# All Questions

583 views

### Hash functions throughput performance [closed]

Without taking into account security, which hash function is the fastest one among the following: MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2 (for various internal size), Keccak, and other… ?
169 views

### Curve parameter for hyperelliptic curve cryptography?

RFC5639 defines some curve parameter for Elliptic curve cryptography. Aren't there any curve parameter database for Hyperelliptic curve cryptography? What I can only find was that written in this ...
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### Who's talking to who encryption - does this concept work?

With all the NSA stuff in the news, I've been thinking about how to ensure the "who's talking to who" is just as private as the contents of the messages. I had an idea on the subject, about which I've ...
171 views

### Security Consideration on The Use of Random Number in Digital Signature

key-exchange protocol allows two parties to establish a shared key over public network. Lacking of authentication the original Diffie–Hellman key exchange is insecure under man-in- -the-middle ...
168 views

### Generating keys with HKDF from Diffie Hellman agreement

In order to generate multiple session keys from a Diffie Hellman key agreement protocol, I'm trying to use the HKDF to generate this session keys. The HKDF algorithm uses an Extraction-Expand ...
503 views

### Proper way of doing encryption and authentication (PBKDF2 + AES)

I'm currently in the planning phase of an authentication and storage-ish service. The client needs a file ("ENCFILE") which he will work with. This file will be encrypted with AES256, and stored on ...
317 views

### Why are the first few bytes of a gpg encryption always the same?

If I run the command 'gpg -a -e < input.txt > output.txt' with completely different inputs (e.g. from /dev/urandom), the first 19 characters are always the same. What is this header? Is it ...
149 views

### Is the “secure-as-worst-case” version of NTRU patented?

Does the improved version of NTRU — which is described in "Making NTRU as Secure as Worst-Case Problems over Ideal Lattices" by Stehlé and Steinfeld — fall under the same patents as the original?
178 views

### Key exchange and man in the middle issue. Secure solution

I am trying to design MiTM protected key exchange algorithm. For instance I am using RSA asymmetric keys. Alice and Bob respectively have each their own pair of keys. And they should be able to ...
309 views

### What's wrong with my security model - or how can it be attacked?

I'm working on a little personal project where security is very important, and I've thought for a while about the best way to do this. Now I am looking for a little outside help on good practices. The ...
103 views

### PKCS#11: Can C_GetMechanismInfo() return CKR_OK on a disabled mechanism?

According to PKCS#11 v2.20, "C_GetMechanismInfo obtains information about a particular mechanism possibly supported by a token." Does that mean ...
316 views

### Discrete log problem with modulus prime

I am a bit confused on the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem. Does it become intractale only when it is mod n, where n is a large composite number (Like RSA key). What about if it is mod a ...
86 views

### Send a message to an entire group of recipients

I'm attempting to send a message to a group of recipients, through an untrusted intermediary. Each of the recipients will have been invited to the group by someone who already has a trusted public ...
234 views

### is this authenticated key exchange protocol sound? too complicated? obviously flawed?

(significantly reworded this question to fit better into crypto.se). I have static RSA keypairs for both sides and an encrypted transport that needs symmetric keys, and need to exchange session keys. ...
457 views

### Algorithm for proving Carmichael numbers

I have an application for determining if a number is a prime or not, currently I'm getting a random number, then doing the Fermat primality testing to find out if the number is probably prime (so this ...
327 views

### Four-Square cipher and its keyspace

Am I thinking about this correctly? Consider that the keyspace of the Playfair cipher is equivalent to all permutations of the alphabet, e.g. the number of distinct permutations of 25 objects, and ...
299 views

### RSA padding: what is it and how does that work?

If I am not mistaken, plaintext RSA is not secure. So, I have read that padding and hashing is needed to make the RSA algorithm secure. However, I am confused on what does padding or armoring mean in ...
101 views

### Merkle signature + PRNG?

In the section 3 (page 44) of the book "Post Quantum Cryptography", it says: Then each one-time signature key must be generated twice, once for the MSS public key generation and once during the ...
116 views

### how does https key get shared?

I am only a beginner and doesn't know much about https. I have heard that they uses somekind of a key and is shared between them. If an attacker wishes to attack could he be able to capturebthe key ...
96 views

### constructing QR-like one way function

I am wondering whether the following form is a one way function with collision resistance: $$ax^2+by^2 \mod p$$ where $a$ and $b$ are given, and $p$ is a prime number. Since the QR (quadratic ...
247 views

### Is this key management scheme secure?

I'm designing a scheme for management of a small number of cryptographic keys (<100 at any given time) and I had an idea. Rather than storing all the keys, could I just store one master key and use ...
154 views

### Tor's integrity verification system?

I am trying to understand the design of Tor(onion router). I am reading the original paper on the 2nd generation onion routing system. Where, under integrity checking on streams, they say, "When Alice ...
208 views

### modular exponentiation as a one-way-hash

As far as I can tell most one-way hashes apply some iterated encryption algorithm to the input data. What would be the issues with a one-way hash based on some fixed large prime p and a generator g ...
115 views

### How to build a secure AE scheme with generic composition?

I am actually looking for using a secure Encrypt-Then-MAC AE scheme , and consider using either an existing "ready-to-use" dedicated AEAD mode (GCM, OCB, CCM, EAX, etc ..) or an alternate composed ...
328 views

### How practical is proxy re-encryption for AES?

In proxy re-encryption schemes, a proxy is given special information that allows it to translate a ciphertext under one key into a ciphertext of the same message under a different key. How ...
175 views

### Preimage resistance hash in digital signature

I'm studying about preimage resistance property of the hash functions. In particularly I'm reading as the missing of this property can be fatal in digital signatures that use RSA. Further details: ...
113 views

### Differential privacy definition

Differential privacy defines "privacy" of a mechanism $A$ as the "closeness" of the two distribution $Pr[A(D) \in S]$ and $Pr[A(D') \in S]$ where $D,D'$ differ in one element. And the distance between ...
125 views

### What kind of cryptography should i use?

I have a trusted third part A that issues an access token (xml file) to an untrusted client C that uses this token to log into an untrusted server S and access to the authorized files. I want only ...
379 views

### Smart Card Basics

I want to implement some of the basic encryption algorithms on smart card, could any body guide me how to program a smart card, which tools (hardware and software) I should have, and if these tools ...
396 views

### When making public key fingerprints - is a sha1 hash still a good idea?

I'm thinking about trying to save some space (and readability) when referencing 2k and 4k public keys (millions of them) by storing the fingerprint in some places instead of the full public key. ...
66 views

### Why does the server in S/KEY authentication only store a single password?

I've been reading about the S/KEY One-Time Password system on wikipedia here and was wondering why the server only stores a single password and not the list of one-time passwords like the client does. ...
266 views

### Key sizes for discrete logarithm based methods

I have a question regarding the key generation process of methods that are based on the discrete logarithm problem. This site gives some good insights, but I don't fully grasp it I think: ...
166 views

### Elliptic Curve is DH function or PKI?

can we reuse same ECC key on TLS for long terms or it must be used just once? (i mean can we use ECC like RSA?) is there patent free ECC implementation ?
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I am read this paragraph and I have a doubt. "An adversary to PKC $\Pi$ is given by two probabilistic polynomial time algorithms, $A = (A1; A2)$. In the first stage, the "find" stage, the ...
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### What does “securely realize” mean?

I was wondering what "securely realizes" means. I see this in some cryptographic papers but I don't know what it means for a protocol to "securely realize" a function $F$. Is it just a fancy way of ...
1k views

Looking at the first step of AES encryption I see that we XOR the key with the plaintext block. Why is the actual key involved at all, why not just use the round keys derived from the key schedule?
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### Is there an efficient way to hide the encrypted plaintext length with a block cipher?

In block cipher modes of operation for encryption on input of a plaintext of $N$ blocks (We assume that the input size is always a multiple of the blockcipher mode: $N·16$ bytes) the size of the ...
118 views

### Security relevance of random factor in Paillier

In the Paillier cryptosystem [1] the encryption of $m \in \mathbb{Z}_N$ with randomness $r \in \mathbb{Z}_n^*$ is $c = g^m r^n \bmod{n^2}$. The additive-homomorphic property of the system shows that ...
643 views

### What goals is homomorphic encryption aiming to solve?

As I understand from this article about homomorphic encryption, it mainly aims to enhance the security of cloud computing. We should be able to encrypt data and send it to the cloud. After it is send, ...
879 views

### Fastest multiplication algorithm for efficient exponentiation in C++?

First I apologize if this question is better tailored for SO, but since I'm using the method for crypto stuff, I thought I'd ask anybody that might know here. Karatsuba algorithm does a pretty good ...
192 views

### Is the following key stretching algorithm as memory hard as I think it is?

I'm having some fun designing a key stretching algorithm that can be implemented in pure Python. It's built entirely out of the standard library's hash functions in an attempt to at least wrest some ...
296 views

### Measuring Shannon's diffusion

Shannon's idea of diffusion is fundamental to cryptography. Besides being a descriptive idea, is there any work on measuring or expressing it? Saying something like "System A has more diffusion than ...
189 views

### Request for 1024-bit primes $p$ , subgroup $q$ and subgroup generator $g$

I need to find a prime $p$ of $1024$ bits with a $160$ bit sub group size $q$, such that $q|p-1$ , and $g$ is the generator of the sub group size $q$. I'm looking for the numeric values of $p$ , $q$ ...
299 views

### What are some different cryptography methods?

Some of the most effective cryptography methods and algorithms are based of factoring large prime numbers (e.g. RSA). I'm curious whether there are some other cryptography methods. Somethings that is ...
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### Kryptos : K2. What is the origin of the “abscissa” keyword?

I'm studying the Kryptos sculpture with its cryptographic puzzles K1 to K4. Similar to the "palimsest" keyword for K1, the keyword "abscissa" for K2 was determined by brute-force. To better ...
250 views

### Understanding padding oracles - is an attack plausible in my scenario?

I have a scheme that, long story short, uses AES in CBC mode to encrypt third-party credentials for user accounts with a password-derived key. It's been mentioned that the use of CBC mode is a ...
113 views

### Polynomials and efficient computability

In public key crypto, the popular definitions of security (CPA, CCA1,2) depend on PPT adversaries. I'm trying to understand why adversaries should be PPT. It's clear that adversaries should be at ...
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### inverse element in Paillier cryptosystem

As I know, in Paillier cryptosystem, the encryption $c$ of a message $m$ is calculated as $c=g^m r^n \bmod n^2$. Now, I am wondering if I can derive $g^m \bmod n^2$ given that I know $c$, $r$, and ...
In a Non-Interactive $Zero-Knowledge-Proof$, the challenge is chosen by the Prover. I am trying to find a Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge-Proof based on the following problem: DISCRETE LOGARITHM ...
In Alice/Bob/Cindy terms (EDIT: and with a little more detail): Alice and Bob have each securely obtained one key of an RSA keypair from a trusted third party. Alice has one key ($e$ and $n$), Bob ...