# All Questions

420 views

### RSA performance

I was wondering what is the performance bottleneck in RSA algorithm? Is it the size of message, calculating the modular inverse, exponentiation? Say I have a fixed value of n to encrypt and decrypt ...
151 views

### Is the composition of collision resistant hash with non collision resistant hash a collision resistant hash?

Suppose $h_1$ is collision resistant, and $h_2$ isn't. Will $h(x)=h_2(h_1(x))$ always be collision resistant? [Edited:] the output of h2 must be uniformly distributed
474 views

### Graphically representing points on Elliptic Curve over finite field

I have taken elliptic curve $E\colon y^2=x^3-4x+20$, defined over $\mathbb{F}_{29}$. The number of points on the curve, $\left|E(\mathbb{F}_{29})\right|=37$. I took base point $P=(1,5)$, and got ...
2k views

### Using the same RSA keypair to sign and encrypt

The RSA signature operation is basically the same as encrypting with the private key. In particular, both operations use the same kind of keys. Is it safe to use the same RSA keypair both for ...
413 views

### What is the chance of a collision when using SHA-3?

I currently am writing a web app and am using two random hashes that are before and after the string and are both 50 char long (alphabet, numbers, and special chars). ...
106 views

### $\phi$ function in Dual_EC_DRBG

I am trying to understand the operation of the Dual_EC_DRBG. I'm reading the formal specification (SP 800-90) and can't seem to find a definition of the $\phi$ function used throughout the definition ...
386 views

### How does Google's “authenticator number generator” work?

I have two-factor authentication enabled on my Google account, and I have this app on my phone which generates a number I have to type when I'm logging in to Google-Mail. But I don't understand how ...
257 views

### How hard is to invert the function that computes the middle-bits of (x^2)?

I'm designing a function f that should be moderately hard to invert and very fast to evaluate in a modern CPU. The function will be used in a proof-of-work function. I've read that the middle-bits of ...
462 views

### IV's from Crypto++ AutoSeededRNG always ends the same: Problem with the PRNG? [closed]

I am using a AutoSeededRNG from Crypto++ to generate IVs for use in CBC encryption. I am encoding the IVs using Base64 for future use (decryption). I notice that ...
152 views

### What does this step in this protocol for the Yao's Millionaire Problem mean?

I was reading “An Efficient Protocol for Yao’s Millionaires’ Problem” (Ioannidis and Grama 2003). In the proposed protocol in section three, it is written: (Step 4) For every $i$, $1 \le i \le d$, ...
148 views

### What is the function of the secret key “r” in Poly1305?

Poly1305-AES uses two per-connection keys $k$ (for AES) and $r$ (for Poly1305's compression function) and a per-message nonce n to execute. I've read the original paper on the implementation, and I ...
367 views

### Did NIST verify “post-quantum” claims in the SHA3 proposal papers?

I have been reading Bernstein’s “Quantum attacks against Blue Midnight Wish, ECHO, Fugue, Grøstl, Hamsi, JH, Keccak, Shabal, SHAvite-3, SIMD, and Skein” paper from 2010… This document disproves ...
247 views

### Blum-Blum-Shub Cryptosystem

I am given $N$, which is Bob's encryption key. I was able to successfully factor $N$ into $N=p*q$. Alice encrypts a messages for bob and sends $a = [1,1,1,0,0,0,1,0,1,1,0,...]$ $b = 1545164156...$ ...
131 views

### Why use two affine transformations in Multivariate Cryptography?

I'm reading Multivariate Cryptography and would like to know why we use two affine transformations to scramble the central map? Why not use only one?
410 views

### Can AES decrypt with a wrong key?

The title is asking the question in layman terms, but what I really mean to ask is this: Let $x \in \lbrace 0,1 \rbrace^{128}$ (an arbitrary input block) and let $K \in \lbrace 0, 1 \rbrace^{128}$ ...
330 views

According to this document the padded message has the following structure: $EM \;= \; 0x00 \; || \; 0x02 \; || \; PS \; || \; 0x00 \; || \; M$ What is the purpose of this null byte at the beginning ...
138 views

### Weak Stream Cipher cryptanalysis

Hi I have a stream cipher which uses a keystream of: F(r) || F(r+1) || F(r+2) || ... Suppose F(r) is the RSA encryption algorithm: ...
154 views

### Publicly exposed hash of private key

Would exposing a cryptographic hash function's digest (e.g. SHA-3) of RSA private key data compromise the key? If so, what are the possible (cryptanalysis-) vectors for attacking the key if an ...
51 views

### Can you clarify the proof that secure LR-two party protocols do not exist?

In the paper “Multiparty Computation Secure Against Continual Memory Leakage” on pg. 1237, the footnote #1 discuss why it is not possible to construct a leakage resilient two-party protocol. But I'm ...
122 views

### Why is Lamport-Diffie secure?

Why is Lamport-Diffie secure? I note that there is a demonstration based on onewayness (in the book postquantum cryptography). But a one way function is not sufficient to ensure that it can not infer ...
253 views

### Can you help me understand hash-preserving encryption?

I have rather simplistic understanding of cryptography, so I have to beg a pardon in advance if the question has internal contradictions. Imagine data $A$ with a hash $hashA$. This data is encrypted ...
247 views

### Can minimum encrypted message length be used to identify public key algorithm or derived some of its features?

Encrypting a very small message using public key cryptography always result in larger encrypted messages. Is it possible to deduce the algorithm used, key length, etc just by looking at the minimum ...
401 views

### Is this encryption scheme perfectly secure?

Let $m = 6$, and let $\mathbb{Z}_m$ denote the set $\{0,…,m-1\}$. Let $X \mod m$ denote the remainder obtained when dividing $X$ by $m$. (a) Consider the symmetric encryption scheme in ...
333 views

### Security of SecRandomCopyBytes on OSX and iOS

How secure is SecRandomCopyBytes() (Apple's RNG)? Has anyone ever reviewed it?
76 views

### How can user privacy be preserved in certificateless cryptography?

In certificateless cryptography, how can a user preserve his privacy from Key Generation Center? If the KGC becomes malicious, how can the user's privacy be preserved? I read "Privacy-Preserving ...
134 views

### Are ideal hashes possible to create?

In a hash function, you map an input of arbitrary length to an output of finite length such that the relationship is one-to-one (or at least that's what you are trying to achieve). Hence, isn't it ...
186 views

### What would make it impossible to deny that decryption of a package has taken place?

I'm part of a team designing a system where a user have to be able to read a certain package, if he has preformed an action or series of actions that makes it legal for him to do so. The tricky part ...
712 views

### Can the XOR of two non-collision-resistant hashes be collision resistant?

Suppose I have two hash functions, of which neither (or only one) is collision resistant, and I want to create a new hash function by taking the bitwise exclusive or (XOR) of the results of those two ...
60 views

### TCR hash functions from MD5

I'm reading Collision-Resistant Hashing: Towards Making UOWHFs Practical (pag. 10 and 11) and here say The most direct way to construct a TCR hash function is to key a function like MD5 or SHA-1. ...
189 views

### Can homomorphic encryption filter?

Often in articles homomorphic encryption is praised as the holy grail of encryption for cloud storage. This is done by suggesting that it can do any computation, and as such could be used for ...
221 views

### Homomorphic Encryption and Semantic Security using Lattices?

I've been reading Brakerski and Vaikuntanathan's "Efficient Fully Homomorphic Encryption from (Standard) LWE" and I'm still digesting pieces at a time. Under section 1.1, "Re-Linearization: Somewhat ...
105 views

### becoming a cryptographer after math studies [duplicate]

After studying philosophy and being a philosophy teacher, I took back studies 4 years ago and I did a bachelor in maths. I'm in maths grad school now (I'm 32), and I would like to work in ...
269 views

### What is 'key agility' in relation to symmetric-key encryption?

I sometimes see, in discussions of symmetric ciphers, reference to the 'key agility' of a particular algorithm. It seems to be related to the difficulty of switching encryption keys, but I don't ...
373 views

### Convert a number to sha-1

I have a task to find a the message for which the SHA-1 hash's last 11 symbols in hexadecimal presentation corresponds to an 11-digit number. I have been given the following example solution: For ...
85 views

### The exact definition of a symmetric encryption

I have doubts for the definition of the decryption algorithm $D(.)$. I think I've already seen that the decryption returns a plaintext $M$ on input the key $K$ and $C=E_K(M)$. I have also seen thet ...
197 views

### Reusing PGP key when generating SSL Certificate Authority?

Does it make sense to reuse some of the keys from my PGP (gnupg, gpg) keyblock when generating my own SSL Certificate Authority (a toy one for myself and a few web services of mine)? In an ideal ...
26 views

### Why does a joint leakage MPC protocol not directly apply to a disjoint leakage requirement?

In the paper "Multiparty Computation Secure Against Continual Memory Leakage" on pg. 1239 the footnote at the bottom points out the difference between $joint$ leakage and $disjoint$ leakage. The ...
79 views

### How do you prevent the risk of damage to the security of Fully Homomorphic Encryption?

In this paper on pg. 1248 in the "preprocessing phase" section the authors say: In the preprocessing phase, the parties run a (standard) MPC to collectively generate a key pair (pk,sk) for the ...
138 views

### Design requirements for a keyed hash function?

I am actually preparing for a cryptography exam, and I found a question asked by the professor in the class, below are the lines that I copied from the slide : Example: Let $Ek$ be the encryption ...
200 views

### Best group if one wants the discrete log problem to be hard?

Suppose one is implementing a cryptographic scheme over a group where one needs the discrete logarithm to be hard - what is the recommended group to use? I'm looking for a group where calculations are ...
100 views

### Adversary to Any Collision Resistance Hash Function

I'm reading a notion Any Collision Resistance for Hash Functions. In the lecture define a collision finder CF. CF is said to $(t,\epsilon)$-break the family of hash functions $F_K$ if the ...
142 views

### Speed up modular exponentation with fixed base and modulus

Can someone explain, how $a^x \mod N$ can be speeded up, when $a$ and $N$ are known constants? How big is the gain and what resources are needed? ...
228 views

### How can Shamir's method for secret sharing work in the GF(256)?

I have been reading about Shamir's secret sharing, and maybe i completely misunderstand something, but the field is meant to be a prime. However, when i look at the implementations of this algorithm, ...
286 views

### scrypt and bcrypt for benefits of both?

I've been reading about bcrypt and scrypt, and it seems that the general consensus is that bcrypt is more "tried and true", but scrypt is better in theory. Couldn't you just hash something with ...
311 views

### Tamper-evident audit logs

I want to be able to detect tampering in a log file that is under the control of an untrusted party. I am not interested in secrecy, only the integrity of the contents in the file - so I want to ...
319 views

### Why does WPA2-PSK use 4-way handshake instead of 2-way handshake

I don't seem to grasp why is the handshake for PTK in WPA2-PSK 4-way and not 2-way. Isn't it enough to just have these two steps: First party sends Nonce1 to the other party Second party sends to ...
134 views

### password generation: random length or max length

In short: Is it cryptographically stronger to have a known length password of the maximum length allowed, or a random length password somewhere in the range of the longest length possible? Does the ...
127 views

### Upper bound Linear Feedback Shift Register

It is clear that when we have any output stream $x_0,x_1,...$ produced by linear feedback shift register than this output has to be periodic. Now I was wondering if we can find an upper bound for ...
We consider a large $n$-bit number $N$. We want to find a factor, if it admits any. For $m$ taking values from $1$ to $n$, perform the following three steps (actually, for each $m$, perform many ...
I have blinded $m = 16$ with $r= 13$, $e = 7$ and $n = 209$. This resulted in $m' = 464$, which led to a $s' = 8$. Now, I want to unblind this $s'$ by using $s = s' \times r^{-1}$ but im stuck at ...