# All Questions

49 views

### Test for randomness - randtests - fails

Suppose I have a data set provided by PRNG in a matrix form with 400,000 rows and 20 columns. Each row consists 20 unique integer values from 1 to 80. I need to check the correctness of the PRNG. For ...
9 views

### Could eVoting on the bitcoin blockchain be done?

I'm basically a crypto noob (and not an english native), so please be indulgent :) I thought about if you could realize an eVoting system with bitcoin. I see 2 major requirements: each citizen ...
69 views

### Where is SRP-Z from?

The Stanford license for SRP says: Broader use of the SRP authentication technology, such as variants incorporating the use of an explicit server secret (SRP-Z), may require a license; Yet ...
43 views

### Verify a RSA signature using only RSA encryption

I'm trying to verify a RSA signed message, however, the API that I have access to in that environment only has encrypt and decrypt. I think I understand that verification and encryption with public ...
22 views

### OpenSSL ECDH key exchange mechanism

I am using FIPS based OpenSSL module for encryption of sensitive data for my desktop socket server and client applications. I am using ECDH for key agreement.The keys public and private pair is ...
54 views

### What are the differences between curve NIST P-521 and Edwards E-521 for signature?

I implemented and used the P-521 curve for ECDSA. Signatures are 132 bytes long. It seems that Edwards E-521 is safer but I did not investigated very deeper. What is its signature length ? How is it ...
19 views

### What are coding schemes for timing channels

I know we can hide information in the inter-packet delays, e.g. we can generate a code-book that each code-word corresponds to a message and is generated by realization of a specific random process. ...
1k views

### Webcam random number generator

I have a question about random number generators. I have read from a real random number generator, based on a webcam ("randcam"). My problem is, that I do not really understand how the generation of ...
50 views

### What is the state of cryptographic obfuscation in 2015?

Cryptographic Obfuscation is a technique that allows one to obfuscate source code in a secure way (as opposed to insecurely mangling it into spaghetti code.) For example, here is a way to protect a ...
11 views

### pairing parameters in PBC library

I would like to know what are the pairing parameters of PBC library and what are they used for? Here an example where they are used. I noticed that we can give any file in the param subdirectory. Is ...
325 views

### AES decryption vs encryption speed

Let's consider the CTR mode. For a faster encryption/decryption, is it preferable to use the decryption operation of AES, or its encryption ?
24 views

### qkd - Does BB84 rely on a prearranged code?

First of all, sorry if the title is not that clear, I'll provide an in-depth explanation behind my question. So, basically I was reading about quantum cryptography and came across BB84. The protocol ...
90 views

### Key Confirmation Attack [Key Distribution Center (KDC)]

Okay this is how I understood it according to this: Alice $A$ establishes a connection to $KDC$ and prepares for session key Exchange $k_{ses}$ $A$ encrypts the request with her key $k_A(A, B)$ ...
89 views

### Proving set membership in less than log(N) bandwidth

I have an unchanging set of unique items, and I want my server to show one of those items to a client, then cryptographically prove that the item is part of the set. How I do this currently: ...
159 views

59 views

### Edwards / Montgomery ECC with Weierstrass Implementation?

So let's assume I want to perform Ed448 or Ed25519 digital signatures or want to perform a DH key-exchange. Assume further that those curves (Curve448 or Curve25519) are required. But the problem is, ...
22 views

### DSSP reduction to DSSI

In “Towards quantum-resistant cryptosystems from supersingular elliptic curve isogenies" by DeFeo, Jao and Plut, a reduction from the Decisional Supersingular Product (DSSP) problem to Decisional ...
252 views

### PBKDF2-SHA512 - Does a Big Salt Decrease Security?

I use PBKDF2-SHA512 with an iteration count of 128,000 to hash my passwords. I use a CSPRNG to generate a salt per password. However, I am unsure about the ideal size of the salt. I have read a lot of ...
142 views

### Straightforward method for hampering frequency analysis on deterministic encryption

I'm brainstorming some different ways of making deterministic encryption more secure. I want to use deterministic encryption to preserve searchability over the keywords in a document set. However, I ...
113 views

### Is a strong block cipher usable as a strong sponge function?

From the literature, it looks like the security proofs of sponge functions depend on how well they approximate a random permutation, Since a block cipher also ideally behaves like a random permutation ...
99 views

### What practical uses can random hash collisions be put to?

Using magic, I've built a machine that instantly generates hash collisions. To try it out, I set the dial to SHA256 and typed in "e7cf3ef4f17c3999a94f2c6f612e8a888e5b1026878e4e19398b23bd38ec221a". I ...
87 views

### Randomness in Public Key Encryption

For a scheme to be at least CPA secure, one has to randomize the scheme. In case of a secret key encryption scheme, the used randomness will typically become part of the cipher text as in the case of ...
51 views

### Can a tree hash with leaf-size of 1 byte support verification of content with elided ranges, at a cost of at most 2 supplied internal-node hashes?

Perhaps someone can confirm my intuition: A tree hash with leaves of size 1 (for example Blake2 in a tree-hash mode) would of course not be very efficient. But it seems that it might be a suitable ...
44 views

### What are the roles of the simulator in simulation based proofs

I'm trying to better understand simulation based proofs in the UC model - but the guidelines to construct a simulator confuse me. To my understanding, the simulator is activated in two ways: ...
10 views

### End-to-End (Point-to-Point?) Email encryption [migrated]

I'm looking into providing security for the email server I recently deployed, however the subject matter is a touch more complex than I anticipated and I would appreciate confirmation or correction of ...
12 views

### How do I create a PKCS#7 or CMS enveloped signature in python? [on hold]

There doesn't appear to be PKCS#7 or CMS support in pyCrypto. Ideally, there will be a call that will create return an enveloped signature given a signer certificate, an RSA private key and a payload ...
133 views

### Is it okay to include relative time for true random number generation?

Similar questions have been asked regarding use of time in true random number generation, but I'd like to consider using time as just one source of entropy, complementing others. True random number ...
106 views

### What are the required security properties for salts?

I was recently thinking about password hashing (maybe caused by the PHC progression). I started to think a little more about it and got stuck at this question: What security properties do ...
62 views

### Inverse public-key encryption

I'm in the need of an inverse public-key encryption method where you encrypt with the private key and decrypt with the public key. In other words an asymetric encryption where you can't generate the ...
Suppose that $s_1$ and $s_2$ are two stings that have a small hamming distance. Is there a preimage resistant "hash" function ($H$) that can map them to the same value i.e., $H(s_1) = H(s_2)$?