# All Questions

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### What is the motivation behind Key-policy Attribute-based Encryption?

What is Attribute Based Encryption? has a nice explanation what both forms (Ciphertext-policy Attribute-based Encryption and Key-policy Attribute-based Encryption) are. My question is: what is the ...
140 views

### Empty message Hash length

I am learning Hash Algorithms and in a presentation (PDF) about these algorithms I read that: Length of $h(m)$ much shorter then length of $m$. Now my question is: What if we talk about an ...
90 views

### Familiar key signing over video call

Say that a friend of mine and I have both generated new PGP keys, and we want to use a video call to verify each other's new keys because we live on opposite sides of the planet. While we could both ...
195 views

### Encrypting the same message using different schemes

$E_1$ and $E_2$ are IND-CPA secure encryption schemes. $E$ is defined as: $k_1,k_2 \leftarrow K_1 \times K_2$ . $E_{k_1,k_2}(m) \leftarrow E_{1,k_1}(m)||E_{2,k_2}(m)$. Hope the notations are in an ...
467 views

### Is the term “Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem” a misnomer?

I have just started studying Elliptic Curve Cryptography, and I have this doubt. In ECC the group operation is addition (and not multiplication). So, why is ECDLP stated as a variation of the discrete ...
2k views

### Certificate signature with SHA-1 and RSA: where do 1888 bits come from?

Plenty of X.509 Certificates use "PKCS#1 SHA1 with RSA encryption" as the Certificate Signature Algorithm for generating a 2048-bit signature. The SHA-1 hash function generates a hash value of 160 ...
412 views

### How can we sign a contract digitally between two parties?

I'm trying to sign a contract with another party, without using handwritten signatures. I've just read through Applied Cryptography, but there doesn't seem to be a protocol that can solve this ...
455 views

### Random numbers for Rabin-Miller primality tests

I've implemented a Rabin-Miller primality test fuction following Wikipedia and the book Applied Cryptography. Now I'm using it for generating primes with a string seed. The book suggests the following ...
3k 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 ...
144 views

### What is the impact of different modes on pseudo randomness of AES?

AES in CBC-MAC mode is proven to be good PRF . But is there any study done on other modes ? how good is ECB mode as PRF ?
185 views

### Speed up modular exponentation with fixed base and modulus

Can someone explain, how $a^x \mod N$ can be speeded up, when $a$ and $N$ are known constants? How big is the gain and what resources are needed? https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/05/10/...
142 views

### Are there any practical examples of breaking a system using linear attacks?

I've read some papers about linear cryptanalysis. But since I am going to give a lecture about it I am looking for an example of breaking a system using this attack. Is there such an example available?...
610 views

### OFB or CTR mode without an IV

I'm reading the SSL specs here. The interesting thing seems to be that RC4 is not re-keyed with a new IV for each message. The stream cipher state is simply carried over to the next record. Why is ...
448 views

### What does the linear assumption over bilinear groups mean?

In the abstract of "Cryptography with Tamperable and Leaky Memory", at the end of the 3rd paragraph, the authors say: In both schemes we rely on the linear assumption over bilinear groups. What ...
666 views

### LFSR using words

If I've got an LFSR, let's say a 16-bit Fibonacci LFSR as shown in the corresponding wikipedia article, which generates maximum length sequences, could I use it to create word sequences instead of bit ...
131 views

### How do these figures represent a boolean function?

In the Wikipedia article "Bent functions", there are some figures representing those Bent functions: How do these figures represent a boolean function ?
426 views

### What kind of machine can generate 100-400 digits prime number? RSA

The 64 bit machine's biggest number can be 2^63 (9,223,372,036,854,775,807). So what kind of a monstrous machine can generate 100-400 digits prime number? I probably don't understand something, so ...
844 views

### Is scrypt a hashing function, encryption, or PBKDF?

I have installed a python implementation of scrypt and noticed it has several functions, both an encrypt and hash function. Yet Wikipedia lists it as being used for PBKDF instead of PBKDF2. Is scrypt ...
291 views

### What is the intuition behind AES or SPN?

I'm new to cryptography and have just encountered AES and SPN. I would like to know how the S-box, permutation step and the MixColumn step help improve security. It seems to me (perhaps mistakenly) ...
415 views

### Please punch holes in this authentication scheme

Folks, I am undertaking a crypto course in Uni. Our professor asked us to try and design some authentication schemes which are resistant to active attacks. This was just a in class exercise to get us ...
136 views

### Is it dangerous to use plaintext as IV in CBC?

Is it dangerous to use plaintext as IV in CBC? For example: I want to encrypt $p1$, $p2$ with CBC. However I use $p2$ as the IV for CBC purposes. What would be the risk of not using a IV based on ...
120 views

### Recasting randomly generated numbers to other widths

Suppose I have a list of randomly generated uint_8's, uniform over the whole range of uint_8. I write them into a file as raw ...
176 views

### Can stream ciphers (usually) be “run backwards”?

Is it possible to reconstruct the previous output bits of a stream cipher, e.g. RC4, when only the current state is known, or is that computationally hard, or even impossible (due to ambiguous ...
287 views

### How to renew keys for a statically-encrypted database

Preamble Before I ask this question, please accept that I fully understand that 'rolling your own' is never a good idea, and that I am a relative n00b. The only reason I am doing this the way I am is ...
1k views

### Security of cloud computational protocols in UC Framework?

The universal composability allows one to the analyze security of cryptographic protocols . But it does have some gaps when it comes to analyzing few protocols especially two party cases when there is ...
715 views

### Identification of correct plaintext after decryption in Rabin cryptosystem

In the Rabin cryptosystem, decrypting a message can produce four different outputs, of which only one is the correct plaintext. How can one know which of the outputs is the correct one?
232 views

### Alice's forgetful banking

Alice has a bank account number, but has forgotten which bank it is for. There are 4 banks, run by Bob, Carlos, David, and Eve. She could find out by going to all of the banks and asking if they have ...
453 views

### Encrypting and MACing different data with same key

It's a well-known best practice to not use one key to both encrypt and MAC data. In my application, there are instances where I MAC a piece of data without having encrypted it first. Do I still need a ...
262 views

### What is the fastest elliptic curve operation f(P) in affine coordinates such that f^n(P)=P only if n is large?

I'm working with the affine representations of points of the Secp256k1 elliptic curve (from Bitcoin). I've read many papers that show that computing some functions, like $f(P)=3P$ can be computed ...
848 views

### What is a fair exchange scheme?

The Wikipedia entry Fair exchange has only two lines, and the only paper I can find describing such a protocol is extremely complicated. Is this a new field in cryptology or can someone give an ...
145 views

### Does knowledge of original file size provide a cryptographic weakness?

I'm encrypting files using an AES-256 CBC cipher and an SHA-256 HMAC every 64KB in the file. Since AES CBC needs an amount of input bytes to be divisible by 16, I use PKCS#7 padding to bring the ...
367 views

### Many consecutive hashes to slow down brute force attack?

I've heard that hash algorithms like bcrypt are more secure because they take longer to complete, and therefore take much longer to brute force, without a ...
149 views

### AES Message Authentication Vulnerability

My securities instructor recently posed this question to the class and I am bending my brain in half trying to figure it out. Suppose $y_1 = AES(K, x_1)$ and $y_2 = AES(K,x_2)$, and suppose you ...
191 views

### How comparable is OFB to a one-time pad?

This is a rather trivial question, I just want to see if I get the concept right. In OFB you generate a pseudorandom stream based on some nonce, and you XOR that with the message to get the ...
347 views

### How to efficiently generate a stream of independent, but biased random bits?

Usually, in cryptography, one is interested in debiasing a stream of independent (true) random bits, and several algorithms exist to do this. What about the converse? Let's assume I have a stream of ...
379 views

### Is semantic security important in a hybrid cryptosystem?

RSA doesn't provide semantic security when used unmodified, and neither does the commonly used PKCS#1 v.1.5 padding scheme for encryption. Is this a problem for hybrid cryptosystems at all? My ...
208 views

### Need for Twin Elgamal encryption

What is the need for two private/public keys in twin elgamal? I'm relatively new and would need some help.
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Say I have ...
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### AES key expansion vs. a hash

Is there something special about the AES key expansion algorithm that makes it secure, or it is a compromise between security and speed? For example, say with a key I expand it by taking pbkdf2(key) ...
834 views

### Why is an Encrypt-and-MAC scheme with deterministic MAC not IND-CPA secure?

I'm preparing myself to exam, but I have a lot of troubles with rigorous proofs. It's the task from two-years ago exam. At the bottom I reminded one definition. Let $(Gen_E,Enc,Dec)$ be an IND-CPA-...
576 views

### What is the strength of unpadded RSA?

I would like to use unpadded RSA for homomorphic encryption in a toy P2P game, for things like fair coin flips and shuffling. How many bits of security does unpadded RSA have, in relation to its key ...
354 views

### Why does .NET's ECB mode implementation append a constant block to my ciphertext?

Consider the following code and output: ...
1k views

### Can we trust digital signatures?

Consider that Alice wants to send a digitally signed message to Bob. Mallory might be able to publish his public key under Alice's name and then impersonate Alice to send a message with an apparently ...
548 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 ...
212 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 ...
2k views

### How to sign a message using RSA?

Assuming I already have a D, P, Q, etc of an RSA key: How do I now sign a message? If it matters – the message is around 100 bits. I don't know much about cryptography, but I can get these numbers ...
2k views

### Symmetric vs. Asymmetric cryptographic approaches to data security

I know the basic differences between Symmetric vs. Asymmetric cryptography, but I'd love to know more details: Exactly why is the asymmetric approach slower than the symmetric? Why does it make ...
80 views

Suppose you need to authenticate yourself to a program with the password - but the program's source code is public, the program doesn't have access to any private information and all your ...