# All Questions

6k views

### Simple example for CP-ABE (Ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption)

I'm currently working on Ciphertext Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE). So far I'm only using it with a basic understanding how it actually works. Now I want to understand it a bit better, but ...
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### What work goes into creating new asymmetric cryptosystems?

It's seems to me that it is rather easy to create a symmetric encryption algorithm (though not necessarily a secure one). They're a dime a dozen. The number of asymmetric encryption algorithms ...
156 views

### How does $g$ being a generator imply Diffie-Hellman's correctness?

In the Diffie-Hellman protocol for key exchange over an unsecured channel, we choose $p$ and $g$, where $g$ is a generator of $\mathbf{Z}_p^*$. However I want to know why this assumption makes the ...
169 views

### Encryption of numeric value using playfair

I am studying in CSE and in my recent exam paper, A question was asked as: Construct a playfair cipher for Plaintext: semester5 and key:technology. Generally as we are taught yet, there is no ...
1k views

### Secure way to encrypt and decrypt a folder on Mac or Linux? [closed]

I am looking for a way to securely encrypt files on Mac and Debian. OpenSSL comes pre-installed on Mac OSX and Debian/Ubuntu. Therefore, is this a safe/recommended way of encrypting individual files? ...
111 views

### FEAL-4 Fk Function 4 Rounds

As I understood in FEAL-4 it needs 4 pair of round keys. Which means that we need to launch Fk function 4 times. My problem occurs starting the 2nd round. At the first round we have the original 64 ...
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### Separate keys for encryption and MAC? [duplicate]

I use HMAC(ciphertext)+ciphertext for authenticated encryption. The same key is used for both MAC and encryption. Is that right? Is using separate keys for MAC and encryption necessary or any good? ...
361 views

### Signing Files vs. Signing File Hashes

What are the security pitfalls that may occur by signing a list of file hashes, versus signing individual files? In short, the security trade-offs between: ...
29 views

### Looking for an adjustable compute bound decryption function

I'm looking for a way to decrypt data, but make it require varying amounts of CPU power to do so. Maybe this could be illustrated as e(m) = m' and ...
294 views

### Is there a format preserving cryptographically secure hash?

I want a way to 'scramble' strings (like words, names) in a predictable way but I don't ever want to (myself or anyone else) be able to 'unscramble' the strings. I found that perhaps what I am ...
112 views

### Is adaptive security the same as full security?

This question contains a great answer about adaptive security, but I haven't yet found a proper definition what full security is. Does a stronger security than adaptive security exist or are the two ...
382 views

### Does the size of a ECDSA key determine the hash algorithm?

I am a bit lost in understanding what I read on authentication, signature, etc. For instance, is the size of the ECDSA keys produced by ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -b 256 ...
223 views

### Will SHA1 or Other Hash Functions Ever Contain Quotes [closed]

I feel foolish asking this, but will the hash generated by SHA-1 or other encryption methods ever have the possibility of containing a quote? Or any other characters that may be escaped such as ", ', ...
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### Is the half-homomorphic property of RSA a problem for blind RSA signatures?

For blind RSA signatures, is it problematic that RSA is half-homomorph? Take a scenario where blind RSA signatures are used for something like a voting procedure or this proposal: Lots of people, ...
166 views

### Defence against timing attacks

I know this is a difficult subject but would a good defense against timing attacks be not sending a message if the decryption or authentication fails? So if the attacker provides a wrong HMAC for ...
138 views

### How difficult is it to get a key using simple XOR

Recently someone gave me an algorithm as follows: XOR = Key XOR Random1 XOR Random2. They think that in order for someone to extract "Key" from XOR they would need Random1 and Random2.. but looking ...
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### Find the prime factorization in the DLP

Suppose we have $g^x \equiv h \pmod N$ Where $N = pq$ and $p$, $q$ are distinct primes. Also $(p-1)/2$ and $(q-1)/2$ are primes. If we know what $x$, $g$ and $h$ are, is it possible for us to know ...
205 views

### How to compare between two cryptographic algorithms in terms of security? [closed]

How to compare between two cryptographic algorithms (e.g. SHA-1 and SipHash) in terms of security? That is, how could one prove that algorithm X is more secure than algorithm Y?
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### Multiple encryption of part of block

Is there any security risk in encrypting parts of blocks twice? I'd like to get around block sizes and make encrypted messages just as long as the unencrypted ones: Block 1: Byte 0 - 7 Block 2: Byte ...
39 views

### AES mode scheme feedback [duplicate]

I've been studying encryption on a hobby basis, and wanted to know if I got this basic cypher construction right (this is another experiment, see the AES ECB experiment thread earlier). Encryption: ...
137 views

### AES key from encrypted text and VI

So I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to extract the private key if you have the ciphertext and the IV corresponding to that ciphertext. It's for some kind of a challenge, and can't really ...
111 views

### AES different modulo operations

I don't get the modulo 10001 operation in mixColumns so much. If I have to take the byte computations mod 100011011 anyway what leads me to a result of 4byte length, why do I need the mod 10001 ...
159 views

### Vigenere ciphers : Need help for math analysis

I've been learning about Vigenere ciphers and then thought of another method to Encrypt and decrypt that. This's my method to encrypt : ...
548 views

### How do we compute IV+1 in CTR mode?

This may be a very simple question, but I have not found info about this in any place. My question is about CTR mode: When it says $IV+1$… How do we make this operation? For example, if I have the IV ...
2k views

### What is “Implicit Authentication”?

What is “Implicit Authentication” in the context of authentication methods? I searched the Web but could not find any article that describes this. If anyone can describe it, that would be a great ...
178 views

### What is the advantage of using the socialist millionaire protocol to authenticate vs HMACing some random number?

Say Alice and Bob have a shared secret $s$. Alice and Bob establish an encrypted channel and verify that it hasn't been MitM'ed by exchanging $r_1$ and $r_2$, where $r_1$ and $r_2$ are randomly ...
199 views

### Predicting Google Authenticator OTP Codes [closed]

I use Google Authenticator to generate OTP codes for logging in. As you know, the numbers change every 30 seconds or so, and (AFAIK) use an RSA key to generate those numbers. If someone were to ...
67 views

### Will the complement of a 64-bit key and message produce the complement ciphertext if ECB is used in DES?

Say I have a 64-bit message/key: P1: 1011....... K1: 0101....... I run this message/key pair through DES in ECB mode and obtain some cipher that looks like the ...
68 views

### Recombination thresholds in degree reduction of multiplied Shamir shares

Shamir's secret sharing can be considered multiplicatively homomorphic, if one is aware of the fact that multiplying two shares of a (n,t)-threshold shared secret yields a share of the same secret, ...
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### Is format preserving encryption suitable for use with words or names?

Is it possible to use FPE to encrypt names and language words like 'Bob' 'the' 'tree', in order to preserve both length and format (like keeping characters within a certain range like A-Z a-z) The ...
492 views

### ccrypt and its security

I would like to know how secure is ccrypt to encrypt files (like images, videos and other non-plain text data) using single password of 20+ chars length. It uses Rijndael with 256-bit block size and ...
27k views

### How does RSA signature verification work?

I understand how the RSA algorithm works for encryption and decryption purposes but I don't get how signing is done. Here's what I (think) I know and is common practice: If I have a message that I ...
336 views

### Drawback of ElGamal encryption

I am trying to find out some disadvantages of ElGamal cryptography but I'm not able to figure out what's wrong with the algorithm. The only one I found is that a known-plain text attack is possible in ...
201 views

### How does ccrypt work?

On many Linux/GNU distributions CCrypt (ccrypt) by Peter Selinger is available as a command line utility to encrypt files. How does the protocol work and is it ...
71 views

### Are there cryptographic schemes that mask as unencrypted traffic?

Are there cryptographic schemes that make encrypted traffic look like unencrypted traffic?
172 views

### Possible hashing scheme

Plaintext(binary) : 10101100 //very short for easy understanding Suppose we have 4 predefined schemes/functions, rotate (101 -> 011) flip (1101 -> 1011) exchange (11011 -> 10111) stretch (1100 -> ...
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### Why would cryptography fall apart if there were a finite number of primes? [closed]

I vaguely know that prime numbers are very important in cryptography, but I assume for most encryption methods, they tend to stay rather 'small'. Are we really using massive prime numbers for ...
675 views

### How secure is it to use password as AES key?

I am developing a steganography app where user encrypt any file into an audio file. The user can enter a password to protect the hidden data. The same password is converted as a 256 bit key and the ...
142 views

### How obvious is it to decrypt numerics encrypted with a reused one time pad?

For instance say you encrypt text using the one time pad and you end up with some scrambled text that appears illegible. If you reused the key for multiple times for enough text, someone could ...
160 views

### What are the well known protocols that offer perfect forward secrecy? [closed]

As far as I know these are the well known protocols that offer PFS TLS/SSL (with DHE-RSA, DHE-DSS, ECDHE-RSA or ECDHE-ECDSA) SSH (RFC4253) OTR (Protocol Version 3 Spec) IPsec (with IKEv1 and IKEv2) ...
140 views

### Is there any existing cipher capable of scaling from a 1 bit key up to a one-time-pad?

We have ciphers that handle small amounts of entropy, such as a 256 bit key for AES; and we have one time pads for enciphering 1:1 entropy, such as a 1GB key for a 1GB file if you could ever harvest ...
2k views

### Shannon confusion and diffusion concept

I read the document(not the whole document) from Shannon where he speaks about the concepts of confusion and diffusion. I read in many places(not in the document but around the internet) that ...
291 views

### Multiple keys for the same ciphertext [duplicate]

Say you have a plain text: How are you today? and you encrypt it so it becomes: LKD03Loel03skj1Q03 Now you have multiple people that need to know the plain text of this cipher text but ...
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I am currently working on my diploma project, a high security NFC door lock and need to exchange very sensible data. That's why I thought of PGP encryption, which is as far as I know one of the ...
549 views

### Differences between Work Factor and Time Complexity

I am interested to know if work factor means the same thing as time complexity. Quoting Work Factor : Uncovering keys in cryptosystems The Work Factor of a cryptosystem is related to its ...
343 views

### Are there any known weaknesses with ElGamal algorithm?

I am working on a messaging system and plan to use ElGamal asymmetric encryption to protect the message contents during storage and transmission. (This would be in addition to TLS used during ...
169 views

### Zero Knowledge Non Interactive Proof with random oracle

I am trying to write an assay about Non Interactive Zero-Knowledge proofs and would like to take the simple discrete logarithm problem example fallowing the Feige-Fiat-Shamir heuristics. I understand ...
2k views

### How exactly is “true randomness” defined in the realms of cryptography?

Especially in relation to stream ciphers, I frequently read about (sometimes theoretical, sometimes practical) attacks that are able to "distinguish a ciphertext from a truly random stream". What's ...