# All Questions

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### How should we interpret the cryptanalysis results of SIMON and SPECK?

The NSA recently released SIMON and SPECK light weight block ciphers. Although initial spec release did not have much of cryptanalysis details, two works later appeared providing the cryptanalysis for ...
313 views

### Is there a proof for showing any cryptogram is crackable?

I commonly hear statements along the lines of "all cryptograms are crackable - it's only a matter of time". Is there a proof to show that any cryptogram is "crackable"? The proof may be of a more ...
263 views

### modfied man in the middle attack diffie hellman

I have been given a problem in preparation for my cryptography final that I'm not sure how to solve. It asks me to suppose a scenario where instead of where an attacker would intercept some message ...
593 views

### OpenPGP/X.509 bridge: how to verify public key?

I'd like to use OpenPGP authentication over TLS, but lack of implementations made me use a temporary solution: an OpenPGP/X.509 bridge certificate. The approach is very similar to the approach used ...
690 views

### Recent attacks on RSA

At Blackhat 2013 this week, there was a talk saying RSA is (essentially) doomed in the near future. networkworld.com ~ “Black Hat: Elliptic curve cryptography coming as smarter algorithms threaten ...
2k views

### Learning to encrypt/encryption algorithms [closed]

I am a beginning programmer interested in coding an application of my own to encrypt sensitive files of mine. For example: lists of passwords, bank accounts, Credit Card numbers etc. I was wondering ...
331 views

### What (precisely) is a block cipher?

If I follow the wikipedia or crypto.stackexchange definition, any simple XOR encryption where the key is as long as the plain text should qualify as a secure block cipher. Now I thought what would ...
331 views

### Help me describe/identify this challenge-response protocol/algorithm?

My area of expertise is reverse engineering, specifically embedded systems. I do attack cryptographic systems, but this largely involves key recovery or exploiting the implementation. I was asked to ...
2k views

### Is compressing data prior to encryption necessary to reduce plaintext redundancy?

As explained in William Stallings' Book, in PGP encryption is done after compression, since it reduces redundancy. I couldn't relate encryption strength with redundancy. Could anyone explain more on ...
1k views

### Is a private RSA key vulnerable to a chosen plaintext encrypted with that private key?

I grasp that having known plaintext encrypted with the public key doesn't provide a means of discovering the private key (that being the whole point...). But if one were in a situation where they ...
243 views

### Is there a cryptographic hash function that can be performed with pencil and paper?

Imagine I'm signing up for the 99th new web site this month. I somehow take my secret key (which I have written down on a card in my wallet) and the domain name of the site and feed them both into ...
305 views

### Can you explain partial private key extract algorithm in certificateless Public key cryptography?

Related to the algorithms of certificate-less Signature approach of Al-Riyami and Paterson… Why is there a need for a "partial private key extract algorithm"? Why should it be needed when ...
110 views

### Explicit Key SHA-1

I'm reading “Collision-Resistant Hashing? Towards Making UOWHFs Practical” and in the Section 2 it says: Hash functions like MD5 or SHA-1 have no explicit key. But no notion of ...
157 views

### How to store keys for a cascading encryption?

What is the best way to implement a cascade encryption? I'm trying to figure out how to cipher a string (or message) using Serpent-Twofish-AES and then store the keys. I'll provide an explanation, ...
106 views

### MD5 theoretical question

Ok, so this is a very possible stupid question, but one of those things that has sat at the back of my mind for a while. We all know that MD5 has issues, and these have been known for about a decade. ...
126 views

### How does secret sharing solve the partial exposure problem?

I have been trying to understand how secret sharing methods like Shamir's secret sharing solve the problem of a share revealing information about the secret. I guess there are some random numbers ...
136 views

### Why is appending the key to a mesage and then hashing that insecure if the hash isn't weakly collision resistant? [duplicate]

Suppose I have H(M|K) and that H is not weakly collision resistant. If I have a message mac pair (M,MAC), how is it possible to find another message mac pair (M2,MAC2)? My thinking for this problem is ...
1k views

### Is this password migration strategy secure?

I want to upgrade the security of some existing databases of users' authentication tokens strictly for the purpose of making sure that if the database is stolen, attackers will not be able to guess ...
217 views

### What is the difference between various modes in FPE?

Format preserving encryption has three modes FE1( FFX) , FE2(VAES) , FE3(BPS) . All of them are based on Feistel Networks .Can somebody explain how they differ from each other ?
128 views

### What security differences are there between E(p',“well-known-plaintext”) vs. hash(p') where p'=KDF(p)

I am using a KDF to derive a key, p' from a password p. I would like to know if the password is correct before using the derived ...
283 views

### What is the name of this kind of protocol

There is a communication protocol that I believe creates the equivalent of a one time pad, with the downside that the secret message must be transferred multiple times. The protocol is so simple that ...
250 views

### Can two people with different one time pads securely exchange a message like this?

Alice has a message, generates a one time pad, encrypts her message and sends it to Bob. Bob generates his own one time pad, encrypts the message again, and sends it back to Alice. Alice then decrypts ...
275 views

### Are there any differences in operation between existing Diffie-Hellman specifications?

Are there any differences in operation between existing Diffie-Hellman specifications, especially those within the RSA PKCS#3, ANSI X9.42 and RFC 2631 standards?
80 views

### Are there public $p$ and $q$ numbers for use in DSA?

There are many RFC documents giving large primes to use in Diffie-Hellman. However, I couldn't find standards on the $p$ and $q$ large primes used in the DSA signature scheme. This is proving to be a ...
2k views

### Is it true for Java that the transformation mode and padding is ignored when using RSA?

Consider GregS's comment to this question (more specific to bouncycastle's provider implementation): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11717646/bouncycastle-rsa-key-size-and-padding The mode, ...
189 views

### Why don't we use MACs to store passwords?

These days, the best practice for storing passwords is to use a scheme like scrypt or bcrypt. The goal of these schemes is to make dictionary attack inefficient for an attacker but it also slows down ...
138 views

### How can two (or more) parties share and agree upon a common random seed?

I really don't know how to call this simple problem: Two (or more) parties need to establish a common (non-secret) value to be used as a seed for a deterministic RNG. The only requirement is that each ...
113 views

### Can Diffie-Hellman generate values in a specified range?

Is there any way to generate values only between $0$ and $255$ with the Diffie-Hellman method? I need to create keys for communication algorithms with $32$ and $16$ numbers between that range. The ...
2k views

### Why does WPA-PSK not use Diffie-Hellman key exchange?

Is there a reason, why in pre-shared key mode, Wi-Fi session key is not secured with something like Diffie-Hellman but instead is derived from PSK key and some information exchanged in clear during ...
96 views

### Is there a relation between security of rounds of DES and Luby Rackoff rounds?

DES uses 16 rounds of feistel networks but not considered secure . Where Luby Rackoff constructions which are inspired by DES its proven by Patarin that 7 rounds is secure . Is there a relation ...
3k views

### What does AES256-CTS-HMAC-SHA1-96 mean in relation to Kerberos?

I'm not completely clueless as to what it means, but I'd like to understand it at a higher level. The highest encryption type used by Active Directory domain controllers for Kerberos authentication ...
171 views

### Where does the meaning of reduction to a hard problem lie?

Given you a protocol, if we can reduce breaking the protocol to a hard problem, such as DLP or CDH, then we can say that this protocol is secure. Theoretically speaking, reduction is a good method ...
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### Perfect Forward Secrecy in MTI/A0

Would the property of perfect forward secrecy still be achieved in MTI/A0 for a session key that was established between C and D when one LL-key aD is revealed so that both LL-keys aC and aD are ...
175 views

### Can someone tell if my Hand Cipher is secure? [closed]

In easy steps, this is how it works: Convert txt to numbers. mod 1-26. Generate random numbers (by my other cipher) equal to plain txt. Write random numbers under txt numbers. Like this: ...
337 views

### How can an encryption scheme be indistinguishable with multiple messages but vulnerable to an adaptive chosen-plaintext attack?

In order to be indistinguishable with respect to multiple messages, wouldn't the scheme need to be nondeterministic? How would this then possibly be vulnerable to an adaptive CPA?
496 views

### Why $n=pq$ with $p=2p'+1$ and $q=2q'+1$ instead of just $n=p'q'$ for RSA crypto?

For RSA cryptography, we know that the modulo $n$ is a product of two big prime numbers(say $p$ and $q$). However, in some documents I see an extension of $p=2p'+1$ and $q=2q'+1$ with $q'$ and $p'$ ...
357 views

### In elliptic curve cryptography, how is “A dot A” computed?

I was just reading Ars Technica's primer on ECC. Somewhere near the middle of the second page, the author introduces the "dot" operation that takes an elliptic curve and two other known points, giving ...
185 views

### Are there any protocols that are truly secure from active and passive MITM attacks?

Are there are any cryptographic protocols or algorithms that can prevent active MITM attacks or interference when initiating a new connection to a server or someone you have not exchange keys with ...
128 views

### Why is $-1$ an illegal message in the Goldwasser-Micali Encryption Scheme

I'm not sure why in the Goldwasser-Micali encryption scheme with a Blum integer $N$, the message $-1$ is always a illegal message. Can you give me some direction for starting? What is illegal ...
77 views

### How to pass an arbitrary signature to a certificate

I am trying to sign certificate (X509) using secret sharing. That is shareholders combine their signatures to produce the final signature which will be in this case the signed certificate. However ...
334 views

### Why is it important to generate a pseudorandom permutation from a pseudorandom function?

Most of the papers on block cipher constructions, especially the ones which discuss constructing block ciphers of arbitrary lengths or small domains, the techniques are designed based on building a ...
222 views

### How do I sign data that's been encrypted using public key? (RSA)

I've received a public key to encrypt my data for the other end to decrypt using their private key. Now, they want us to sign the data as well to ensure non-repudiation. I thought that I should only ...
377 views

### Is encrypting credit card numbers one by one with rsautl secure?

I wish to encrypt credit card numbers one by one using asymmetric encryption on the command line. My current approach is this… Encrypt: ...
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### partial-domain permutation and strong assumption

Quoting "Verified Security of Redundancy-Free Encryption from Rabin and RSA", Chapter 2 (on page 4): OAEP was proved IND-CCA-secure by Fujisaki et al. [28] under the assumption that the underlying ...
809 views

### Elliptic curve cryptography related key attacks

This question is an extension of Families of public/private keys in elliptic curve cryptography As described above, bitcoin "type 2" deterministic wallets use a root private/public key pair, where ...
231 views

### Security of RSA-substitution-RSA

Following on from here, I am unconvinced that encrypting twice with RSA is a waste of time: doesn't it depend on what is placed in-between the two encryptions?. What would happen if a permutation was ...
93 views

### Sematically Secure McEliece

I am read the Lemma 2 (pp13) in the paper "Kazukuni Kobara and Hideki Imai: Semantically Secure McEliece Public-Key Cryptosystems –Conversions for McEliece PKC– (PKC 2001)". Related to the question ...
775 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… ?
### Generator for Group $QR_{N}$
Let $N=PQ$, where $P=2p+1$ and $Q=2q+1$. $P,Q,p,q$ are prime numbers. $QR_{N}$ is the set of quadratic residues modulo $N$. Please help me to prove $QR_{N}$ is a cyclic group. Note: $QR_{P}$ and ...
Suppose that a single evaluation of a block-cipher (DES or AES) takes 10 operations, and the computer can do $10^{15}$ such operations per second. How long would it take for to recover a DES key, ...