# All Questions

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### Key Confirmation Attack [Key Distribution Center (KDC)]

Okay this is how I understood it according to this: Alice $A$ establishes a connection to $KDC$ and prepares for session key Exchange $k_{ses}$ $A$ encrypts the request with her key $k_A(A, B)$ ...
4k views

### Is it safe to use PBEWithMD5AndDES?

I'm encrypting some of my (not so much important) files with PBEWithMD5AndDES. Is it a strong method or it can be de-crypt easily without knowing my selected ...
181 views

### credit card number encryption using aes-ctr mode

I want to encrypt credit card numbers. I want to apply AES-CTR mode. Is it suitable for that? How can I store nonce and counter values for an individual credit card number? How can I send the ...
139 views

### How are RSA and ElGamal compatible in PGP?

I'm starting to play with PGP and I don't understand how if your key pair is RSA you can encrypt a message for someone whose key is for example ElGamal. How does the asymmetric key exchange work if ...
113 views

### chaining multiple key derivation functions together

I was looking at PBKDF2, bcrypt and scrypt as options for key derivation; and would like to try using them all together in order to get the cryptographic strength of the strongest one (which seems to ...
60 views

### Is it safe to encrypt data by simply randomizing chunks based on a permutation?

Say I want to encrypt the following text: "Today is March the 22nd, 2015". And say want to encrypt 8-byte blocks of data using the following permutation [6,3,0,1,5,7,2,4] to swap characters at those ...
428 views

### Purpose of expanding then shrinking in SHA-1

What is the purpose of expanding then shrinking in SHA-1? Does it serves any security purposes?
205 views

### How do you implement a cipher as one lookup table?

I am reading up on whitebox cryptography and have trouble understanding how are ciphers implemented as one lookup table? assuming my plaintext is just 4 bits so the size of my lookup table should be ...
81 views

### What does invertibility of the cryptographic primitive mean?

source: http://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/publications/thesis-152.pdf ,page 32 Note that key recovery implies invertibility of the cryptographic primitive (because due to the Kerckhoffs’ ...
282 views

### Difference between the TLS cipher suites?

TLS_DHE_DSS_AES256_CBC_MAC / TLS_DHE_RSA_AES256_CBC_MAC Hi, I have been studying to learn about various cipher suites and their performances. I gathered that DSS is efficient when compared with RSA. ...
39 views

### AES product function

Small description: consider a polynomial in GF($2^8$) , which has the form $$f(x) = b_7x^7 + b6x^6 + b_{5}x^5 + b_4x^4 + b_3x^3 + b_2x^2 + b_1x + b_0$$ If we multiply by x , we have x * f(x) = ...
119 views

### Which algorithm can be performed by humans?

Suppose I want my grandmother to perform encryption without any help from a computer, and she must encrypt the word 'HELLO' for me. I could ask her to instead of typing the real keys, that she always ...
331 views

### About the Security of PCBC Encryption Mode

We are designing an encrypted file system. We plan to use the PCBC (Plaintext Cipher Block Chaining) encryption mode for encryption. This is because we desire the feature ("small changes in the ...
47 views

### Security of simple Skein PBKDF mentioned in the paper

From the Skein 1.3 paper section 4.8, Skein as a Password-Based Key Derivation Function (PBKDF), it mentions the following as a simple PBKDF (S = seed and P = password): An even simpler PBKDF is ...
102 views

### Is this an example of a zero knowlege proof?

My Math Structures professor mentioned the strange concept of a zero knowledge proof to me after class one day, and I decided to do some reading about it. After reading the relatively famous "How to ...
141 views

### Coding of unsigned int to prevent guessing next ID

Suppose we are assigning records an unsigned integer ID from a N-bit space (say 32-bit) in a sequential manner. Is there a way we can code this ID before showing it to the public such that someone ...
221 views

### Replacing the PRF in PBKDF2 with Keccak

I am unable to find a reliable, tested library for a decent password based key derivation function e.g. Scrypt in the programming language I am using, but I have a reliable library for PBKDF2 (which ...
124 views

### Is it safe to prefix the a key with a known value?

Almost every encryption algorithm is based on a secret key. I wonder when the algorithm is considered safe, does that also imply that I can prefix (or suffix) the key with a known value, as long as ...
131 views

### Are factorization algorithms parallelizable?

I was reading about the Blum-Blum-Shub random number generator, and its security depends on the hardness of factoring very large numbers (like many things in crypto do). I'm just wondering, if I have ...
96 views

### Creating a new cipher! [closed]

http://flashbackcipher.blogspot.ae/2015/03/introducing-flashback.html Hey guys the above is the blog for a new cipher, if you guys can take a look and suggest problems.. it would be of great help!! ...
1k views

### RC4 , Is it possible to find the key if we know the plaintext and ciphertext?

Is it possible to find the key if we know the plaintext and ciphertext with RC4. How should I write the algorithm?
125 views

### Information-theoretic bound on leakage by timing measurement

I'm looking for an information-theoretic bound on leakage by timing measurement. I'm assuming that an attacker wants to leak out of a black box a secret key of $k$ bits that is secretly injected ...
175 views

### How can ECDSA signatures be shortened (to be used as a product key)?

So I made my own serial key generation software, using ECDSA, for use in my own applications and it works great so far! To keep the serial key short enough I use a 128 bit EC curve. My final signature ...
88 views

### How dangerous is it to encrypt with AES 256 if the end user knows the unencrypted value?

I am implementing a bit of security in a system that was originally built without encryption on a specific piece of data. The plan was to encrypt this piece of data and include it as part of the ...
462 views

### Why is diffie-hellmangroup1-sha1 used instead of diffie-hellman?

For SSH why is diffie-hellmangroup1-sha1 used instead of just diffie-hellman? In other words, why is the hash function used?
176 views

### Construct rainbow table to break DES

I'm facing a project where I need to build a rainbow table to break DES. I've already collected information about Hellman, DP, rainbow table method. Finally, I chose the rainbow table approach. I've ...
81 views

### Do asymmetric signatures require constant-time verification?

To avoid a timing attack, HMAC signatures are usually compared in constant-time (every byte is compared, and the results aggregated). Is the same necessary for asymmetric signature algorithms such ...
42 views

### Determining nonce between unsynced systems

It's my first venture into cryptography, and I'm struggling with how to use a nonce in an encryption standard between two digital radios. The two radios support AES encryption, only requiring a ...
130 views

### HMAC tag to verify the key (verification in the reverse direction)

A quick question. Are there any problems with the following HMAC use-case: We have two entities ($A$ and $B$), both of them have a secret ($A$ has $S_0$ and $B$ has $S_1$) $A$ generates a random ...
474 views

### ECDSA for encryption

ECDSA keys are much shorter than RSA keys, but typically only used for signing, not encryption. Is there an accepted way of doing this? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196378.0 ...
612 views

### Deterministically generate a RSA public/private key pair from a passphrase (with sufficient entropy)?

Is it possible to deterministically generate public/private RSA key pairs from passphrases? Would giving the (key generating) algorithm data made from key-stretching the passphrase (instead of a ...
81 views

### Improving on a clocked PRNG

I recently developed a PRNG from scratch with a little inspiration from the initialization function used in the HC stream cipher. The state ($S$) of the basic version is an array of 5 bytes and uses ...
142 views

### Deciphering text encrypted with a changing cipher

I know there are many ways to crack basic ciphers were each letter is mapped to some other letter, but what ways are there to decode something that was encrypted using a cipher that changed after ...
156 views

### How to calculate the non-linearity of an s-box? [duplicate]

I am struggling to understand how to calculate non-linearty of an s-box, could someone show me a detailed example? I found “How to calculate non linearity of AES S-box?” which helped a little, but I ...
273 views

### MAC in SSH packet encryption, benefits to not including it?

What are the benefits to not including MAC in a SSH packet encryption? I understand what the MAC is there for, but if it was not included would there be an advantage? Is the MAC somewhat redundant ...
88 views

### Applying Trapdoor Function directly to plaintext

Suppose we have a secure trapdoor function defined on (G, F, F^-1) where G is a randomized algorithm outputs a key pair (pk, sk). Why would this trapdoor function become insecure if we apply F ...
282 views

### Concatenation of two strong hashes may have striking weakness

For any hash functions $H_0$ and $H_1$, it is easily proved that their concatenation $H_0\|H_1$, defined by $(H_0\|H_1)(X)=H_0(X)\|H_1(X)$, is at least as resistant as the strongest of $H_0$ and $H_1$ ...
237 views

### What happens when a RC4 stream gets corrupted?

I want to encrypt a large file using RC4. But what happens if the encrypted file gets corrupted (bytes modified or lost)? Can I still decrypt the rest of the file correctly? If not, what is the best ...
76 views

### Making PRFs out of PRGs

Is it possible that we take a $PRG$ $G(k)$ of stretch $n\cdot2^n$, and read its output as the table of a $PRF$ $F(K)$ with input and output size of $n$? Intuitively it sounds possible however I read ...
113 views

### What practical uses can random hash collisions be put to?

Using magic, I've built a machine that instantly generates hash collisions. To try it out, I set the dial to SHA256 and typed in "e7cf3ef4f17c3999a94f2c6f612e8a888e5b1026878e4e19398b23bd38ec221a". I ...
29 views

### Is RSA-OAEP secure when e=3? [duplicate]

Is RSA-OAEP secure when the exponent is equal to 3?
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### Practical strength of non-2^n RSA key lengths [duplicate]

It has for many years been popular to use RSA keys that have lengths that are powers of two. E.g. 1024-bit, 2048-bit and 4096-bit key lengths are all popular for use with OpenPGP implementations such ...
116 views

### Why not send the identity in the encrypted message?

I've recently started reading the book "Applied Cryptography" written by Bruce Schneier. Quite a few times I stumbled across protocols who send the identity outside of the encrypted message (see step ...
62 views

### Resynchronizing brute-force attack against stream ciphers

There is a stream cipher without any known cryptographic weaknesses. The attacker knows parts of the key so she can reduce the key-space to a size that can be practically brute-forced. However the ...
201 views

### Given only RSA public key parameters, what security issues might I be able to detect?

I'm attempting to automate some checks against a large list of .NET assemblies, and want to include a test to see if the RSA parameters used to sign the assemblies are sensible. However, since I don't ...
89 views

### CCA-attack is possible in RSA, but how the decryption key $d$ is known to anyone

CCA-attack is possible in text-book RSA, but how the decryption key $d$ is known to anyone, as it is kept secret with receiver.
361 views

### What is the most light-weight symmetric cipher thats still usefull?

I need a very light encryption scheme which costs almost no performance during encryption (while decryption may be slow). I found 5 algorithms: RC4, DES, LED, PRESENT, and Piccolo. But how do I ...
174 views

### Where I can find a list of certified software / hardware RNGs compliant to NIST SP 800-22?

I need to use NIST SP 800-22 approved software / hardware to generate RSA key pair. Where I can find a list of certified software / hardware RNGs compliant to NIST SP 800-22? And how is the SP ...