# All Questions

127 views

### Prime factors of non-random keys

I have been working on a challenge i found on the internet. It is as follows: You've stumbled onto a significant vulnerability in a commonly used cryptographic library. It turns out that the ...
77 views

### Convincing “someone” on the (in)validity of DH tuple without revealing $u,v$

Is there a way of convincing someone on (in)validity of Diffie Hellman tuple $<g, g^u, g^v, g^{w}>$ without giving away $u,v$. or at least solve the Decisional Diffie Hellman Problem without ...
4k views

### Why is H(k||x) not a secure MAC construction?

If H(m) is a secure hash function, can't we implement a MAC using H(k||m)? However, it seems the more widely used MACs, such as NMAC and HMAC (both originally defined in Keying hash functions for ...
138 views

### Is script execution time a decent source of pseudorandom number generation?

This is for a PHP script for password generation. Naturally there are other things being calculated before the password is generated. But I figure the time it takes for the script to initialize and ...
70 views

### Why don't we use H(m||k) as a MAC? [duplicate]

HMAC seems a bit complicated. Why can't we use $H(m||k)$ as a MAC? Unlike $H(k||m)$, length extension attacks won't work. Is there some other obvious attack?
1k views

### NTRU crypto from unseen.is; myth busting help

I am always on the look out for privacy enhancing technologies. I stumbled upon the service from unseen.is. I had a look at their site (specifically here) and even though I lack knowledge there are a ...
165 views

### Can I use asymmetric encryption for more powerful write-protection?

I have a game that I am developing which uses a locally-stored internal database. It does not matter to me whether a user can read the file (which, to me, means I don't need a symmetric cipher), but I ...
392 views

### Why does CTR mode XOR the plaintext into the output of the block cipher rather than XORing the plaintext into the input of the block cipher?

As I understand it, CTR mode essentially turns a block cipher into a stream cipher like so: ...
198 views

### Is it meaningful to consider the leakage of master key of KGC?

In the Identity-based cryptography, the user's private key in the systems is delivered by the key generation center(KGC). My question is : Is it meaningful to consider the leakage of master key of ...
924 views

### Questions about OAEP for RSA

I have two questions about OAEP for RSA. How are the number of bits to pad with 0 chosen? For example, if I'm sending a 255 byte message with RSA-2048 I have 8 unused bits (1 byte). Should I split ...
2k views

### OpenSSL PBKDF2 documentation

I'm using OpenSSL 0.9.8 on OSX Maverick, and I want to use a PBKDF but I can't find any doc/man about it on OpenSSL's website. I'm working on QCA, an OpenSSL wrapper for Qt, and when I arrived there ...
2k views

### How does TLS generate the shared secret?

From many readings, I got to know that TLS generates master shared secrets using pre-master keys and uses the DH algorithm to generate the shared secret/Master secret. What values during the hello ...
66 views

### Machine Learning with Encryption [duplicate]

Machine Learning is sometimes associated with cryptography. Many of such cross field studies have been majorly done in use of machine learning for cryptanalysis/decryption. I am interested in knowing ...
240 views

### Frequency of letters change by the length of the texts?

In terms of the frequency of letters, how is it possible to have different frequent letters when the length of the text I'm analyzing is shorter? At the moment, I'm comparing the frequencies of a ...
346 views

### Check the validity of a rsa key pair with only the public key? [duplicate]

I am currently developing a messaging application that uses rsa end to end encryption. The client generates permanent rsa keys, and sends the public key to my server for account management. As it ...
71 views

### If $G'(s)=G(s0^{|s|})$ and $G$ is a PRNG, is $G'$ necessarily a PRNG? [closed]

I argue it is because there should be no more correlation between the outputs $G(s0^{|s|})$ than between the outputs $G(s)$. Thus we can say the $G'(s)$ is a PRNG that satisfies $|G'(s)| \geq 4|s|$. ...
112 views

### Which data to share in CTR mode?

Suppose I've got two clients $A$ and $B$. Client $A$ encrypts data in CTR (Counter) mode to get a ciphertext. What information will client $B$ have to receive from $A$ to decrypt the ciphertext? Just ...
119 views

### Need Help Reversing my Encryption Algorithm [closed]

So I wrote a simple encryption algorithm (Not very secure, just a starting point. I don't want criticism on it.) and I have been having trouble finding a way to decrypt the text. The algorithm is here ...
164 views

### File Encryption (EFS method)

I'm implementing (for learning purposes) a file encryptor, which uses the following method (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypting_File_System). I have 3 kind of keys: RSA public/private, AES ...
213 views

### Derive both MAC and AES keys from same PBKDF2?

When doing password-based encryption, is it OK to create one instance of PBKDF2 from the password, and then use it to create both the AES key and the MAC key? (Or should a new instance of PBKDF2 be ...
10k views

### Where i can find an AES implementation in python?

Where i can find a "reviewed" version of AES implementation in python. Not an API like PyCrypto whereby you can call AES algorithms in a single line.
409 views

### Using RSA key pair for file encryption

I'm looking for a way to perform encrypted nightly backups of a server I administer, without storing the decryption key on the server. A form of PK encryption seems ideal for this, as I can store the ...
87 views

### Determine the iteration times using Pollard's rho Method for factoring

Let's say, we have a large number $n=181937053$ and $f(x)=x^2+1$. And also we know that $n=12391 \times 14683$. The problem is that ,using Pollard rho method, can we find the algorithm iteration ...
2k views

### How to calculate the time it'll take to crack RSA or DH?

Sometimes the easiest way to describe security of a type of cryptography is to say that "the time it takes to solve for an x-bit key would be y years". How would one go about doing such a calculation ...
932 views

### Why Elliptic curve cryptography are not popular in practice

RSA and ElGamal can be implemented using the technique of Elliptic curves. I am confused on why the it seems that Elliptic curves are not so popular in cryptographic applications since they provide ...
519 views

### Z*p Generator (Cyclic Group) in java

I am trying to implement ElGamal in java without using the in-built libraries. The problem occurs when I am trying to find the generators of the number(in this case 11). Everything works perfectly ...
771 views

### ElGamal signature without calculating the inverse

I stumbled upon this question in some textbook. Propose a variant of ElGamal signature scheme such that there is no need to calculate the inverse $k^{-1}$ as it is usually done using the EEA. ...
305 views

### ElGamal signature - exploiting fallacious implementation

This question is related to ElGamal signature scheme as defined here ElGamal signature without calculating the inverse Show how one could exploit an implementation ElGamal signature scheme in which ...
377 views

### Mapping between subgroups and the integers

This question is a companion to the equivalent question on elliptic curves. Preliminaries Diffie-Hellman, Elgamal, DSA, etc. are examples of protocols that work in the integers modulus a large prime ...