All Questions

112 views

How can I process data within a cloud securely?

I'm new to programming and I'm getting ready to design a proof of concept for an app that I'm thinking of building. Problem is I'm a complete noob to cryptography and need a little nudge to point me ...
234 views

Measure ECC key size

I have implemented a ECC key generation scheme successfully. Now I need to find ECC key sizes of each generating key pairs. I assumed that ECC key size is the size of the ECC private Key. So I would ...
5k views

Which one of the Block Cipher modes is the best?

I have two questions regarding the Block Cipher Modes: Which one of the modes is considered the best? I know CBC has a problem of IV since the next block of the plain text is XORed with the result ...
420 views

Precomputation attacks on RSA

Are precomputation attacks - such as outlined in RFC 3610 chapter 5 - possible on RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 signature generation? If yes, are such attacks taken into account when calculating the cryptographic ...
639 views

Is the first version of the Message-Digest algorithm by Ronald Rivest publically available?

Diving into the history and evolution of the Message-Digest algorithm by Ronald Rivest, I have been able to track back papers from MD6 down to MD2. Yet, somehow I can not seem to be able to find any ...
463 views

I'm a big fan of Colin Percival's "Cryptographic Right Answers" post. This was written in 2009, which is a long time ago in Internet years. Is the advice still valid or, if not, can someone point me ...
2k views

Accelerating SHA-1

I have a program where computing SHA-1 is the bottleneck. This is using OpenSSL 1.0.0e on a 2.6Ghz 16-core Opteron where I get about 325MiB/s throughput. (SHA1 here is via Andy Polyakov's x86-64 ...
115 views

Correct way to read a given permutation cipher?

In some literature I am reading – where they are explaining the permutation cipher – they have two examples, which encrypt a small block of text. But they seem to contradict each other: First ...
99 views

How can I make a message into a blocks for NTRU?

I have more bits than the degree of the NTRU polynomial. For example: $x^{11}-1$ message: Hello (I am using ascii, 8 bits for 1 symbol) got: ...
178 views

How can one parallelize tasks in CTR-AES for maximum performance?

From what I have read it seems like one of the purported benefits of using CTR mode AES, is that it can be parallelized to a greater degree, or maybe more easily than the other block cipher modes, ...
300 views

How Does Progressive Hashing Work?

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/KGtUE/ https://code.google.com/p/crypto-js/#Progressive_Hashing sha256.update("abc"); sha256.update("def"); sha256.update("ghi"); ...
139 views

Parallel hash construction

I'm wondering why hash constructions aren't parallel like CTR mode for encryption? For example: We have ideal block cipher E, where we encrypt message block with counter and xor output block with ...
239 views

Choice of MAC and handling it correctly

I have recently learned that Encrypt-then-MAC is recommended when using symmetric encryption. I have two closely related questions related to that, which is why I am posting them as one: Looking ...
332 views

How to prove identity without revealing identity

Let us say Alice publishes a book under the name of Claire. The book becomes wildly popular and now Bob comes along, claiming to be Claire, to reap all the success. How does Alice prove that she wrote ...
940 views

Why does Openssh use only SHA1 for signing and verifying of digital signatures?

I am learning SSH protocol. With my current understanding of SSH protocol, I think that message digest algorithms for using in digital signature should be derived from Key Exchange. But Openssh ...
213 views

Security of the iterated Hill Cipher

I can understand that the basic Hill Cipher is susceptible to known plaintext attacks, but suppose the Hill Cipher is modified into the Iterated Hill Cipher. For a plaintext $x_0=m_0$ and an ...
2k views

Why is plain-hash-then-encrypt not a secure MAC?

It seems that even in MAC-then-encrypt systems like SSL, something like HMAC is used rather than a plain hash. Why? Suppose we use some stream cipher; then why can't we use $Encrypt(m | H(m))$ as ...