a simple P-Box is used to make the cipher text

If I have 64 bit as input for a straight box that use a transposition process to encipher the plain text and the given 64 bits contains 60 bits as (1s), then how many trial I should do?
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### How to prove a function is pseudorandom function?

I am currently enrolled in a cryptography course, which uses the book by Katz and Lindell. I am using a function having $F_{k}$ = $A_{k}(B_{k}(r,m),r)$, the random number is generated using the ...
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### Ciphertext with uneven letter distribution

I have a ciphertext encrypted with an unknown method. It is part of a challenge (personal quest), so I can not post it. The letter statistics is the following: ...
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### How many hashes one needs in order to reverse engineer hash function?

If I know the pattern of a hash string, particularly dllldlll or llldllld (d=digit, l=low case letter), is it possible to reverse engineer the hash function? If so, how many hashes ones needs to do so,...
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### Carmichael's function in Cryptography

The Carmichael's function says that for $a\in \mathbb{Z}_n^*$, if $gcd(a,n)=1$, then $$a^{\lambda(n)} \equiv 1 \;(mod\; n).$$ My aim is to find $a$ if factorization of $n$ ...
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### What is a simple information authentication protocol for constrained devices?

Background: I have an application where devices will poll information from some source on the network. These devices are very basic and have modest processing and memory capabilities. Hashing (and ...
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### Security or not in Key distribution

For example, There are 3 clients. I want to deliver specific value $x$ to all clients. $x\leftarrow {0,1,2,...,q-1}$ where q is a large prime number. By using function $f(x)=x*y_{i}*z_{i}$ where i=...
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### Can you use a hash as a password?

There are several methods of making a strong password, making it longer is one of them. now we also have hashing algorithms which have outputs of 512, so i wonder, would it be safe to basiclly use a ...
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### Software Security Impossible in Non-Trusted Hardware?

Fundamentally it is impossible to protect software if you can't trust the execution platform (e.g. using a TPM), so what is the point of software security then? With vendors claim that their white-...
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### Encrypted firmware

I have seen many papers on "encrypted firmware" (for example, firmware on Apple Watch like devices) . Can you tell me how it works? Is there a stub in the firmware which is not encrypted and can ...
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### Recover elliptic curve order from ECDSA signatures

I need the elliptic curve order to recover the private key from two signed messages with ECDSA. What I have: two signatures signed by the private-key I want to get the messages that have been ...
1k views

### Do key collisions for symmetric ciphers exist?

I'm not sure if I'm calling the thing (key collisions) correctly, and that's probably why I couldn't find any information about it on Google. Still, my question is as follows. Note that I don't work ...
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### What is the lightweight key exchange protocol of choice?

Assume I have to implement a secure channel protocol by myself. Assume further that for some obscure reasons (library restrictions?) I can't use any of the pre-made libraries for SSH, TLS and such. ...