# All Questions

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### Asymmetric algorithm for one time signing of small cleartext

I want to generate a key pair such that the private key can be used once to sign a small message (1024 bytes) at some indeterminate point in the future and the public key can be used to verify that ...
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### Secure Deduplication and Encryption in a data store

Assume: We have a centralized data store that can store whatever we need Every user is online Users can securely communicate Function $f : File \to Key$ gets access to the store, and is the same for ...
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### Implementing the Mceliece Encryption - making the Generator Matrix

I am working on an implementation of the Mceliece Encryption system (MCE) and the Niederreiter encryption system. I have been through the basics of finite fields, polynomial arithmetic and some coding ...
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### practically verifying block ciphers strength

How do we verify practically the strength of a block ciphers? Most of the security analysis of block ciphers is usually around theoretical analysis and proofs in some random oracle model etc. For ...
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### Homomorphic Encryption: how does the equality test on ciphertexts work?

let's suppose we have a asymmetric cryptosystem H which is homomorphic with respect to some function F. Alice encrypts a message m with her private key e in the cryptosystem H and obtains the ...
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### Question on Waters IBE

I'm reading “Efficient Identity-Based Encryption Without Random Oracles” by Brent Waters. In Page 9, I don't know how ...
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### 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 ...
175 views

### How does Random Oracle and Standard Model differ? [duplicate]

I am new to Crypto field. Many papers are boasting of not using Random Oracle model. Instead, those prove security in Standard Model. I am surprised how do these models differ. Can anyone please ...
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### Repeatable crypto

Is there a safe way to do crypto that will always produce the same result for a given input? My use case is transferring deltas of huge files, to a backup server. The backup server has no knowledge ...
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### Why are some key stretching methods better than others?

I'm trying to understand why some key stretching methods are better than others. The wikipedia article presents 3 different key stretching methods: A collision prone simple key stretching ...
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### Choice of authenticated encryption mode for whole messages

There are several well-regarded block cipher modes for authenticated encryption which have made their way into standards and protocols: CCM, EAX, GCM, OCB, … If I am designing a new messaging or ...
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### Understanding Genkin-Pipman-Tromer's ground potential, side channel attack on RSA

I'm pretty sure that by now folks might have come across this research from Genkin-Pipman-Tromer (GPT) on extracting the RSA key used by GnuPG (GPG) just by measuring the ground potential. I'm going ...
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### Can Bitcoin HD public keys be used for symmetric encryption?

I asked this at bitcoin.stackexchange.com first, but it seems that this is more of a crypto-question anyway. I'm interested in using a Hierarchical Deterministic Bitcoin wallet branch as a "shared ...
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### Security of very simple XOR with random?

I am currently trying to implement a very fast and simple encryption algorithm in Lua for the purpose of using it with ComputerCraft. The main problem is that bitwise operations in Lua (5.2 at least) ...
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### RSA was rejected by which journal?

Is it true that first time RSA algorithm was rejected by a journal?
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### Possible CPA or CCA attack when using AES-CBC mode under the following situation?

Both client and server know a shared key in advance. Both sides us EVP_BytesToKey() derive a pair of same key and same IV. Then, client and server start transferring data encrypted by AES-CBC mode ...
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### What's the point of a Meet In The Middle attack using i.e. double AES with throw-away keys?

What's the point of a Meet In The Middle attack while using, for example, a double AES encryption and using one time keys? You can recover the keys for a secret message already known and you can't use ...
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### Comparing Difference Distribution Tables

I have been studying the Diff. Cryptanalysis and finding it hard to do a problem. The problem is I have calculated the tables programmatically and found that the second table has a max value of 6 ...
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### PBKDF2-SHA256+SHA256 for password storage

I recently came across an interesting paper detailing the use of hardened session cookies. Each cookie includes a preimage of the password hash, and the preimage is hashed once more and compared to ...
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### Are variable-length crypto hash functions still susceptible to collisions?

I just recently learned that the SHA-3 finalist Keccak allows for variable length output. As the only answer to this question states, "[it] need to have an output length at least equal to the input ...
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### PBKDF2 Salt and Password Ordering

I am currently reading about PBKDF2, and understand that the salt is used only once, while the password is used multiple times in the computation of the final key (see this question). How would the ...
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### How to distribute symmetric key between $n$ entities?

If there are $n$ servers for broadcasting a symmetric key in such a manner that following holds: No server alone can find the key $K$ alone. Any two servers can pass $k_i$ and $k_j$ such that ...
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### Partial hash code protocol for security tokens providing signatures

I've read the following two sentences within a beta protocol specification, which references ISO/IEC 7816-8 for PSO:HASH which already contains notions of a "partial hash". The off-card entity is ...
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### Type G Bilinear Pairings

I was reading PBC and its implementations for finding pairing parameters. I am particularly interested in implementing a BLS signature scheme with 20-byte (160-bit) signatures ("short signatures"). ...
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### What c++ crypto library might I use for XTS mode? [on hold]

Ideally, I would like to use crypto++ for it's simplistic and straightforward API. This has so far worked very well in a domain where data needs to be read from / written to at random seek locations: ...
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### why should one use lattice-based systems in epassports in post- quantum computers era? [on hold]

I found that shor's algo would break the RSA and DH algorithm(though I dont understand the complete steps of shor's algo), all protocols of epassports would be broken so why cant it be not broken with ...
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### EAX: OMAC and CMAC

OMAC is specified as the underlying algorithm to provide authentication within the EAX authenticated encryption (with associated data). Would that be OMAC1 or OMAC2? If it is OMAC1, does that mean it ...
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### Proof for composed signatures

Assumes that we have 3 signature algorithms, $S^A$ with key pair $(sk^A,pk^A)$, $S^B$ with key pair $(sk^B,pk^B)$,$S^C$ with key pair $(sk^C,pk^C)$. We denote by $\epsilon$, $\epsilon'$ and ...
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### OCB and GCM security

Is OCB as secure as GCM or CCM ? Since OCB design is quite different from GCM and CCM, I was wondering if the security properties of these latters are satisfied by OCB, as well. Thank you.
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### Why is composite order bilinear group used for scenarios needing highly secure systems?

Why composite order bilinear group is used for scenarios that need highly secure system compare to prime order bilinear group that used for efficiency? We know that composite order bilinear group are ...
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### Proving Non-Existence of ECC Backdoors

In light of the NIST Dual EC DRBG scandal, I was intrigued by a NIST slide (slide 9) that said the two points P and Q can be chosen so that the chooser can prove they don't have a backdoor. This ...
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### Is hashing a list of hashes safe?

I have an arbitrary long list of hashes (e.g. git tree hashes), and I'm wondering by how much I am increasing the risk of hash collisions by condensing them into a single hash, like so: ...
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### Found a way to crack AES-128, what now?

I have just found a way to crack AES-128 in a reasonable time (1-2 days). How do I publish and prove this? I remember reading about lots of people who cracked DES and other ciphers but how did they ...
164 views

### Attacking unuauthenticated RSA

In symmetric cryptography, a scheme is not considered secure if the data transmitted is only encrypted. The adversary will be able to modify messages to generate encrypted messages of his choice ...
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### Good challenges for a crypto competition for teenagers

I'm holding a cryptography workshop for teenagers (around 16 years old) at our university. As part of the workshop, I'm planning to run a crypto competition with prizes: there will be different tasks, ...
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### Solution with high decryption cost and low encryption cost

I am looking for any cryptographic solution that will meet those requirements : Only known method to get the encrypted string need to be brute force. Decrypting on modern computer not more than ...
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### Counter Mode: how to choose the nonce part of the counter? [duplicate]

Suppose: The "counter field" is about: NONCE || CTR-VALUE. I have multiples messages $M_a, M_b, M_c, \dots$ Each message can be divided into x-bits blocks ($M_{a1}, M_{a2}, M_{a3}, \dots$). Each ...
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### Can all asymmetric key pairs be reversed?

After reading about public/private key cryptography, there are still a few points I don't really understand. Based on the way (I understand) challenges work, the public key is used to encrypt a ...
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### Groth-Sahai proofs and hardness assumptions

I am learning Groth-Sahai NIZK proof system for Bilinear groups. While going through the literature, I am getting confused on how the proof system is related to Subspace Decision, SXDH or DLIN ...
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### One Way function and Merkle Damgård

Is it possible keep the "one wayness property" of certain one way function in Merkle-Damgård construction? I'm asking this question because according to Collision-Resistant hashing: Towards making ...
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### RSA and ECDSA Certificate Sizes

Is there a table (or a whitepaper from official sources) that compares the size of X509 certificates generated with RSA (starting from 1024 bits) and ECDSA (starting from 160 bits) ? Thanks for the ...
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### What's the best packet cipher mode for use with UDP for example? Advantages or disadvantages of any alternatives?

Cipher modes typically assume data is streamed or read from a reliable channel with guaranteed ordering. However, many communication transports, such as UDP, are not reliable and don't guarantee order ...
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### Efficiently map $2^n$ unique 64-bit vectors to $2^n$ $n$-bit vectors where $n < 64$? [on hold]

Is there an efficient way to map $2^n$ unique 64-bit vectors to $2^n$ $n$-bit vectors where $n < 64$?
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### What's the consequence of having a short IV? Is one mode better in that case?

I've read lots about null-length IVs being bad for most modes. In a scenario where passing a 128-bit IV along with each message isn't feasible, how would generating the IV from a smaller passed-along ...
131 views

### Proof of Communication

I desire an algorithm in which Alice sends a block of data $X$ to Bob, with proof that the data was both sent and received. Ideally this would take the form of a public-key signature of the block $X$ ...
342 views

### Is it secure to derive an AES key from a MAC?

I'm working on a project where we need to encrypt a large number of files and store them on the cloud. And I'm wondering if the following process would be secure (we have a “Hardware Security Module” ...
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### Which causes longer “break” time (in general)?

In general (if possible to determine) which would make an output harder to turn into plain text with a computer? Extreme Length (minor complexity change) Extreme algorithmic complexity (minor length ...
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### Convergent Encryption: integrity and authenticity

I have one question about convergent encryption. Suppose I use AES-256 in CBC mode. I need a 256 bits key and a 128 bits IV. If I use SHA-256 to hash one file, then I can use directly that hash as ...