# All Questions

2answers
274 views

### If Bob steals Alice's private key, how exactly would he read her encrypted documents?

So Bob grabs Alice's secret key when she isn't looking and her encrypted files, doesn't he need to know her passphrase to read her files? What I am reading is that no he does not need it but as far ...
1answer
3k views

### What is the “Random Oracle Model” and why is it controversial?

What is the "Random Oracle Model"? Is it an "assumption" akin to the hardness of factoring and discrete log? Or something else? And why do some researchers have a strong distrust of this model?
2answers
820 views

### Encryption scheme for social-network-like data sharing data via untrusted server?

I am thinking quite a lot lately abut the problem of secure, privacy-preserving social networking. Distributing the network among trusted, preferably self-hosted servers (like Diaspora, GNU Social ...
3answers
960 views

### How does one scale encryption strength upwards from 256-bit?

I have seen many examples of encryption up to about 256-bit. But how does one programmatically scale the logic upwards in a language such as PHP or Java to say 1024-bit or even 4096-bit and higher? ...
3answers
251 views

### SIM security for two messages

Here SIM means the simulation based security Consider a two message encryption scheme:$$Enc:K \times M \times M \rightarrow C \times C$$ and $Enc(K, m, m')=(K \oplus m, K \oplus m')$, In ...
2answers
586 views

### Where can I get information on how to implement AES?

I want to write AES from scratch without using the built in libraries of java. I know there are hundreds of AES programs (and websites) out there but I can't seem to find a site that gives me the ...
7answers
14k views

2answers
7k views

### How long does it take to crack DES and AES?

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, ...
3answers
2k views

### How to attack a classical cipher using known partial plaintext?

I have a ciphertext generated by a classical cipher. I do not know what was cipher used to generate it. I do however have the beginning of the plaintext. What are the cryptanalysis approaches for ...
2answers
389 views

### How should one implement a delegated shared trust protocol?

Consider the following (probably naive) scenario. Alice, who is very limited in her knowledge of security in general (clueless about securing a private key for example), wishes to delegate certain ...
3answers
307 views

### Designing a key expander out of ciphers

Is it possible to compose or combine $n$ ciphers ($cipher_0, cipher_1, ... cipher_n$) in such a way that they generate $n$ ciphertexts from the same key, $k$, and that recovering the key, $k$, from ...
4answers
215 views

### Changing algorithms during encryption

Inspired by "Guarding against cryptanalytic breakthroughs: combining multiple hash functions", I am curious if there is a cryptographic reason to use only one algorithm during encryption. For ...
2answers
1k views

### Accelerating SHA-1

I have a program where computing SHA-1 is the bottleneck. This is using OpenSSL 1.0.0e on a 2.6Ghz 16-core Opteron where I get about 325MiB/s throughput. (SHA1 here is via Andy Polyakov's x86-64 ...
2answers
4k views

### Why use an Initialization Vector (IV)?

Why use an Initialization Vector (IV)? How are IV's used? What are the advantages/disadvantages of using an IV? Why use an IV instead of a longer key in which some section of the key is pubic? What ...
5answers
8k views

### Is Convergent Encryption really secure?

Recently a company called Bitcasa demonstrated a product of cloud storage. they indicated that they would use "Convergent Encryption" to secure your data and de-duplicate, essentially one copy of the ...
3answers
1k views

### What is the use of REAL random number generators in cryptography?

I understand the use of pseudo-random number generators. I am not getting mixed up between these and "real" random number generators. However, I don't understand for what a real random number ...
1answer
367 views

### What is the best method to determine the language used in a monoalphabetic substitution cipher?

Working on a cipher (which I assume to be a mono-alphabetic substitution cipher due to the letter frequency) I struggle with the fact that I don't know which language the plain text is written in. ...
1answer
643 views

### Implementation of Tao Xie and Denguo Feng's MD5 attack

It is well known that MD5 is completely broken today - however, to understand the theory behind the attacks I am looking for an implementation of the collision attacks described in the 2009 paper A ...
3answers
650 views

### Converting a stream cipher into a block cipher

The well-known Counter-Mode (CTR) mode of operation for a block cipher essentially converts any block cipher into a stream cipher. Is there a way to do the reverse? In other words, given a "good" ...

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