# Tagged Questions

HMAC is a method for constructing a message authentication code based on a cryptographic hash function.

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### Does “use of SHA-256 in cryptography” imply use of SHA-256 both in HMAC and DH key exchange, assuming these are the only uses of hash in system? [on hold]

I am beginner to Cryptography. And recently I came across the requirement like "use of SHA-256 in cryptography". Does "use of SHA-256 in cryptography" imply use of SHA-256 both in HMAC and DH key ...
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### Why don't we use H(m||k) as a MAC? [duplicate]

HMAC seems a bit complicated. Why can't we use $H(m||k)$ as a MAC? Unlike $H(k||m)$, length extension attacks won't work. Is there some other obvious attack?
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So these days I see everyone using AES-GCM. What are its advantages over simple CTR+HMAC modes? Is it speed? Or ciphertext length? And what are the security tradeoffs, both in terms of practical ...
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### Is it necessary to use single hash function for signature generation and HMAC?

I am trying to figure out if we need to use single hash function across all the places in a ssh session. i.e – signature generation/verification and HMAC calculation/validation. Is it possible to use ...
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### Breaking a PRNG Scheme

Assume the following scheme for a PRNG generating decimals in [0,100) Given a message and a key, compute tag := HMAC512(message, key). Take the first 5 hexadecimal characters of the tag. If the ...
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### Keyed-hash of a lot of small numbers

Let's say I have a list of several million numbers, with only 6-9 digits of secret information per number (this means that an attacker might efficiently guess the other digits). I have to store the ...
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### Using HMAC-SHA256 with short passwords and sliced outputs for short-lived secure hashing

I don't have much background in cryptography, so forgive me if I'm using the wrong mathematical terms to explain my needs. Following this question, I learned that taking a random secret 16-bytes ...
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### Can I use HMAC-SHA1 in counter mode to make a stream cipher?

Say I have an embedded device which is only capable of doing HMAC-SHA1 transformations (that device is, in fact, a YubiKey). Would it be secure to feed it like a block cipher in counter mode to get a ...
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### How does the secret key in an HMAC prevent modification of the HMAC?

Just as a preface: I'm not implementing a HMAC - I just want to understand it, as it is part of of my Computer Science course. When using Hash-based message authentication codes, I understand that ...
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### Using HMAC to secure a “widget”

Let's say I have a web "widget" that a customer could include on their website. They would include the widget by adding an iframe that points to a URL on my site. I want to ensure that my widget can ...
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### Game traffic encryption AES CTR + HMAC

I was asked to implement traffic encryption between the game server and clients. Currently, the traffic is not encrypted in any way, which lets players use cheats to listen to the traffic in order to ...
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### When do I need to renew keys for Salsa20 or HMAC?

I currently have a system which uses two keys sourced from a single key subjected to HKDF. One key is used in the Salsa20 stream ...
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### Is there any analysis of freebsd's “geli” encrypted geometry provider?

I've done a few obvious searches on google and google scholar and not turned up any security analysis of FreeBSD's geli. Is there some out there, or has it gone unanalyzed since its introduction ...
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### Why does WPA2-PSK use 4-way handshake instead of 2-way handshake

I don't seem to grasp why is the handshake for PTK in WPA2-PSK 4-way and not 2-way. Isn't it enough to just have these two steps: First party sends Nonce1 to the other party Second party sends to ...
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### Is this new server API authentication protocol secure?

I need a secure protocol to authenticate client side users with my server which has an API. I am devising something more secure particularly to resist active MITM attacks where an attacker may modify ...
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### What does AES256-CTS-HMAC-SHA1-96 mean in relation to Kerberos?

I'm not completely clueless as to what it means, but I'd like to understand it at a higher level. The highest encryption type used by Active Directory domain controllers for Kerberos authentication ...
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### Encrypted query parameters via HMAC

I have an unsubscribe link, which needs to be passed a customer id, and a product id, producing a query string something like: ?cid=100&pid=2 I would like to ...
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### HMAC vs Encrypted Hash

What is best to use (for message integrity) between… AES(Data) + HMAC(Data) AES(Data + HMAC(Data)) AES(Data + Hash(Data)) …and why?
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### How to use HMAC-SHA1, HMAC-SHA2 in conjunction with AES

I understand how to compute HMAC-SHA1, HMAC-SHA2 etcetera. Please explain why/how is the resulting HMAC value is used in conjunction with AES for encryption/decryption and signing/verifying. In ...
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### SHA256 HMAC brute force with chosen plaintext attacks

This is a follow up to Is It Possible To Reconstruct a Cryptographic Hash's Key I am using a SHA-256 HMAC function on a single-word input: sha256hmac(privatekey,word) = output. The private key length ...
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### Using the same secret key for encryption and authentication in a Encrypt-then-MAC scheme

Is it a weakness to use a single shared secret for protecting messages using a Encrypt-then-MAC scheme? Assuming a system is using AES-256-CBC and a SHA1-HMAC and the same secret key for both ...
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### How secure is passing a MAC to Python's random.seed before using random.choice to generate a MAC?

I'd like to use Python's random.choice seeded with a HMAC-SHA1 tag to generate a MAC encoded in a variable set of chars. ...
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### AES+CTR+HMAC Encryption and Authentication on an Arduino

In my project we would like to encrypt and authenticate the the communication channel between our server and our Arduino nodes, which relies on an underlying TCP channel. We have chosen AES in CTR ...
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### Case insensitive verification of HMAC / Base64 signature

I am signing a short message using the base64 of an HMAC, like this (python): ...
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### RSA digital signature vs authenticated cipher

I want to provide both confidentiality and integrity for data at rest (many large files stored on disk). I plan to encrypt the data using AES, which will cover the confidentiality requirement. So ...