All Questions

2k views

How do digital certificates work, and why is it not possible to reverse engineer one from a signed file?

Digital certificates are used quite commonly these days, for signing files. They are used by various operating systems to ensure reliability and security. For example, Android requires that each of ...
4k views

What are the benefits of the two permutation tables in DES?

Why do we use a permutation table in the first step of DES algorithm and one at the end of algorithm?
311 views

Sorry if this is a noob questions, but I finally figured out how to implement the Tiny Encryption Algorithm in C++. My question is what to do about padding the key and the plaintext? I know that ...
207 views

Looking for cipher that uses one ciphertext

I'm new to Cryptography so please free to edit my question for clarity and add the appropriate tag. I'm trying to research if the following is possible. Suppose John has a message that he ...
131 views

Separate Read and Write Keys in TLS Key Material

Why does the TLS protocol use different symmetric keys for receiving and sending data? Isn't it enough to have a single key used for both reading and writing?
79 views

Incorporating known ciphertext into new message

Which ciphers $c_k$ enable one to define a joining function $f_{c,k}$ such that: $$f_{c,k}(c_k(p_1), p_2) = c_k(p_1 + p_2)$$ That is, the result of joining some known ciphertext $c_k(p_1)$ with a ...
393 views

How to represent a 32-byte SHA2 hash in the shortest possible string?

I'm calculating a SHA2 hash of a certain sensitive key value. I need to store files on disk using this hash a directory path prefix. So lets say I hash the key value 150023, I get a 32-byte value ...
168 views

MD5 implementation doubt

In MD5, there are four rounds. After every round, why do we need to add the computed Q values to the initial values and then take this value as input to the next round. For example after the first ...
239 views

Does ShaCrypt have the properties which make BCrypt slow on GPUs?

Sha256Crypt / Sha512Crypt are designed based on ideas of BCrypt but use SHA instead of Blowfish because of political requirements. The Sha*Crypt algorithms have the advantage that they are used in ...
350 views

Verilog simulation & synthesis of Diffie-Hellman key exchange

Is there any freely available verilog implementaion of Diffie-Hellman key exchange? I couldn't find anything using google. So, assuming its not there I started implementing on my own. The code is ...
333 views

What's the reason for applying the hash twice when hashing with salt?

One of the typical approaches to computing a salted hash is this: hash(salt+hash(secret)) where hash is something like SHA-256 hash function - taking any size ...
228 views

Does a hash function in chaining mode or in counter mode make a better pseudo-random number generator?

I have two pseudorandom generators: $f_1$ takes a random seed $l_0||r_0$ $\in \{0,1\}^{160}$ as input and outputs $r_1||r_2|| \dots ||r_k$, where $l_i||r_i = \operatorname{SHA-1}(l_{i-1}||r_{i-1})$ ...
191 views

Attack vectors introduced by compilers

I have a question about attacks on the implementation of cryptographic code that are enabled by compilation and compiler-optimisations. I am aware of this. Would anyone be able to point me to other ...
773 views

Which attacks can be avoided by the use of OFB instead of ECB?

For a file encryption program, I was told to use Output Feedback mode (OFB) instead of ECB (Electronic code book) mode. Which attacks can I avoid by this choice?
169 views

How hard is to find the operators of an addition knowing the sum of them?

I want to learn whether or no there is a cryptographic primitive,scheme assumption that is based on the following hard problem if it is hard . By hard we mean that we have a polynomial adversary: The ...
140 views

Idea for secure password hash-likes, is this feasible/usable/workable?

(Hand moved from stackoverflow.com,due to suggestion) Since breaking password hashes has become a new passtime for scriptkiddies, I thought of the problem and came up with a novel(?) idea. store ...
642 views

CBC - a canonical mode, even though there are streaming modes

Why is CBC considered the canonical mode when there are streaming modes available such as CFB and OFB? One thing that I can think of is that in CBC you can easliy do range-based decryption. All you ...
153 views

How does DJB's nistp224 manage to fit compressed points into 224 bits?

DJB's nistp224 program purports to be an implementation of elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman relative to the standard NIST P-224 elliptic curve. To the best of my ...
140 views

Proof of work scheme with one and only one correct answer

I need a problem that has one and only one solution, such that the solution is hard to find but easy to verify. I need to be able to generate the problem deterministically from a random seed. So ...
171 views

Do these 2 KSA shortcuts weaken RC4?

Alice securely gives Bob a secret key so they can exchange 10 different messages encrypted with RC4. (Messages will include a counter for uniqueness and a MAC for authentication.) For each message ...
954 views

How can 3DES encryption use decryption in the middle step?

I have been reading about the 3DES algorithm and I cannot understand one part. In 3DES we do following operation: $$C=E[K_3,D[K_2,E[K_1,P]]].$$ Where $C$ is ciphertext, $P$ is plaintext, $E$ is DES ...
378 views

File Encryption/Decryption in ECB mode [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Removing Padded Value in Decrypted Message I tried to encrypt and decrypt a file in ECB mode using AES Algorithm but I encountered one problem during decryption, I don't ...
113 views

How can I protect against the failure of a block or symmetric cipher?

Can I protect against the failure of a block or symmetric cipher by chaining different techniques together? If so what implementation details should I be aware of? Are some combination of ciphers ...
249 views

K out of N encryption

A friend just showed me how to combine padlocks to achieve a lock that opens when k out of n people turn their keys. I was ...
339 views

OpenPGP Signature Packet hashed data

RFC 4880 describes the version 4 signature packet, tag 2, as ...
189 views

Using compression to test encryption

Is the uncompressibility of encrypted data a necessary property for a good cryptographic algorithm? To make a crude experiment, I encrypted an 8K file with all 'A' and then compressed both the ...
722 views

“Signing” with public key

For this question, the following caveats and assumptions hold: There exists a 2048-bit RSA key pair used exclusively for signing/verification The private key is kept completely private There exists ...
209 views

Is this streamable combination of encryption and MAC secure?

I want to combine encryption and MAC. For encryption I use AES-256 with CBC and PKCS5Padding. For MAC I use HmacSHA512. I use the Encrypt-then-Mac approach (calculate MAC over the ciphertext and ...
951 views

How to get the keyword from a keyword cipher?

I was given a ciphertext and now I am trying to break it via looking for the keyword. This is a keyword cipher. So: PlainEnglish: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ If ...
3k views

In the SHA hash algorithm, why is the message always padded?

In the SHA hash algorithm the message is always padded, even if initially the correct length without padding; the padding is of the form "1" followed by the necessary number of 0s. Why is it ...
518 views

Replay attack prevention under strict conditions

Say I have a request-response protocol and the task to make it immune to replay attacks. The requirements are as follows: The defense mechanism cannot rely on the clocks of the parties. The defense ...
122 views

When to prefer exchanging cryptographic certificates over exchanging only public keys?

Let's think of the following case: A group of peers want to exchange messages with each other. They use public-key cryptography to sign and encrypt messages. Anyone with any name can join the ...
1k views

Is every output of a hash function possible?

Is every output of a hash function (e.g. SHA1, MD5, etc) guaranteed to be possible, or, conversely, are there any output values that cannot possibly be created from any input? If so, what guarantees ...
174 views

Safely use CryptSignAndEncryptMessage?

I am developing an application that sends messages which I want to encrypt and sign. The CryptoApi offers a function called CryptSignAndEncryptMessage. The description says, what this function ...
517 views

Why are MACs in general deterministic, whereas digital signature constructions are randomized?

The fact is I'm not quite sure if my question statement is true, however all the MAC constructions I know of (e.g. CBC-MAC, CMAC, HMAC) are deterministic, whereas many constructions for digital ...
478 views

are CFB and OFB really meant for streaming?

CFB, OFB and other modes are meant for streaming and don't require padding. Are there still limitations such as the text needs to be greater than key length?
508 views

How can one sign with NTRU?

I am looking at implementing NTRU, but I noticed that while the encryption/decryption algorithm seems to be mature and well-documented, there is comparatively little information about how to sign ...
381 views

Is quantum key distribution safe against MITM attacks too?

i read this recently: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12786-quantum-cryptography-to-protect-swiss-election.html and some parts of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution ...
70 views

Cryptographic Algorithm/Protocol needed

I am trying to achieve the following: Encrypted files are stored on users filesystem. The user uses my client to authenticate against a server. Once he is authenticated successfully he gets a token ...
71 views

Applying multiple hash functions to improve security? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Guarding against cryptanalytic breakthroughs: combining multiple hash functions I'm a total newb to cryptography but after reading what I've read about it, I had a ...
2k views

What alphanumeric string length can be used to guarantee no hash collisions from CRC-64?

If I'm hashing alphanumeric strings (chars in the set 0-9, a-...
3k views

How can SSL secure a two-way communication with only one key-pair?

As I understand it, SSL involved the use of a public-private key pair. How does this enable two-way communication? Suppose I have some server with which I wish to communicate securely. I connect to ...
2k views

In which order are the round keys used during AES decryption?

In the Add Round Key step in AES decryption, which part of the expanded key will I XOR first to the result of the SubBytes step? Is it the 10th round key? For example, is this the right order? ...
161 views

RSA/DSA: Wouldn't it make sense to sign using decoding the data hash?

Why is encoding using the private key used for signing? Wouldn't it make sense to keep the premise, that private is for decoding and public is for encoding? i.e. create a hash and threat it as a ...
128 views

Standard symbol / notation for “x knows y”, or the inverse

What's the standard way to express "$x$ knows about $y$", or "$x$ has no knowledge of $y$" in cryptographic notation? Example (PRNG predictor): \$\exists f : P(f(G(k)|_{0..n}) = G(k)|_{n+1}) \geq 0.5 ...
311 views

How can encryption involve randomness?

If an encryption algorithm is meant to convert a string to another string which can then be decrypted back to the original, how could this process involve any randomness? Surely it has to be ...
333 views

Complexity of ECB and OFB

What is the complexity of ECB in terms of Time and Memory? and also in OFB? I can't find it in the internet, so I decided to ask it in here.
343 views

After implementing a novel encryption algorithm, how would one go about analyzing its security or get help from others in doing so?

Preface: This question was originally asked on Theoretical Computer Science and later on Computer Science. The kind people on cstheory.SE referred me to this web site. It is being repeated here in an ...