# All Questions

597 views

### How broken is a xor of two LCGs?

Suppose we define a PRG as the xor of two LCGs modulo a 64-bit prime: something like the following Python code. ...
677 views

### Where is the S-Box generated in Rijandel/AES?

It's rather kind of lame questions, and I can't find good and clear explanation: In which step of Rijandel is S-box generated? Is the S-box reused in every round of cipher or is generated in every ...
1k views

### What is the security loss from reducing Rijndael to 128 bits block size from 256 bits?

As you know in the past few weeks it has emerged that NIST/NSA have been involved in weakening encryption standards over a long period of time so that they can retain the ability to break encryption ...
364 views

### Extracting only the entropy

(I cleaned up the question a bit, It was previously titled "extracting entropy without hashing" .. thus some of the comments / answers) I'd like to extract the entropy of data without injecting ...
2k views

I would like to know how much padding OpenSSL algorithms expect.
296 views

### Bandwidth and block size for Paillier cryptosystem

Can someone clarify what is meant by the terms cryptosystem bandwidth and block size for public key cryptosystems; The context is the Paillier cryptosystem and its Damgard-Jurik generalisation. My ...
799 views

### Using Whirlpool hashing function to encrypt data

I've read that the Whirlpool hash function can produce footprints that could be used as a pseudorandom generator. Is it "OK" to use it to encrypt some data using something like the following? ...
1k views

### Reusing keys with AES-CBC

I heard that key/IV pairs must not be reused in AES-CTR, or when using any stream cipher for that matter. Yet the attacks described do not seem to apply to AES-CBC. Is reusing the same key several ...
118 views

### md5sum collision question

I've been reading the wikipedia page, trying to get a better understanding of how to produce a collision. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5#Collision_vulnerabilities The wikipedia page above states: ...
747 views

### With a true random number generator at hand, how to implement one-time pad?

I have a Raspberry Pi single-board computer that happened to have an hardware true random number generator, based on some quantum effects on the processor silicon, baked into its BCM2835 chip and I ...
366 views

### some of my confusions about DDH assumption

The wiki defines the decisional Diffie–Hellman assumption as follows: Decisional Diffie–Hellman assumption Consider a (multiplicative) cyclic group $G$ of order $q$, and with generator $g$. The DDH ...
7k views

### Why is TLS susceptible to protocol downgrade attacks?

A recent blog post from Ivan Ristić (expert extraordinaire on all things SSL) says: all major browsers are susceptible to protocol downgrade attacks; an active MITM can simulate failure conditions ...
58 views

### What makes adaptive memory attack difficult for the adversary?

On page 11, definition 2 of "Simultaneous Hardcore Bits and Cryptography Against Memory Attacks", the paper outlines the following steps (PK,SK) public key and secret key are generated by defender ...
375 views

### Is my understanding of CPA indistinguishability experiment correct?

Following are steps to conduct Chosen Plaintext Attack (CPA) indistinguishibility experiment $PrivK_\mathcal{A,E}^{eav}(n)$. $\mathcal{A}$ is the adversary $\mathcal{E}$ is the encryption scheme ...
2k views

### Does Microsoft use Dual_EC_DRBG by default?

So, as we all know, Dual_EC_DRBG contains an NSA back door. At this point, there is no reason to call it a "potential" or even an "alleged" back door; the presence is obvious even to the NY Times. As ...
370 views

### List of available symmetric & assymetric ciphers [closed]

I was looking all over the Internet list of ALL existing symmetric and asymmetric ciphers. I know that there's, for example, AES, DES, Blowfish, DSA. But how about more? Where to find such list?
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370 views

### Is it safe to use GZIP to avoid padding related attacks

I am designing a library that supports encrypting some in-memory data using AES in CBC mode. Now I need a padding but it seemed to me that Apple's CommonCrypto library and OpenSSL have different ...
814 views

### Why is AES considered to be secure?

The security of RSA is based on the integer factorization problem, which is a very well defined and understood mathematical problem. This problem must be solved in order to fundamentally break RSA. ...
446 views

### Can I use SHA1 as license key?

I have recently started looking into creating secure, while not validating against an external server, software product keys. The idea I have had is to create a key consisting of two parts firstly a ...
122 views

### Can someone explain how this unpadded RSA formula works?

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption, $\mathcal{E}(x_1) \cdot \mathcal{E}(x_2) = x_1^e x_2^e$ $\bmod\; m = (x_1x_2)^e \;$ $\bmod\; m = \mathcal{E}(x_1 \cdot x_2)$ What is ...
88 views

### How to get the same calculation result on an untrusted computer, while withholding some information?

Consider this command on a trusted computer: result = function(public data, secret data) or shorter: r = f(p,s). How could a ...
99 views

### blinding a hash vs. sending the hash directly

So with blind signatures you have two parties - A and B. A has a message that they want B to sign so A creates a hash of their message, blinds it, and then sends it to B to sign. That, as I understand ...
236 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 ...
6k views

### What is the lowest level of mathematics required in order to understand how encryption algorithms work?

What mathematical fields of knowledge would be required in order to get a good understanding of encryption algorithms? Is it basic algebra, or is there a "higher education" mathematical field ...
375 views

### Is the inverse of a secure PRP, also a secure PRP?

If a block cipher is a secure PRP, is it's inverse a secure PRP as well? My intuition says yes but I'm not exactly sure. On a related note, if a block cipher is a secure sPRP, is it's inverse a ...
271 views

### How would I make a secret notation alphabet more secure?

Disclaimer: I was looking for a place to ask this question on SE and this site seems to be the most fitting. If this question doesn't belong here, feel free to redirect me. Just out of boredom and ...
134 views

### Is it possible to find a preimage for a reduced size hash?

Given a message $M$ and a 256 bit key $K$, perform HMAC($K$, $M$) with a 256 bit hash function resulting in: $a$ = ...
246 views

### Shamir's secret sharing with passwords

I'm trying to design an extension to Shamir's Secret Sharing that would allow the participant to specify a password instead of remembering/storing a large integer or binary data. So far, I have two ...
151 views

### What does it mean to be simultaneously hardcore?

In this paper the term "simultaneously hardcore" is defined as: "We say that a block of bits of $x$ are simultaneously hard-core for a one-way function $f(x)$, if given $f(x)$ they cannot be ...
128 views

### Which encryption method supports random reads?

I have a file containing 16-bit samples and I want to encrypt it, but the problem is that I need to be able to read any random 16-bit value from the file, and be to able to decrypt it, without reading ...
3k views

### Why not the one-time pad with pseudo-number generator

I am very new to cryptography (so be kind), but I have a question that may seem silly. If the one-time pad is the perfect cipher and impossible to crack, why would the following algorithm not be one ...
326 views

### Which encryption method supports random reads?

I have a file containing 16-bit samples and I want to encrypt it, but the problem is that I need to be able to read any random 16-bit value from the file, and be to able to decrypt it, without reading ...
412 views

### Can we design a public-key infrastructure without certificate authorities?

In a recent essay, Bruce Schneier tasks the engineering community with redesigning and rebuilding the vulnerable parts of the Internet's backbone. We need to figure out how to re-engineer the ...
409 views

### Can I construct a feasible stream cipher out of HMAC and a secure hash algorithm?

I have constructed a stream cipher from a secure hash algorithm and a HMAC. Here is a brief description of the algorithm: Let: (Actually Objective-C styled pseudo code) ...
26k views

### Explaining weakness of Dual EC DRBG to wider audience?

I have an audience of senior (non-technical) executives and senior technical people who are taking the backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG and considering it as a weakness of Elliptic curves in general. I can ...
478 views

### How to choose keys for a block cipher?

AES and DES are block ciphers. Mathematically, its the mapping from plaintext space to ciphertext space using the keys i.e. $\{{0,1}\}^k$ x $\{{0,1}\}^l \longrightarrow \{{0,1}\}^l$ I know that these ...
743 views

### Encrypting 8 times with 8-bit key beneficial?

I was trying to understand cryptography from the book Information Security by Mark Stamp and I am confused by something. Suppose that Alice has a secure block cipher, but the cipher only uses an ...
199 views

### PKCS1 and blind RSA signatures

Wikipedia's article on RSA blind signatures says that you need to raise the message $m$ to the secret exponent $d$ modulo the public modulus $N$. Implicit within that, it seems to me, is that m needs ...
1k views

### Estimating bits of entropy

Best ways to estimate average bits of entropy in a byte stream. I know there are different statistical tests out there (NIST, Dieharder, etc), which all do different ways of analyzing entropy. What ...
692 views

### How much entropy is lost via hashing when you add known or low entropy data?

(I updated the title, as I think there was some confusion as to the question) Here's the question: For example, if I have a bit stream that is 64K bytes long and there is about 16 *8 bits worth of ...
758 views

### probability of N hash digits colliding

What is the probability of the first N hash digits colliding? for example i made a script that appends the first 5 digits of the file's sha1 hash to the name of the file. So will the probability of ...
743 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 ...
189 views

### Fast post-processing for broken RDRAND

Let's assume that the Intel RDRAND instruction does not return fully random numbers, e.g. because it has been engineered with a backdoor for the NSA. If the Intel RDRAND instruction is used directly ...
114 views

### what is PFS game?

when i reading about this paper, in the Setup of SIM section 5.2, it says that "According to the definition of PFS game", i wonder what the definition of PFS game ...
1k views

### DSA vs. ElGamal vs. Schnorr

It has been well known for a long time that NSA played a primary role in the development of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). DSA is a sort of hybrid of the ElGamal and Schnorr signature ...
2k views

### Who uses the RSA BSAFE library? [duplicate]

Who uses RSA's BSAFE library? Does anyone know what products use it, or have any statistics on how many end users use something that is built on BSAFE? Background: BSAFE is one of the oldest ...
434 views

### Using SHA3 as an entropy pool

Has any work been done on analyzing the SHA3 sponge construction for use as an entropy pool (e.g. /dev/random)? All the use cases I've heard of consts of a ...
I read that Silver–Pohlig–Hellman algorithm solves the discrete logarithm with prime module $p$ in $O(\log^2(p))$ if $p-1$ is a smooth number. This seems pretty fatal for cryptography, since it is a ...