# All Questions

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### 128 bit 3DES Key and AES Key: what's the difference?

Apologies if this is really basic but I couldn't find the answer to this. I have heard some Info Sec colleagues talking about creating an AES key in preference to a DES or 3DES key but I don't know ...
11 views

### Pseudorandom function and hash function

What is the difference between a pseudorandom function and hash function ? I have already read the answer in this link What is the difference between a hash function and a pseudorandom function? but ...
35 views

### ccrypt and its security

I would like to know how secure is ccrypt to encrypt files (like images, videos and other non-plain text data) using single password of 20+ chars length. It uses Rijndael with 256-bit block size and ...
9k views

### How does RSA signature verification work?

I understand how the RSA algorithm works for encryption and decryption purposes but I don't get how signing is done. Here's what I (think) I know and is common practice: If I have a message that I ...
24 views

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51 views

### Drawback of ElGamal encryption

I am trying to find out some disadvantages of ElGamal cryptography but I'm not able to figure out what's wrong with the algorithm. The only one I found is that a known-plain text attack is possible in ...
14 views

### What are the steps to decrypt a TLS 1.1 record?

My question is related to another question in Cryptography about TLS 1.1 and 1.2. I have read both RFC 2246 The TLS Protocol Version 1.0 and RFC 4346 The TLS Protocol Version 1.1. What I know is that ...
38 views

### How does ccrypt work?

On many Linux/GNU distributions CCrypt (ccrypt) by Peter Selinger is available as a command line utility to encrypt files. How does the protocol work and is it ...
28 views

### Are there cryptographic schemes that mask as unencrypted traffic?

Are there cryptographic schemes that make encrypted traffic look like unencrypted traffic?
50 views

### Vigenere ciphers : Need help for math analysis [on hold]

I've been learning about Vigenere ciphers and then thought of another method to Encrypt and decrypt that. This's my method to encrypt : ...
93 views

### Evaluating Algebraic Complexity of a S-box

While studying the design and the desirable properties of an AES S-box , I came to know that Algebraic Complexity is also an important property of an S-box which is usually considered while evaluating ...
144 views

### Possible hashing scheme

Plaintext(binary) : 10101100 //very short for easy understanding Suppose we have 4 predefined schemes/functions, rotate (101 -> 011) flip (1101 -> 1011) exchange (11011 -> 10111) stretch (1100 -> ...
14 views

### Pre-Shared Key tunnel solution?

I'm looking for program that will create an encrypted tunnel with port forwarding between two (linux) computers, that handles key exchange using a pre-shared password. In other words, something like ...
42 views

### Why would cryptography fall apart if there were a finite number of primes?

I vaguely know that prime numbers are very important in cryptography, but I assume for most encryption methods, they tend to stay rather 'small'. Are we really using massive prime numbers for ...
19 views

### Recommendation for encryption of db fields [on hold]

Looking for java library who is capable to encrypt db fields of postgres 9.x database
108 views

### How secure is it to use password as AES key?

I am developing a steganography app where user encrypt any file into an audio file. The user can enter a password to protect the hidden data. The same password is converted as a 256 bit key and the ...
42 views

### How obvious is it to decrypt numerics encrypted with a reused one time pad?

For instance say you encrypt text using the one time pad and you end up with some scrambled text that appears illegible. If you reused the key for multiple times for enough text, someone could ...
47 views

### Twofish vs. Serpent vs. AES (or a combo)

I've seen some posts and info online, but they are from 2009, 2010, 2011 or 2012, which is 3-6 years ago, which is a very long time. So I'm looking for an up-to-date answer about which of these is the ...
77 views

### How does knowing the factorization of N can help to obtain the secret?

Assuming $x=a^2 \pmod n$ and knowing $x$, $p$, $q$ how is it possible to obtain $a$?
31 views

### Calculation of time needed to crack DES with my CPU

I have a laptop that has the CPU and the RAMs shown below in the images. My question is that, using this CPU and the RAMs, how much time would it take for me to crack an old school DES algorithm ...
25 views

### BLAKE2 input parameters [on hold]

Being a newbie, I was reading papers on the recent crop of hash functions and BLAKE2 intrigued me. Then I wanted to play around with the "blake2s" code in the code package. If I were to implement a ...
61 views

### How does $g$ being a generator imply Diffie-Hellman's correctness?

In the Diffie-Hellman protocol for key exchange over an unsecured channel, we choose $p$ and $g$, where $g$ is a generator of $\mathbf{Z}_p^*$. However I want to know why this assumption makes the ...
56 views

### What are the well known protocols that offer perfect forward secrecy?

As far as I know these are the well known protocols that offer PFS TLS/SSL (with DHE-RSA, DHE-DSS, ECDHE-RSA or ECDHE-ECDSA) SSH (RFC4253) OTR (Protocol Version 3 Spec) IPsec (with IKEv1 and IKEv2) ...
127 views

### Is there any existing cipher capable of scaling from a 1 bit key up to a one-time-pad?

We have ciphers that handle small amounts of entropy, such as a 256 bit key for AES; and we have one time pads for enciphering 1:1 entropy, such as a 1GB key for a 1GB file if you could ever harvest ...
532 views

### Shannon confusion and diffusion concept

I read the document(not the whole document) from Shannon where he speaks about the concepts of confusion and diffusion. I read in many places(not in the document but around the internet) that ...
94 views

### In HMQV, can one use multiple identities with one public key?

The HMQV protocol has 2 "identity" fields $\hat{A}, \hat{B}$ that are used in the dual signature - and it tries to guarantee that any properly-generated session key is only shared by a single \$(A, B, ...
52 views

### Multiple keys for the same ciphertext [duplicate]

Say you have a plain text: How are you today? and you encrypt it so it becomes: LKD03Loel03skj1Q03 Now you have multiple people that need to know the plain text of this cipher text but ...
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I am currently working on my diploma project, a high security NFC door lock and need to exchange very sensible data. That's why I thought of PGP encryption, which is as far as I know one of the ...
29 views

### Differences between Work Factor and Time Complexity

I am interested to know if work factor means the same thing as time complexity. Quoting Work Factor : Uncovering keys in cryptosystems The Work Factor of a cryptosystem is related to its ...
46 views

### Are there any known weaknesses with ElGamal algorithm?

I am working on a messaging system and plan to use ElGamal asymmetric encryption to protect the message contents during storage and transmission. (This would be in addition to TLS used during ...
62 views

### Zero Knowledge Non Interactive Proof with random oracle

I am trying to write an assay about Non Interactive Zero-Knowledge proofs and would like to take the simple discrete logarithm problem example fallowing the Feige-Fiat-Shamir heuristics. I understand ...
128 views

### PGP String to Key specifiers

I've been reading through the PGP Standard and here I'm a little confused. This section is discussing converting string data to a session key. I'm confused about the paragraph in bold. First off, what ...
28 views

### Would the Fiat Shamir identification scheme be more secure if I design it with an exponents higher than 2?

Let's say both Prover and Verifier would use nth power instead of 2nd when creating public keys and when verifying. I know it would slow it down but would that cause the protocol to be more secure?
2k views

### How exactly is “true randomness” defined in the realms of cryptography?

Especially in relation to stream ciphers, I frequently read about (sometimes theoretical, sometimes practical) attacks that are able to "distinguish a ciphertext from a truly random stream". What's ...
2k views

### The exact difference between a permutation and a substitution

I've noticed confusing definitions about permutation and substitution, preventing to make the difference. A permutation changes the order of distincts elements of a set, but this can be writen as a ...
62 views

### What would a backdoor in symmetric key cipher look like? [duplicate]

Pretty much what the title says. DES was suspected of having one, but I couldn't imagine what it could possibly look like if only the NSA knew how to use it. Dual_EC_DRBG's backdoor is asymmetric, but ...
61 views

### Working a problem that uses RSA encryption:

To overcome weaknesses of the textbook version of RSA encryption, commonly some form of padding is applied.Consider the following suggestion for an asymmetric RSA-based encryption scheme: Key ...
48 views

### Why is C_digest defined in PKCS#11?

Digesting doesn't require any key and can be performed on the client side. Why does the PKCS#11 token interface standard have a C_digest method? For example, why should I send my data to a PKCS11 HSM ...
112 views

### Multiple private keys for single public key

I am currently working in security in mobile ad-hoc networks. I have several clusters, and I want to send some data encrypted with its public key, from the cluster head to the cluster members. I ...
555 views

### If we can find prime numbers larger than 17 milion digits, why can't we find all 1024bit primes? [duplicate]

"Largest Known Prime Number Discovered; Has 17,425,170 Digits" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130213225424.htm If we can find prime numbers larger than 17 milion digits, why can't we ...
266 views

### decrypt numbers multiplied by a certain floating point number

A friend has about 10K numbers in a an excel sheet. He wanted to encrypt these numbers in order to share the file with a 3rd party that will help him reorganize the tables. What he did, to hide the ...
15 views

### Runtime of a particular step of karatsuba algorithm [on hold]

I am new to algorithms and was trying to calculate the runtime cost of each step of the karatsuba algorithm. Assuming you know what the karatsuba algorithm is, So I was not sure of the calculation ...
28 views

### Standard serialization format for libsodium-based messages

Does anyone know of a standardized serialization format which can be (or already is) widely used for encrypted messages? For a variety of reasons (mostly complexity, age and poor support across a lot ...
34 views

### GCM implementation

I want to write GCM implementation myself (only for research purposes). So far, I have successfully written CTR implementation (for AES), but now I ran into few problems with GCM. If I'm not wrong, ...
168 views

### How to choose an algorithm

I have some understanding of Cryptography and I would like to know if there is a tool or website to help me choose an algorithm based on my own needs (I'm being vague in purpose). I'm looking for a ...
21 views

### Is this JS library using openssl genrsa -rand improperly?

pem, a JS wrapper around openssl, has the following code in it: var params = ['genrsa', '-rand', '/var/log/mail:/var/log/messages', keyBitsize ]; Am ...
8k views

### Difference between encrypting something and hashing something

What is the difference between encrypting something and hashing something? in what situations would I want one or the other?
64 views

### Exponentiation with fully homomorphic encryption [duplicate]

I have often heard that because a fully homomorphic encryption scheme allows for both additions and multiplications on encrypted data, most other operations can be simulated. I don't understand how ...