# Tag Info

## Hot answers tagged keys

9

XORing a master key (presumably a long term key) with data is a very dangerous idea. If any data key is leaked, then the master key may be easily calculated, thus leaking all keys. ($m$ for the master key, $d_x$ for all data keys) $$c_x = d_x \oplus m$$ then somehow $d_4$ is leaked $$m = d_4 \oplus c_4$$ $$d_x = c_x \oplus m$$ You'd be better off applying a ...

5

Many keys do not consist of a single value. Other key types, such as most symmetric keys, don't have a most significant bit or byte as the key value isn't interpreted as an integer. So this question would be different for each key type and encoding. In general though you would just decrease the "entropy" or key size. This is certainly the case for ECC, and ...

4

Each 56-bit key has a unique 8-bit parity value. For this reason there are only $2^{56}$ keys.

3

Yes, the principle to use a common password and a unique salt per file with a key derivation function is a good and acceptable practice, as you generate the salt randomly and with the right size. The uniqueness of the salt guarantees a different password per file (actually one password per salt, so: do not reuse a salt, use a csprng). You forgot to mention ...

3

If a cryptosystem is expecting a 16-byte key, making the first byte nonzero simply reduces the number of possible keys. It is better to allow all bytes to be all values.

2

First things first, finding the key (book) is not impossible, but just tough. If someone, like Google for example, has scanned millions of books into digital formats then it won't take long for them to figure out which book (simply try decrypting the first sentence only until the key is found, should be feasible for a mainframe). Also, there is a lack of ...

1

This depends on the MAC because there are different kinds of attacks to consider. If the best attack is randomly trying authentication tags, then the key does not matter. If the best attack is brute forcing the key, then key renewal does mean that the attacker has to "start anew", but as long as the key space is large enough that the probability of finding ...

1

Well, as SEJPM and Mok-Kong Shen pointed out, it's described in FIPS 197, but let's explain it in details: Here's the Key Expansion algorithm pseudo-code from FIPS 197: Where $Nk$ is the number of $32$-bit words that composed the key $Nr$ is the number of rounds $Nb$ is the number of columns in the state block (which is always $4$). $word$ is a ...

1

The parity bits act as error checking. In effect there is only 56 bits being used for entropy. Also This question has already been answered. See similar question here or here

1

well it probably varies on how you want to access the key, one of the most extreme version could be an HSM which should keep it really safe but is also rather expensive. another way would be encrypting it with a key that just you know with plain AES and storing the base64 somewhere for example, that's what I do for some of them if you want to require ...

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