# All Questions

414 views

### True 128bit secured password length?

assume we say 128bit keys are secure so a 16 character long password is safe, but if i even use lower case and upper case letters with numbers and special characters on my keyboard its about 80 ...
270 views

### Can you help me with this Random Number Generator function?

By someone's suggestion, I am posting this question from math.stackexchange.com. I want to find out a suitable function or algorithm, which can provide a random sequence like this… Input: $3$ ...
156 views

### Strategy to crack a presumed substitution cipher

The ciphertext given is: ejitp spawa qleji taiul rtwll rflrl laoat wsqqj atgac kthls iraoa twlpl qjatw jufrh lhuts qataq itats aittk stqfj cae I've done ...
156 views

### How should I treat a new cipher release like Spritz?

I have been looking at both the paper as well as the sourcecode of Spritz — a spongy RC4-like stream cipher and hash function by Ronald L. Rivest and Jacob Schuldt. The paper states We have also ...
160 views

### Why are Fortuna entropy pools reset after a reseed?

I've implemented LibTomCrypt's version of fortuna and am wondering about the pool resetting after a reseed. In fortuna.c in libtomcrypt we have the following (which is that part that adds the entropy ...
151 views

### Wrong Test Vector for HKDF with HMAC-SHA256 [closed]

I have implemented HKDF by myself and it seems to work good. I managed to replicate all the test vectors listed here but... except this one: ...
82 views

### Times of nested algorithms in proofs of security

Proofs of security may be constructed such that an adversary $A$ is used to construct an adversary $A'$. The reduction/algorithm which uses $A$ has to perform a number of computations in order to ...
224 views

### Should an AES byte key generated with OpenSSL be converted to hex?

I am generating a key & iv with Ruby's OpenSSL wrapper for an AES CBC 256 setup: ...
97 views

### Needed: signature over a collection of hashes

I'm looking for some kind of crypto-based data structure that will allow me to produce a signature over a set of hashes. Call this a SignedSetOfHashes. I want to be ...
467 views

### FIPS 140-2 compliant algorithms in Enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic Provider (Windows XP) [closed]

We have a native C++ application that supports Windows XP SP3. Recently we've decided to change our crypto algorithms to FIPS 140-2 compliant ones. We are planning to use the following algorithms in ...
174 views

### Regex searchable word list for space-less monoalphabetic substitution [closed]

I am working on teaching myself basic cryptography, in the process I created a simple substitution cipher based on a single alphabet, and a statically defined offset (no key for now). Now that ...
167 views

### What is the difference between, and security of $Z_p$ and $F_p$?

While reading some papers, I found that sometimes $Z_p$ was used but sometimes $F_p$ was used ($p$ is prime). Usually, the author will only use their subgroups like this: choose a big prime factor of ...
326 views

### Is this encryption scheme perfectly secure?

Let $m = 6$, and let $\mathbb{Z}_m$ denote the set $\{0,…,m-1\}$. Let $X \mod m$ denote the remainder obtained when dividing $X$ by $m$. (a) Consider the symmetric encryption scheme in ...
199 views

### Why not just generate random strings for one-time password (OTP)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_password#How_OTPs_are_generated_and_distributed Why have so many methods to generate OTPs, why not just use just random strings?
823 views

### HMAC vs Encrypted Hash

What is best to use (for message integrity) between… AES(Data) + HMAC(Data) AES(Data + HMAC(Data)) AES(Data + Hash(Data)) …and why?
125 views

### Key Refresh in Diffie-Hellman

Assume the case, that two participants have agreed on a key $K=g^{ab} \mod p$ via Diffie Hellman. I have the need to change the key every now and then. The first idea I had was to simply initiate a ...
165 views

### Is there a way to encrypt multiple sets of data into one result, with separate keys decrypting each set of data

What I am picturing is something like this: Block A: "Hello, how are you today?" Block B: "The weather reminds me of summer." I encode this, giving me two keys and a resulting encrypted block e.g. ...
328 views

### Is this scheme a provably fair random number generation?

I have thought up a method for generating random numbers between a client and a server which I hope is fair: The client and server decide on a range in advance, $0$ trough $n-1$. The server ...
174 views

### Is this how padding can work?

So for block ciphers you need a fixed size block. If the plaintext length is not a multiple of the block length then you need to pad it. One way you could do this is that for the last block you just ...
203 views

### fixing WEP by treating all messages as one long stream

in the course of introduction to cryptography on coursera professor suggested treating all messages as a long stream XORing them with the key this way we will not need to change the key and will not ...
751 views

### Are mouse movement coordinates useful as a seed for a RNG?

Is it good to use a mouse movement as a 64-bit random seed for a Pseudorandom Generator like AES in Counter Mode? Should I only need to get the X and Y coordinates of the mouse movement?
137 views

### Cryptographical formalization of computational privacy

Yesteryears problems of communication privacy has been well defined in cryptography through Asymmetric cryptography. Due to rise in Cloud computational model , computational heavy tasks are being ...
31 views

### Does the size of a SSH ECDSA key determine the hash algorithm?

I am a bit lost in understanding what I read on authentication, signature, etc. Is the size of the ECDSA keys produced by ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -b 256 linked to the ...
69 views

### stream cipher computation cost [closed]

With AES-CTR the computation time to encrypt a message of lengh $n$ blocks is $n$ computations of the block cipher. What is the running time to encrypt a message of $n$ bits using a stream cipher, ...
75 views

### What does $\to$ mean in the following definition of a block cipher?

In the following picture $\kappa$ is the key length and $n$ is the block size. I understand that $\{0,1\}^\kappa$ means all possible combination of keys and $\{0,1\}^n$ means all possible combination ...
50 views

### How to make a document truly read only

How is it possibile to cryptographically make a document truly read only? As in read only I imply that the user can obviously view it which can be achieved by coding which pixels have which colors. ...
113 views

49 views

### SHA1 multipart calculation

Is it possible to combine SHA1 digest values to get the SHA1 of the concatenated parts ? I know the "S1" SHA1 of "part 1" and the "S2" SHA1 of the "part 2" and I would like to know the SHA1 of the ...
164 views

### Is C25519/Ed25519 “twist secure”?

This recent new curve mentions something that's new to me: twist security. http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/bada55.html Are the existing C25519/Ed25519 curves secure against this form of attack?
120 views

### Convert SpookyHash to semi-secure 192bit hash [closed]

What do you think of converting SpookyHash into semi-secure 192bit hash function by this way: increase security by using 8 * 8byte = 512bit blocks instead of 8 * 12byte blocks, but remaining 8 * ...
46 views

### Ensuring that an operation takes a relatively specific amount of time, but easily verify the result

I want an algorithm of some sort that can ensure that an operation takes a fairly specific amount of time, but proof that this operation was done can be completed relatively inexpensively. For ...
157 views

### Question on RSA trapdoor permutation

You plan to use a public-key cryptosystem based on the RSA trapdoor permutation in three different real-life applications, in which the attacker has, respectively, only one of the following resources: ...
101 views

### Is it possible to calculate the 'skeleton key' for DUAL_EC_DRBG? What would it take?

According to Bruce Schneier the constants used in the spec of DUAL_EC_DRBG may be related to a secret set of numbers, that could function as a master key for ...
66 views

### If $G'(s)=G(s0^{|s|})$ and $G$ is a PRNG, is $G'$ necessarily a PRNG? [closed]

I argue it is because there should be no more correlation between the outputs $G(s0^{|s|})$ than between the outputs $G(s)$. Thus we can say the $G'(s)$ is a PRNG that satisfies $|G'(s)| \geq 4|s|$. ...
423 views

### My SSH server public key is 2048 bits, but my account's private key is 4096. What is my effective security?

My SSH server has a 2048-bit public key. But my private key, for clients to login, is 4096-bit. In this case, do I have the brute force protection of 2048 or 4096 bits? My worry is that someone ...
136 views

### Why does DSS have such formulas?

I've learnt the formulas needed for the DSA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Signature_Algorithm). But most importantly, I don't quite understand what represents those formulas and why they are ...
160 views

### Why use CBC-MAC? Why not just apply hash function on the whole message?

Why not just apply hash function on the whole message? Why convert that message into blocks and hash those blocks? To avoid collisions?
108 views

### No Birthday Attack to TCR

I'm reading the paper “Collision-Resistant Hashing? Towards Making UOWHFs Practical” , which compared TCR (Target Collision Resistant) and ACR (Any collision Resistant). It says we wish to stress ...
945 views

### Does ssl_rsa_with_rc4_128_md5 have known weaknesses?

My bank's website uses HTTPS with the cipher suite ssl_rsa_with_rc4_128_md5. What are the known weaknesses of this suite? Do they have a practical impact for ...
205 views

### Proving HMAC collision probability bounds?

Could someone point to results or proofs about the probability of $$HMAC(k, m_1) = HMAC (k, m_2)$$ assuming the underlying hash function is SHA-256? Would those probabilities be higher/lower if $m_1$ ...
166 views

### Encrypting and Decrypting a 19-digits long BigInteger

How can I take a maximum 19-digits long BigInteger and encrypt it with the following rules: The result must be based on digits and lower-case English letters ...
170 views

### Is solving a modular linear equation a hard problem when the coefficient is not an invertible element?

Assume that we have a linear equation like this: $$ax=b \pmod n$$ when $x$ is the unknown, and $a$ is not an invertible element in $n$. is finding $x$ a hard problem? (by solving I mean finding an ...
350 views

### Properties of Ideal Straight P-Boxes

What properties should an ideal straight P-Box exhibit?
102 views

### AES 128bit round level recommendation

we don't want change standard just after every attack, now for AES 128bit blocks i think 16 round is secure, but what is best round amount ? we had attack for 7 round then 10 round and it going so on ...
411 views

### Is the AES encryption scheme CPA secure?

Give a 256 bit key space and 128 message space would AES block cipher as the encryption scheme be CPA secure?
156 views

### Pseudo-random Number generation for Passwords

I am looking for a good pseudo-random number generation algorithm for passwords. My scenario is that I have to generate 5K pseudo-random bits from a user-supplied password (6 characters). What are ...
250 views

### Should I use md5 for my new application?

MD5 is a very fast hash and its output is short and easy to store. Should I use it for my non-security-sensitive application? I don't think so, but I can't seem to convince anyone else that this is ...
3k views

### How does one implement the Inverse of AES' MixColumns

I got an answer in the related question about Mixcolumn for encryption, but how about decryption? what will I do? Because it said that I will used this: During decryption the Mix Column the ...
I have the following question: What polynomial, when factored over the field $GF (2^8)$ based on the irreducible polynomial that is used in Rijndael, will factor into all the polynomials in the ...
The passage said that the computational load to attack DES-X can be reduced to approximately $2^{(56+64)}=2^{120}$ steps,and the storage of data sets should be $2^{64}$. But I can't figure why ...