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### In symmetric searchable encryption are the algorithms public? [duplicate]

If a user (other than the data owner) possesses the secret key in symmetric searchable encryption scheme are they able to run the trapdoor algorithm, or is this not publicly available?
66k views

### Why can't we reverse hashes?

First off, I know hashes are 1 way. There are an infinite number of inputs that can result in the same hash output. Why can't we take a hash and convert it to an equivalent string that can be hashed ...
9k views

### Why not the one-time pad with pseudo-number generator

I am very new to cryptography (so be kind), but I have a question that may seem silly. If the one-time pad is the perfect cipher and impossible to crack, why would the following algorithm not be one ...
17k views

### Is truncating a SHA512 hash to the first 160 bits as secure as using SHA1?

I am from a web development background (I don't know an awful lot about cryptography or how the algorithms themselves work), so I am asking this question in simple terms. Consider a hash of the word '...
21k views

### How cryptographically secure was the original WW2 Enigma machine, from a modern viewpoint?

If cryptanalysts today were to crack the original Enigma machine, “how fast” or “how easily” could they do it? What methods would they use? The original cracking was significantly helped by operator ...
3k views

### How to publish a cipher (concept)?

In the last months I was searching for a subject for my bachelor thesis. I came up with an idea for a new cipher concept that works by combining already known techniques in a (hopefully) new way. So ...
8k views

### Is a Mersenne-twister cryptographically secure if I truncate the output?

I want to create an online roulette game. Is it OK if the PRNG is seeded only once, when the user starts the game, or is it recommended to re-seed sometimes during game? Maybe just seeded once a day ...
2k views

### Does exposing algorithm, key size and IV weaken the security?

I am using an encryption program to encrypt my documents. Previously I have used PGP and AxCrypt, so I just wanted to see how this new tool encrypts the file. This tool is keeping parameters like ...
1k views

### Is there a way to generate sound one-time pads out of public information?

Is there a way to 'mangle' a public data-source (for example, the current date in YYYYMMDD or the top New York Times headline) to form a one-time pad that will sufficiently hide the pad's source? ...
5k views

### Writing your own Encryption algorithm?

Simple answer (and I know this is a simple yes or no) is it possible to write an encryption that is 100% uncrackable, as long as I keep certain parts private? It's just for personal use. I'm a ...
2k views

### Are specially designed fonts sometimes used in cryptography?

As a font designer, I was thinking that it would be very easy to design a special font that could either jumble characters of a language (or of a code) or simply (with the features offered by the OTF ...
1k views

### Why are cryptography algorithms not exported to certain countries?

There have been strict laws about the export of crypto software to certain countries. I can understand the intent, but never gauged the fact that there is nothing stopping these countries from ...
624 views

### What are the exceptions to Kerckhoffs's principle?

Kerckhoffs's principle: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge. Yet the following are three exceptions:- NSA Suite A cryptographic ...
1k views

### Making my steganography code more hard to detect and crack

I'm doing a college project about digital image steganography on MATLAB. So far i've been able to get the help i needed from cool guys on stackoverflow but i now need to make my algorithm more hard to ...
845 views

### When did Kerckhoffs's principle become fully accepted in design and practice of modern ciphers?

Kerckhoffs's principle is named after a publication over 130 years old. Yet it is still something that is commonly misunderstood and challenged by newcomers to cryptography. This question from Open ...
225 views

### Any benefit to writing a message as a mix of 2 languages before encryption?

For example, imagine a message that is a mix of Japanese and English words; Japanese in unicode, English in ASCII. Japanese doesn't use spaces between words. The sentence structures, anything ...
900 views

### An unbreakable book cipher?

In a recent press interview, a former terrorist of the 1970s described the cipher his group used to communicate. He claimed that method was unbreakable and I wonder if cryptographers today would agree....
264 views

### Does complicating a flawed algorithm make it secure?

It's a basic question I guess, but I don't know the answer and I don't think that anyone asked it. Suppose I built a system, it relies on MD5 for security, suddenly I read am article on how easy are ...
423 views

### Does a conditional statement depending on a round number introduce timing attack problems?

In a cryptographic implementation I’m playing with, there’s a round function which includes a conditional if statement. Stripping the superfluous stuff, the C ...
2k views

### How vulnerable is one-time pad (OTP) encryption, if the OTP is used twice, with a random substitution scheme

After reading up on the one-time pad (OTP) encryption method, I could see how it would offer unbreakable encryption if used properly. Moreover, I looked at how the OTP could be broken if the OTP-key ...
357 views

### Fast post-processing for broken RDRAND

Let's assume that the Intel RDRAND instruction does not return fully random numbers, e.g. because it has been engineered with a backdoor for the NSA. If the Intel RDRAND instruction is used directly ...
956 views

### What is 'key agility' in relation to symmetric-key encryption?

I sometimes see, in discussions of symmetric ciphers, reference to the 'key agility' of a particular algorithm. It seems to be related to the difficulty of switching encryption keys, but I don't ...
1k views

### How do you test the security of your cipher?

I got asked this question and I didn't know what to answer. How do you test the security of your cipher? What comes to my mind now would be to test it with famous attacks: padding attacks, ...
465 views

### Decrypting ciphertext that is missing a block

In the AES encryption, suppose that the key is known. The ciphertext is also known except for a block of the same size as the key. For example, the adversary knows $k, c_0, c_1, \dots, c_{n - 1}$; ...
279 views

### Value of new symmetric key algorithm

When I was in grad school, I invented (discovered?) a new PRNG algorithm. This algorithm has an infinite period length (given infinite memory). This in itself cannot be new, because all you need to ...
288 views

### Allowing the user to choose the hashing formula at the registration

I was thinking of a potential new way to increase someone's account security. The idea was allowing the user to choose one of the hash formulas available in the software (example: "MD5", "SHA512" and ...
327 views

### What is the correct test/s to do in asymmetric algorithms to test their security?

I would do some test for evaluating security in asymmetric algorithms such as RSA and ElGamal to evaluate which of both are safer. The basic problem is that I need to test the security of some ...
317 views

### Choosing encryption algorithms and encryption protocols in military systems

Militaries use their own cryptographic algorithms, those of a private third party, or ones that are openly available. But fear of a backdoor having been planted in publicly-available encryption ...