# All Questions

134 views

### More technical details on the ongoing (alleged) Chinese cyberattacks [closed]

Recently, there has been quite a lot of news about the Chinese compromising various US weapons systems and stealing military designs through "cyberwarfare". I am reading the news sources about these ...
501 views

### How broken is a xor of two LCGs?

Suppose we define a PRG as the xor of two LCGs modulo a 64-bit prime: something like the following Python code. ...
443 views

### Understanding elliptic curve encryption

I'm having a hard time understanding the elliptic curve encryption. One thing thing I don't understand is listing all the points on the curve (mod p). Suppose I have the following elliptic curve: y^2 ...
3k views

### Is there any opensource white-box implementation of AES or DES?

I googled it and give me no result. There is a binary executable of white-box implementation of DES (scroll down), but no source code provided. The same page also links various papers about ...
457 views

### Why must curve25519 shared secret be hashed?

When using the curve25519 DH function, D.J. Bernstein recommends hashing the shared secret before using it as a session key for a symmetric block cipher. Why is that? Hashing won't increase the ...
975 views

### Are NIST's changes to Keccak/SHA-3 problematic?

NIST is working on standardizing SHA-3. They have selected Keccak as the basis for SHA-3, and they plan to make some small changes to it; the result (with NIST's changes) will be standardized as ...
30 views

### Detail about reactive simulatability framework

I'm trying to understand the framework of reactive simulatability using *"PfWa2_00AsyncModel"* from this publication which is a tech report behind the paper A model for Asynchronous Reactive Systems ...
1k views

### How can I determine the GPG/PGP key ID from the RSA modulus?

According to http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-keys.html#key-public-key-forgery, key ID is some lower bits sequence from the modulus (i.e. the $n$ variable): A PGP key ID is just the ...
303 views

### Friedman Index of Coincidence, pruning multiples of the keylength

I'm trying to write a Vigenere decipher script. I defined a couple of possible keylengths using the Kasiski method, using roughly this method: find recurring strings in the ciphertext between 3 and ...
225 views

### how to mathematically prove a key exchange algorithm [closed]

I want to know the basic methodology that can be used to prove that a key exchange algorithm is secure. I am not asking about any specific algorithm. I want to know what should be proven and how to ...
456 views

### How to attack a fixed LCG with partial output?

To show some colleague programmers exactly how broken C's rand() is (at least on Windows) I decided to break it. So everyone knows the exact parameters, MSVC's ...
854 views

### Why does Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme need a finite field?

I read ampersand's question "Necessity for finite field arithmetic and the prime number p in Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme", where he asked why Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme uses arithmetic in a ...
640 views

### Could one construct a cipher that is secure for friendly parties to use but insecure for hostile parties?

Consider the situation of a nation state (Blue) at war with another nation state (Red). Blue wants to deploy a secure cipher that blue currently can not break, but they are considered that Red could ...
977 views

### Why was the winner of the AES competition not a Feistel cipher?

The winner of the AES competition has a structure that does not qualify as a Feistel cipher, as explained in answers to this recent question. However, most many of the AES candidates, and all 3 out ...
105 views

### 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 ...
63 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 ...
74 views

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 - ...
270 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 ...
306 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 ...
165 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"?
654 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 ...
130 views

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.
607 views

### 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 ...
221 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 ...
607 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). ...
4k 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 $p$ ...
263 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 ...
318 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 ...
217 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 ...
67 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 ...
260 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 ...
371 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 ...
653 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? ...
850 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 ...
636 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 ...
584 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 ...
265 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 ...
106 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 ...
349 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 ...
466 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 ...
461 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 ...
338 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 ...
523 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 ...
319 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 ...