B-Con

2,174 reputation

1418

bio	website	bradconte.com
	location	Texas, USA
	age	25
visits	member for	1 year, 9 months
	seen	yesterday
stats	profile views	18

I'm a software engineer. My specific interests are Cryptography and computer security. I graduated from UC Davis with B.S.s in C.S. and pure math.

My website: http://bradconte.com

	2,174 reputation	bio	website	bradconte.com	visits	member for	1 year, 9 months
1418 badges		location	Texas, USA		seen	yesterday

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Aug 14	answered	Homomorphic cryptosystems in RSA
Aug 14	revised	What is the actual difference between security through obscurity and true encryption? It was difficult to find appropriate tags, but at a minimum "keys" would seem to fit.
Aug 14	reviewed	Looks Good Does the MixColumns step come before or after AddRoundKey in AES decryption?
Aug 14	reviewed	Close Does the MixColumns step come before or after AddRoundKey in AES decryption?
Aug 14	answered	What is the actual difference between security through obscurity and true encryption?
Aug 13	revised	PBKDF2 and salt added 2 characters in body; edited tags
Aug 9	comment	Do MD5's weaknesses affect Oplop? Do existing collision attacks on MD5 give any stepping stones for a pre-image attack? Given that the pre-image contains a master password, that could be a concern.
Aug 6	revised	Why x00 is usually avoided in salt? Added a tag that seemed appropriate.
Aug 1	comment	Does TLS use RC4-drop[n]? @D.W.: This is obviously not a duplicate of the question I linked to, but once you know the answer to that other question the answer to this one is a natural result. Since the RC4 weaknesses here are not relevant in the TLS context there is little motivation to use RC4-drop-n, and it isn't used.
Aug 1	revised	What are the dangers of predictable (repeated) plaintext structures? Added relevant tag.
Jul 31	revised	Relative security of a Vigenère cipher Added relevant tags.
Jul 31	comment	Does TLS use RC4-drop[n]? Very similar to this question. The summary is that these attacks do not really matter in the context of TLS/SSL (aka, when the key is randomized, there are no related keys, etc). Read RSA's own words here.
Jul 31	revised	Why x00 is usually avoided in salt? Clarified first paragraph.
Jul 31	answered	Why x00 is usually avoided in salt?
Jul 30	revised	Why do we need extra hashing if we could use simpler scheme? Added "mac" tag.
Jul 27	comment	Is just a bit of random, “fully random”? If you view the separate hashes side-by-side they will only have 128 bits of entropy total because you need only discover 128 bits in order to learn their combined initial state. Taken individually, however, we would probably still think of each hash as the having 128 bits of entropy because that's the work factor for an attacker. No matter which string they choose they still have 128 bits of work to do. But since their entropy is not, shall we say, "distinct", you can't add the entropies when you combine the strings (so you don't get a paradox by copying and concatenating entropy).
Jul 27	revised	Is just a bit of random, “fully random”? Added another relevant tag.
Jul 27	comment	Should I use md5 for my new application? Is security now a component of the application? We need to understand where the lines in your application are being drawn between intended security and no intended security.
Jul 27	answered	Is just a bit of random, “fully random”?
Jul 24	answered	Is there a way to break this encryption?