# All Questions

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### What security do digital signatures provide (like used when signing PDFs)?

I want to ask you one question about digital signatures as they are (for example) used when digitally signing PDFs. We know that if our document has a digital signature, we can detect if the original ...
60 views

### How are the lower levels calculated using upper levels in an optimized Merkel Hash Tree?

I was reading about the TIK protocol for thwarting wormhole attacks on adhoc networks. It uses a Merkel Hash Tree to store keys. But since the number of keys can be large, the tree is optimized by ...
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Assume that sender and recipient both already have each others public keys(certificates). Sender needs to generate session key to encrypt some data and sends encrypted data to recipient. All offline - ...
256 views

### Could completely public passphrase hashes ever be reliably secure?

This is a hypothetical question and I only have a basic understanding of Cryptography. If one were to follow the very best cryptographic practices for storing passphrases, could it ever be possible ...
290 views

### What does a “cycle” mean in cryptography benchmarks?

In this table of the "Crypto++ 5.6.0 Benchmarks", for example, cryptographic algorithm performance is measured in cycles per byte for symmetric ciphers, and in cycles per operation for asymmetric ...
151 views

### what is an injective trapdoor function?

The answer to this question at Crypto.SE is clear about what a trapdoor function is, but what makes a trapdoor function "injective"?
544 views

### Perfect zero knowledge for the Schnorr protocol?

Can somebody explain (or point to a reference) why the Schnorr protocol cannot be proved zero knowledge?
2k views

### Why is AES not a Feistel cipher?

I am studying for an exam right now. And I wanted to make sure I got this point correct. AES is not a Feistel cipher because the operations in AES are not invertible. Is the above statement ...
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I am a first year math PhD student with work experience and an MS in math. Do you have any advice regarding internships involved with cryptography and other mathematics other than the NSA? Thanks.
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### Is there any implementation of scrypt that allows a specific limit on memory?

The answerer has commented that scrypt's memory use is "only a function of r". $\:$ However, he has not addressed my argument that it also depends on N, in one of my comments from over 5 days ago. I ...
205 views

### How to perform benchmark of block/stream ciphers?

I would like to perform some benchmarking of different block and stream ciphers for general data (lossless and lossy data) encryption and decryption (with focus on power consumption). To get general ...
601 views

### How to provide secure “vanity” bitcoin address service?

Bitcoin addresses are RIPEMD-160 hashes of the public portion of a public/private ECDSA keypair (along with an abbreviated hash of the hash to provide a check code, as @pulpspy notes in a comment). ...
3k views

### What makes RSA secure by using prime numbers?

I am just learning about the RSA algorithm. Looking at the first two steps: Choose two distinct prime numbers $p$ and $q$. Compute $n = pq$. I have some probably stupid questions: Why do $p$ ...
233 views

### Shamir's Secret Share [duplicate]

I'm not quite sure the benefits of working over a prime modulus in Shamir's secret share- but doesn't limiting the numbers you pull from make the secret easier to guess? Instead of being over the real ...
311 views

### What crypto system allows for 3 parties: Party 1 who makes an assertion, Party 2 mutates the assertion, Party 3 validates it

I'm looking for the cryptographic equivalent of a Drivers license where the issuer can be verified, the issuer doesn't need to know who you showed the drivers license to, but also allows ...
186 views

### What are the possible cryptographic implications of Zhang's proof of the Twin Prime Conjecture?

Earlier this year, Yitang Zhang published a proof of a weakened form of the Twin Prime Conjecture. I'm wondering if any of the new mathematical machinery he developed has uses in cryptography or could ...
65 views

### How does Dissent protect against Sybil Attacks?

Dissent claims to be able to be resistant to Sybil attacks. Dissent seeks to offer accountable anonymity, giving users strong guarantees of anonymity while also protecting online groups or forums ...
249 views

### random number generator and seed

I'm working with openssl cryptographic libraries, I'm new to all these cryptographic stuffs and slowly I'm learning all these. I have a doubt regarding random number generator, I'm using ...
366 views

### Provable Encryption

Is it possible to encrypt data in a way that it can be proven that the data is encrypted, without revealing the key? Alice chooses some plaintext, then she encrypts it with a certain scheme. She ...
619 views

### Using Whirlpool hashing function to encrypt data

I've read that the Whirlpool hash function can produce footprints that could be used as a pseudorandom generator. Is it "OK" to use it to encrypt some data using something like the following? ...
753 views

### What is the security loss from reducing Rijndael to 128 bits block size from 256 bits?

As you know in the past few weeks it has emerged that NIST/NSA have been involved in weakening encryption standards over a long period of time so that they can retain the ability to break encryption ...
593 views

### How is the initial permutation of DES created?

I am creating a program in C language with DES (Data Encryption Standard) functionality, but don't know how to apply the initial permutation. Is it achieved by swapping the values? If "yes", then ...
1k views

### GPG symmetric encryption and javascript

I have a use case where I need to encrypt some text in the browser using javascript. Only the encrypted text will be stored on the server. The user should then be able to take the encrypted result and ...
577 views

### Counter mode secure hash algorithm

Ever since the SHA-3 competition, I've been wondering if it is possible to create a hash algorithm that is easier to parallelize. The current algorithms all seem to require building a tree of hashes. ...
51 views

### Algorithm for sharing secret information with redundant keys [duplicate]

I have an information that I would like to encrypt and give it to someone else. I would like to encrypt it using N separate passwords (say 5) and give each password to some other persons. However the ...
242 views

### Is this a structural weakness of Feistel networks?

I'm doing a lot of reading about Feistel networks. Something occurred to me a bit ago that I hadn't realized previously, namely that in any Feistel construction there are bits of the plaintext that ...
104 views

### Is there any existing analysis for this construction to turn a tweakable blockcipher into a PRF?

I'm basically looking at this construction to turn a tweakable blockcipher $E_c(x)$ taking a key $k$, nonce $n$, counter $c$ (forming tweak $t = c||n$) and an input $x$ into a PRF on an ...
337 views

### Can a nested block cipher avoid the meet in the middle attack by using a secret initialization vector for the inner encryption?

It seems to be believed that encrypting twice with a block cipher using an independent key each time is not as secure as you might expect because of the "meet in the middle" attack. This is an attack ...
459 views

### Verify product without revealing multipliers

Situation: Several participants contribute encrypted random numbers. These numbers will be used to generate community-agreed random (by simple multiplication). Question: Is there any way to detect ...
444 views

### Are there public slow-but-strong algorithms out there that resist brute-force attacks better?

I'm reading that AES uses 4x4 bytes (4*4*8 = 256 bits key) matrix for performances matters (since it's a requirement for common standard encryption algorithms), but are there implementations with ...
331 views

### Dual_EC_DRBG and OpenSSL on a Mac

Since there is not much info anywhere on the Internet related to this: Does anyone know if OpenSSL's default CSPRNG is Dual_EC_DRBG or not? Their wiki is not very clear… Related to the first ...
501 views

### RSA Decryption with Private Key but no public exponent

I manually set the RSA private key, given the private exponent and modulus. When I use this key to decrypt a message encrypted using a public key (also set with public exponent and modulus) seems to ...
3k views

### Counter Mode in Advanced Encryption Standard(AES) Algorithm

In Advanced Encryption Standard, if I used "Counter Mode", how should I handle the nonce? Should I divide the nonce value into two? For example: I have 128-bit of nonce, should I divide it so I get ...
287 views

### Is it safe to use GZIP to avoid padding related attacks

I am designing a library that supports encrypting some in-memory data using AES in CBC mode. Now I need a padding but it seemed to me that Apple's CommonCrypto library and OpenSSL have different ...
226 views

### How does Poly1305 in the NaCl library calculate a MAC?

I've been reading about Poly1305 as implemented in the NaCl library, more specifically I've been referring to this Java implementation of NaCl. My understanding of XSalsa20Poly1305 (in this ...
680 views

### Achieving 256-bit encryption strength with PBKDF2 - HMAC-SHA1

I am interested in the theoretical consideration of the bit strength of an encryption key and its precursor. Assume a given environment as follows: a. My encryption algorithm is AES-256 b. My key ...
2k views

### Is it possible to make time-locked encrytion algorithm?

I'm not sure if what I'm asking is even a valid question but here goes. Would it be possible to add a mechanism to an encryption algorithm that would mean it had to be a certain time of the day or a ...
220 views

### chaining rsa with ecies

In an answer to a previous question it was suggested that one way to protect your asymmetrically encrypted AES-256 keys, from say a solution to prime factorization, would be to chain asymmetric ...
436 views

### Textbook-RSA meet-in-the-middle attack against other RSA based schemes?

A “meet-in-the-middle” (not “man-in-the-middle”!) attack on textbook-RSA was presented to me. The only requirements for it was that the attacker gets the output of RSA and the public key, and that the ...
1k views

### Cryptanalysis Affine Cipher: Brute-Force Search Vs. Meet-in-the-middle

Affine Cipher: $Enc(x) = (ax + b) \mod m$ $Dec(x) = a^{-1}(x-b) \mod m$ For a brute-force key search, we need to do $a \cdot b$ encryptions in the worst case. For a meet-in-the-middle attack, how ...
453 views

### Where is the S-Box generated in Rijandel/AES?

It's rather kind of lame questions, and I can't find good and clear explanation: In which step of Rijandel is S-box generated? Is the S-box reused in every round of cipher or is generated in every ...
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### Meet-in-the-middle with checking complexity

In regards to meet in the middle type attacks, I have been considering the amount of operations in order to successfully find a key given two sets of plaintext / ciphertext pairs. All of the sources I ...
4k views

### What to watch for with openssl generating weak keys? (low entropy)

(Disclaimer: I am regular software engineer with only basic crypto knowledge, so helpful if can be explained for a layman.) I am concerned about generating weak keys on a shared linux box with ...
213 views

### Bandwidth and block size for Paillier cryptosystem

Can someone clarify what is meant by the terms cryptosystem bandwidth and block size for public key cryptosystems; The context is the Paillier cryptosystem and its Damgard-Jurik generalisation. My ...
318 views

### List of available symmetric & assymetric ciphers [closed]

I was looking all over the Internet list of ALL existing symmetric and asymmetric ciphers. I know that there's, for example, AES, DES, Blowfish, DSA. But how about more? Where to find such list?
2k views

### Assuming a 1024qb quantum computer, how long to brute force 1024bit RSA, 256bit AES and 512bit SHA512

Assuming in the future there was a functioning 1024 qubit quantum supercomputer and it could run Shor's algorithm or Grover's algorithm to crack encryption very quickly. I'm interested in how the ...
821 views

### Reusing keys with AES-CBC

I heard that key/IV pairs must not be reused in AES-CTR, or when using any stream cipher for that matter. Yet the attacks described do not seem to apply to AES-CBC. Is reusing the same key several ...
2k views

### RSA cracking: The same message is sent to two different people problem

Suppose we have two people: Smith and Jones. Smith public key is e=9, n=179 and Jones public key is e=13, n=179. Bob sends to ...
Following are steps to conduct Chosen Plaintext Attack (CPA) indistinguishibility experiment $PrivK_\mathcal{A,E}^{eav}(n)$. $\mathcal{A}$ is the adversary $\mathcal{E}$ is the encryption scheme ...