All Questions

836 views

Why are the outputs of the md5sum tool and Crypto++'s MD5 different?

Could you please tell me what is the difference of coreutils' md5sum and sha*sum tools (...
3k views

Multiple private keys for single public key

I am currently working in security in mobile ad-hoc networks. I have several clusters, and I want to send some data encrypted with its public key, from the cluster head to the cluster members. I ...
295 views

PBKDF2 for login key, scrypt for encryption key

I need to derive two keys from a single password client side. One for in-browser login, the other for encryption. Is the following secure ? ...
187 views

Why is C_digest defined in PKCS#11?

Digesting doesn't require any key and can be performed on the client side. Why does the PKCS#11 token interface standard have a C_digest method? For example, why should I send my data to a PKCS11 HSM ...
117 views

What aspect of elliptic curve encryption paradigms makes them especially susceptible to quantum based attack algorithms?

This was a statement made during a talk at today's DFN-CERT conference but unfortunately it wasn't explained further. Can anyone shed light on why elliptic curves are susceptible to quantum based ...
486 views

How to choose an algorithm

I have some understanding of Cryptography and I would like to know if there is a tool or website to help me choose an algorithm based on my own needs (I'm being vague in purpose). I'm looking for a ...
58 views

Reduction of a modular exponentiation's base does not change the result

Can anyone help me to prove this property used in the RSA correctness theorem? $a^b\bmod{n}\equiv (a\bmod{n})^b\bmod{n}$ Specifically, here is what I have done: this is what i mean. i can't ...
184 views

RSA Key composition

I'm trying to figure out how it is composed the RSA key. Follow what I know : For a RSA 2048, 2048 is the bit length of the module. The public key is composed by $(e,M)$ when $e$ is the public ...
149 views

ECDSA Public key randomness

If I have a 256bit ECDSA public key how likely is it that the same public key will be generated by another person. Will it take on average 2^256 tries to generate same public key? If I xor the first ...
4k views

AES GCM vs other encryption modes in embedded environment for network traffic

I'm doing a lot of research since I'm doing an internship for a company where I need to upgrade their security level. Their own protocol needs a cryptographic upgrade and I'm leaning towards AES since ...
117 views

168 views

Is the result of HMAC-sha256 distinguishable from random noise?

Is if the result of HMAC-sha256 distinguishable from random noise? If so, given: a collection of 1000 keys, and 1000 messages of random noise, 100 signed by each of only 10 of those keys Can ...
213 views

Reducing size of hash function

If I have some data I hash with SHA256 as hash=SHA256(data) and then copy only the first 8 bytes of the hash instead of the whole 32 bytes. How easy is it to find a ...
231 views

AES ECB experiment

Generally speaking, ECB mode shouldn't be used. ECB seems to be more of a basic building block than anything else. Because I thought it would be interesting to experiment with encryption (this method ...
118 views

Schnorr's identication protocol

Schnorr's identification protocol is said to be a honest verifier zero knowledge protocol. Does it imply it will not work if the verifier is dishonest? I'm wondering if this is the case, it would ...
184 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 ...
166 views

Linear Recurrence, keystreams, and periods

I am trying to understand the following problem: Consider the following linear recurrence over $Z_2$ of degree four: $z_{i+4} = (z_{i+3} + z_{i+2} + z_{i+1} + z_{i}) \bmod 2$ i >= 0. ...
77 views

Hill Cipher the point of a known plaintext attack question

Is the point of a known plaintext attack on a Hill Cipher to get the matrix key?
394 views

Substitution-permutation network

Can anyone in 6th grade English explain the steps in the Substitution-permutation network algorithm or just point a link that does so? (which is included in many of the top modern algorithms) ...
574 views

Why don't PyCrypto and M2Crypto produce the same result as OpenSSL here (AES-128 ECB)

If I run the following, for openSSL: echo -n "0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef" | openssl aes-128-ecb -nosalt -nopad | xxd and enter the key "YELLOW SUBMARINE", ...
3k views

Is CAST5 still a secure algorithm to use?

I just installed GnuPG for Windows. The documentation says the default symmetric cipher is CAST5. In PGP also, default cipher was CAST5. Is CAST5 secure to use? Any known attacks reported on this ...
98 views

Anonymisation resilient to key leak

Problem statement Elbonian citizens have been issued a card holding a random $B_j\in\{0,1\}^b$, $0\le j<2^n$, $b\ge n+20$ (representative example $b=64$, $n=28$). The habit has grown to use this ...
380 views

Convert numeric message from RSA ciphertext to alphabetic

I have a set of numeric values that are supposed to represent a message encoded via textbook RSA. For example: 60889 37946 13359 61629 35960 13747 I've decrypted ...
150 views

Figure out the encryption being used [closed]

There is a web API (for a game) that sends and receives data encrypted in hex format. I'm interested in accessing the api outside of the game client (mobile app). When sending a request with an ...
175 views

Why would using a random seed with other variables be bad for ecrypting if you can't guess the key?

I asked this on stack exchange with it being code based, but someone suggested to ask here. Basically, I've done a script in python and wanted an option to encrypt the input, but I couldn't get any ...
106 views

Hash “Preimage by product” resistance

Let H() be a hash function that achieves collision resistance as well as first and second preimage resistance. Let's equip the output set of H of a multiplicative group structure, more precisely a ...
103 views

Implications of reversing CBC encryption

What would be the security implications if we reverse CBC encyption? Here is a picture of CBC encryption: Here is a picture of CBC decryption: My guess is that the encryption would work if we ran ...
257 views

LUKS multiple key slots - what's the intuition?

LUKS volumes have the ability to allow multiple independently usable passwords, as explained here: [https://code.google.com/p/cryptsetup/wiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions] The intuition behind basic ...
109 views

What is the polynomial to use in the Massey-Omura cryptosystem?

The Massey-Omura cryptosystem uses "multiplication over the finite field $GF(2^n)$. I'm just starting understand the idea of multiplying polynomials and I've searched for online calculators to use for ...
157 views

Crypto hash function vs encryption algorithms

Why is a cryptographic hash function generally faster to execute in software than conventional encryption algorithms such as DES?
125 views

What are the computational benefits of primes close to the power of 2?

Recently I was reading some article about the Bernstein's Curve25519. This is a particular Montgomery curve over $\mathbb{F}_q$ where $q = {2^{255}-19}$. What I missed or was unable to understand is ...
75 views

76 views

Crack RSA with additional information [duplicate]

Suppose $N=3953$, Alice encryption key is $e_A = 337$ and bobs is $e_B=23$. Eve happens to know the corresponding decryption keys, $d_A=3385$ and $d_B=2663$. Can I use this information to find the ...
180 views

ECIES with AES-GCM

The Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES) describes how to derive a "temporal" key, encrypt a message (eg. using AES) and creating a MAC. However, from my understanding using AES in GCM ...