# Tag Info

20

AES-GCM has the following problems: In the case of nonce reuse both integrity and confidentiality properties are violated. If the same nonce is used twice, an adversary can create forged ciphertexts easily. When short tags are used, it is rather easy to produce message forgeries. For instance, if the tag is 32 bits, then after $2^{16}$ forgery attempts and ...

7

If the data to protect has no built-in redundancy at all (for example, has each of its bit determined by fair coin toss), there is no way to protect integrity without expansion (Proof sketch: there are as many distinct possibilities for valid plaintext as there as possibilities for valid enciphered-and-protected data, hence every possible ...

7

Thought I'd begin with some references for you that might be of interest. These terms are used as key 'selling points' for a number of schemes, including many of the CAESAR submissions. Some examples using the terms specifically are given below - most of which are from CAESER because I have the zoo in-front of me: "Online": OCB, Ascon, CBA, APE, NORX ...

7

The GQ identification scheme is essentially a zero-knowledge proof of a value $x$ such that $x^\mu \equiv J \pmod N$ where $N$ is an RSA modulus and $(\mu,N)$ are system parameters and $J$ is known to the verifier and $x$ only known to the prover. Now your question is not directly concerned with the aforementioned proof where a user shows the possession of ...

7

First, the fact that the data is "easy" to guess (in the sense that an attacker has a one-in-2^32 or a one-in-2^64 chance of guessing correctly) doesn't mean much if the attacker has no way of checking if his guess is correct. Or at least, it's not a problem with the cryptography. Second, even if he does have that ability, the problem of protecting your ...

7

One obvious thing that it is vulnerable to a known plaintext attack that truncates the known message. This attack is quite simple; suppose the attacker knows a message $(P_1, P_2, ..., P_n)$ and the corresponding ciphertext $(C_1, C_2, ..., C_n, T)$ (using some IV; we don't care what it is). Here is how the attacker can generate a ciphertext that would ...

6

A is acting as a square-root oracle in that protocol. We can use that oracle to factor $n$ and break the scheme. Suppose you are an attacker that wants to impersonate A. You: Pick a random $m$; Send $m^2$ to A; Compute $p = \gcd(m_1 - m, n)$, thus factoring $n$. This works with probability $1/2$ for each attempt.

5

I suppose one of the problems (they mention several after a short reading) with a mode like GCM is nonce misuse (e.g. reuse). When the key is the same and the nonce is reused, by misunderstanding the concept or by a simple programming error, information about the plain texts can be revealed. Phillip Rogaway has already defined an encryption mode (SIV, ...

5

Before answering your questions: GCM is an authentication encryption mode of operation, it is composed by two separate functions: one for encryption (AES-CTR) and one for authentication (GMAC). It receives as input: a Key a unique IV Data to be processed only with authentication (associated data) Data to be processed by encryption and authentication It ...

5

GCM Personally, I would go for GCM (Galois Counter Mode) since it is efficient – meaning: it handles pretty much everything you’ld expect from it, while other modes sometimes tend to lack a specific feature here and there (see image below for a comparison that shows what I’m hinting at). Also, GCM has a pretty good performance (assuming non-flawed ...

4

It has the disadvantages of any MAC-then-encrypt scheme, which I'm quoting from the linked answer below. In addition: It has the property that you need both a nonce and a hash, so for equivalent security it requires more message space. The nonce has to be random, so it requires strong random numbers for each message, unlike e.g. AES CTR + HMAC. Doesn't ...

4

As correctly pointed out in a comment, the authenticated encryption model assumes that the attacker knows the algorithm; the attacker can query the encryption oracle with any plaintext $P$ (and a unique nonce $N$) and get MAC-then-Encrypt ciphertext $C$; the attacker can query the decryption oracle with any string $C$ pretending to be a ciphertext. No ...

4

Because $r$ is not guaranteed to be a Quadratic Residue, so for random $r$ there wouldn't be $m_1$ such that $r \equiv m_1^2(\mod n)$, therefore authentication will be impossible in this case.

4

AES-GCM uses single block cipher operation and can be processed in parallel, therefore it should be faster. CTR+HMAC requires block cipher and hash function, which usually can't be processed in parallel. Also it requires 2 keys. It is often miss-implemented (MAC-than-encrypt or MAC-and-encrypt, using single key). Cipher-text length is the same for same ...

4

What Stephen says in the comment is correct. It is safe to not use authenticated encryption whenever your adversary model assumes that the attacker does not have the ability to manipulate ciphertexts. I assumed hard drive volume encryption or per file encryption that is not transmitted over an insecure network should be considered safe to do without a ...

4

From the sound of your questions, it almost appears that you have some confusion between the CBC-MAC key and the CBC-MAC tag. The CBC-MAC algorithm takes the message (in this case, most likely the ciphertext) and a secret key; it outputs a tag (which can be public). The security property of CBC-MAC is that someone who does not know the key cannot generate ...

3

From RFC 4880 - Open PGP Message Format (emphasis added) OpenPGP implementations SHOULD compress the message after applying the signature but before encryption. As the signature provides authentication, and you specifically ask about authentication, I think that quote from the RFC should answer your question. Compression does not affect ...

3

Moxie Marlinspike calls it in his article http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/the-cryptographic-doom-principle/ the doom principle: if you have to perform any cryptographic operation before verifying the MAC on a message you’ve received, it will somehow inevitably lead to doom. He also demonstrates two attacks which are possible because of trying to ...

3

I guess the answer is no, as long as you are using ECIES then this protocol does not work - you cannot trust the public key of Bob, which is required for ECIES. You could however use ephemeral-static Diffie-Hellman, using ECDH as cryptographic algorithm. Alice would supply the static part as her public key is trusted, Bob may use any key pair. That means ...

3

The biggest issue with padding oracle attacks are when the padding is not very carefully implemented (for example if using EtM you must calculate the MAC over everything - including the padding). To pre-empt references to the classic Belare-Namprempre paper, be wary - their results do not apply to modern primitives, since nowadays we prove security ...

3

Unless you are absolutely sure that you don't need to and that the cost is going to be significant then I would absolutely say you should use authenticated encryption. One reason is bit-flipping attacks - flipping a few bits at the 'right' point in your encrypted message might lead well to a message that is legal (the classic example is if someone learns ...

3

Answering my own question since there haven't been any response. In fact there is no flaw in the definition. Nor in my attack per se! However, the entire point of this definition is to rule out non-stateful schemes (and stateful schemes that doesn't incorporate the state in a sufficient manner) as being secure. In particular, when the adversary asks for ...

3

If there exists an encryption scheme, then there exists an encryption schemes such that one can easily modify a single ciphertext so that whether or not that modifies the decryption result depends in a predictable-and-useful way on what the plaintext message was, such as: The modified encryption operation outputs a zero concatenated with the original ...

3

In general signature creation contains the hashing part within the algorithm. A signature algorithm may also contain a padding mechanism such as PKCS#1 v1.5 or PSS for RSA. Finally it contains a one-way trap door function (modular exponentiation within RSA). Encryption has other requirements, and uses a different padding mechanism. Basically you are ...

3

I would pick EAX as it is by far the simplest to implement and therefore to understand and audit. It is reasonably fast if based on AES. GCM seems quite popular, but I personally see a number of issues with it: it is very difficult to implement in software (which is not surprising, since it was developed with hardware in mind). it is slower than it seems ...

3

Yes, this should be secure, as it is largely compatible with KDF1 and KDF2 which basically use a 4 byte big endian encoding of the counter instead of a direct ASCII conversion to a byte. Note that this construct works fine for master keys (short length, high entropy) but may be vulnerable to length extension attacks if larger input is allowed. However, if ...

3

I'll answer the related questions in order: No, because a ciphertext (generated from a key stream generated by a stream cipher) should be indistinguishable from random data, and a MAC should be as well. No, because #1 depends on the secret, and the secret was derived using a Diffie-Hellman key agreement algorithm, using the given curve. To know ...

2

A symmetrically encrypted hash is not a secure MAC. You should use either an authenticated encryption scheme or a secure MAC in encrypt-then-MAC. With asymmetric encryption, it may be secure – "encrypting" with the author's private key means you are actually signing the message which is fine. However, you need to use the actual asymmetric primitive, not ...

2

encrypt it with the message author's private key This statement makes me uncomfortable. Normally, in asymmetric cryptography, one encrypts with the public key and signs with the private key. Did you mean “sign it with the message author's private key”? Otherwise, I would not accept your protocol without a clear, detailed explanation of what encryption ...

2

It depends on exactly what protocol you're asking about. ECIES as design gives no assurance to Bob that the message really came from Alice. This is, with standard ECIES, Alice does not use her private key -- instead, everything that Alice does (encrypt using Bob's public key) could have been done equally well by someone else - hence, Bob has no ...

Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible