# Tag Info

8

No, because even SHA-512 was considered overkill from a security perspective. It has 256-bit collision resistance, which is unbreakable. (The link is about keys but a similar argument applies.) If you think large quantum computers will be efficient, a 512-bit hash makes some sense, but even then a 1024-bit one wouldn't. A quantum computer requires ...

6

Using a MAC on the plaintext may potentially leak information about the plaintext (MAC algorithms do not necessarily ensure confidentiality of the data they are applied to, although some MAC algorithms like HMAC seem pretty safe). If you want to avoid this (theoretical) problem, then you should encrypt the MAC on the plaintext (i.e. MAC-then-encrypt, not ...

3

A key derivation function lets you derive keys from others. In this case I would use HKDF, which means using HMAC in a predefined way. Your key material is the keys $X$ and $Y$, so you can concatenate those to get the PRK for HKDF-Expand. An output key would then be $\operatorname{HMAC}(X||Y, \text{info} || \text{0x01})$, if the size of the HMAC is long ...

3

The catch how ever is that if a small part of the file is given along with the location of that bytes from the beginning of the file we should be able to decrypt just that piece. Normal CTR mode encryption allows one to decrypt any block of the file independent of the rest, so no need to invent your own mode. With AES the block size is always 128 bits, ...

3

You basically want a full disk encryption mode for a block cipher; XTS mode seems to be the current standard. In your case each "disk block" is actually a file offset. Note that using a stream cipher or counter mode is NOT secure if the data is ever modified in the file, as it would violate the cardinal sin of using the same key and initialization vector to ...

3

The Secure Hash Standard and corresponding FIPS-180/202 do not specify any hash to meet a security requirement above 256-bits (using a 512-bit hash). This is unlikely to change. SHA-2 was built with state and word sizes to meet the security requirements on commodity computers (x86 and Alpha), which use 32 and 64-bit maximum CPU word sizes for general ...

2

Small addition: You do not lose integrity when using encrypt-then-MAC. Since encryption is an injection, distinct plaintexts produce distinct ciphertexts, so plaintext forgery implies ciphertext forgery, which is hard if encrypt-then-MAC is secure.

2

There is no uniform permutation; there is a permutation uniformly chosen from the set of all possible permutations over $Z_2^{128}$. It is evident that AES is not a uniformly chosen permutation, since its permutation is fixed for any key. One can consider a family $\{AES_K\}$ of AES permutations under all possible keys $K$. Even if the key is chosen ...

1

It depends on what properties the compression function has, which in turn depends on how the hash function was constructed. In hash functions based on the Merkle–Damgård construction, the compression function is required to be collision, preimage and second preimage resistant, just like the hash function itself. The only difference is input length: the ...

1

HMAC is considered the most secure way of combining two keys, as compared to a single round of SHA256. hmac is designed to fold in the key material in 2 hash operations, which helps resist chosen plaintext attacks on sha-256, although SHA256 has no known chosen plaintext attacks at this time. Symmetric ciphers are considered less reliable than hashes for ...

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