# All Questions

3,674 questions
Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
2k views

### Security of Schnorr signature versus DSA and DLP

The Schnorr signature scheme is a randomized signature scheme with appendix. The signature is $3t$-bit for conjectured $t$-bit security in a chosen-messages setup, with at most $2^{t/2}$ queries to a ...
29k views

### How to attack a “many-time pad” based on what happens when an ASCII space is XORed with a letter?

I've already sent my correct solution to a homework exercise from Dan Boneh's Introduction to Cryptography class on Coursera: "Let us see what goes wrong when a stream cipher key is used more ...
3k views

### lcm versus phi in RSA

In textbook RSA, the Euler $\varphi$ function $$\varphi(pq) = (p-1)(q-1)$$ is used to define the private exponent $d$. On the other hand, real-world cryptographic specifications require the Carmichael ...
1k views

### Mathematical formula for switching the key for OTP?

Instead of generating the random key for the one time pad cipher over and over again, is there a mathematical formula that allows you to switch the key to a new key? The new key must be as random and ...
56k views

### How does asymmetric encryption work?

I've always been interested in encryption but I have never found a good explanation (beginners explanation) of how encryption with public key and decryption with private key works. How does it ...
117k views

One runtime platform provides an API that supplies PKCS#5 padding for block cipher modes such as ECB and CBC. These modes have been defined for the triple DES, AES and Blowfish block ciphers. The ...
18k views

### Galois fields in cryptography

I don't really understand Galois fields, but I've noticed they're used a lot in crypto. I tried to read into them, but quickly got lost in the mess of heiroglyphs and alien terms. I understand they're ...
30k views

### Understanding the length extension attack

I have been trying to understand exactly how a length extension attack works on SHA-1. I'll detail below what I've understood so far, so that I can convey my understanding of the same and hopefully ...
17k views

### Why must IV/key-pairs not be reused in CTR mode?

Many sources mention that IVs must not be reused with the same key in CTR mode, for encrypting 2 different pieces of data, because that totally destroys security - but I haven't found an explanation ...
10k views

### Is 80 bits of key size considered safe against brute force attacks?

I came across the KATAN family of ciphers for small domain input blocks. They cipher arbitrary block lengths: 32, 48 and 64, but their key size is 80 bits only. Is 80 bits of key size considered ...
6k views

### Is it feasible to build an index of prime factors?

Would it be possible to break an RSA key, in for example 1 week of time, if the cracker have already spent X number of years building an index of primes by performing every permutation of existing ...
7k views

### “Weaknesses” in SHA-256d?

According to this answer, "SHA-256d" was proposed in one of the Ferguson/Schneier books like so: SHA-256d(x) = SHA-256(SHA-256(x)) Apparently, the motivation for ...
6k views

### Why does the padding in Merkle–Damgård hash functions like MD5 contain the message length?

I understand the need for padding in MD5. But why do we append the message length to the padding? I heard it strengthens the hash but how? Please provide an example if possible and how it applies to ...
9k views

### What is a tweakable block cipher?

Pretty simple question - but I can't seem to find much information about it. What exactly is a tweakable block cipher? How do they differ from traditional block ciphers? What is the 'tweak'? Is it ...
19k views

### Why is triple-DES using three different keys vulnerable to a meet-in-the-middle-attack?

Among other sources, this wikipedia entry states that triple DES using three seperate keys (k1, k2, k3) is vulnerable to meet-in-the-middle-attacks, while triple DES using only two keys (k1, k2, k1) ...
2k views

### Is the encryption of a hash a good MAC?

At university we were told that it is a bad idea to implement a MAC by simply concatenating a key with the data to sign and to run it through a hash function (e.g. $s = \mathrm{hash}(k||\mathrm{data})$...
6k views

### How bad it is using the same IV twice with AES/GCM?

I understand that initialization vectors (IV) should not be used twice when using AES/GCM. I am using a counter as an initialization vector. Every time I send out a new packet (I am developing an UDP ...
3k views

### Is it theoretically possible to construct a string that contains its own hash value?

After saw the xkcd comic Self-Description, I wonder if it is theoretically possible to construct a self-descriptive string that contains its own hash value? Let's say the string's MD5 value is ...
68k views

### How should I calculate the entropy of a password?

If part of the password is a whole regular English word, does the entropy of that part depend on the number of English words in existence, the number of English words known by the choosing algorithm, ...
32k views

### What are preimage resistance and collision resistance, and how can the lack thereof be exploited?

What is "preimage resistance", and how can the lack thereof be exploited? How is this different from collision resistance, and are there any known preimage attacks that would be considered feasible?
11k views

### Is the software that uses PGP broken, or is it PGP itself?

PGP is all over the news (even on TV) and there seems to be a lot of confusion about it. For the time being, people face articles like Attention PGP users: new vulnerabilities require you to take ...
17k views

### What is the most secure hand cipher?

By "hand cipher", I mean a symmetric cipher for which encryption and decryption can can both be performed with a pencil on graph paper, consuming about 10-20 seconds per character by a proficient user....
18k views

### Why do we use encrypt-decrypt-encrypt (EDE) in 3DES, rather than encrypting three times?

I'm wondering why we use encrypt-decrypt-encrypt (EDE) sequence in 3DES (also known as DES-EDE, TDES or TDEA) with three keys instead of three times encryption (EEE) with three different keys?
17k views

### ElGamal with elliptic curves

I've searched some information on ECC, but so far I have only found Diffie-Hellman key-exchange implementations using ECC, but I don't want to exchange keys, I want to encrypt & decrypt data like ...
9k views

### Why should I use an Initialization Vector (IV) when I have unique keys?

I took a look at “Why, or when, to use an Initialization Vector?” but my question is not the same. I have unique keys encrypting each plaintext (in CBC mode, AES-256) and I do not use a key to ...
2k views

### After ECDH with Curve25519, is it pointless to use anything stronger than AES-128?

Is the following reasoning correct: After ECDH with Curve25519, the resulting shared secret will be an EC public key with a bit strength of 128 bits. This public key would then be hashed (let's say ...
2k views

### What are the requirements of a key schedule?

In the first block cipher I designed I used a CSPRNG to generate the round keys. The purpose was to at least have a chance of creating a (hopefully!) secure cipher on the first try (but please don't ...
2k views

### Cycles in SHA-256

Let's say I start with a particular 256 bit value. Call this $v$. I then hash that value, and get another 256 bit value. Call this $\text{SHA256}(v)$. I take this value and get another 256 bit value. ...
5k views

### Related-key attacks on AES

According to Wikipedia: Related-key attacks can break AES-192 and AES-256 with complexities $2^{176}$ and $2^{99.5}$, respectively. What are the requirements for these attacks (i.e how many ...
47k views

### Should we trust the NIST-recommended ECC parameters?

Recent articles in the media, based upon Snowden documents, have suggested that the NSA has actively tried to enable surveillance by embedding weaknesses in commercially-deployed technology -- ...
93k views

### RSA encryption with private key and decryption with a public key

When using the RSA cryptosystem, does it still work if you instead encrypt with the private key and decrypt with the public key? What about in the case of using RSA for sender authentication?
41k views

### Why hash the message before signing it with RSA?

The diagram below illustrates the process of digitally signing a message with RSA: As diagram shows, the message is first hashed, and the signature is then computed on the hash, rather than on the ...
14k views

### Using the same RSA keypair to sign and encrypt

The RSA signature operation is basically the same as encrypting with the private key. In particular, both operations use the same kind of keys. Is it safe to use the same RSA keypair both for ...
37k views

### Why is HMAC-SHA1 still considered secure?

This Q & A https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33123/hotp-with-as-hmac-hashing-algoritme-a-hash-from-the-sha-2-family says that the security of HMAC-SHA1 does not depend on resistance to ...
7k views

### Desirable S-box properties

What desirable properties should an S-box have? My current standard selection process is to just pick them at random and verify that they fit the following criteria: The probability that any random ...
3k views

### Can you create a strong blockcipher with small blocksize, given a strong blockcipher of conventional blocksize?

Suppose I want a strong 20-bit blockcipher. In other words, I want a function that takes a key (suppose the key is 128 bits), and implements a permutation from 20 bits to 20 bits. The set of ...
929 views

4k views

### Is knowing the private key of RSA equivalent to the factorization of $N$?

Given the RSA modulus $N$ the fastest method to factor it is of sub-exponent order. But, now if I know the private key $d$ of RSA, does that mean I can factor $N$ efficiently?. It intuitively seems ...
5k views

### Bit Flipping Attack on CBC Mode

To perform a bit flipping attack, the previous block is modified by using XOR. This results in an altered plaintext. However, now the ciphertext of the previous block is altered, hence it will result ...
4k views

### AES timing attacks

I'm just interested in cryptography, so please don't expect me to be an expert. ;) I recently read about AES cache timing attacks and found it very interesting. I read the article Cache-timing attacks ...
128k views

### How does RSA signature verification work?

I understand how the RSA algorithm works for encryption and decryption purposes but I don't get how signing is done. Here's what I (think) I know and is common practice: If I have a message that I ...
12k views

### For Diffie-Hellman, must g be a generator?

Due to a number of recently asked questions about Diffie-Hellman, I was thinking this morning: must $g$ in Diffie-Hellman be a generator? Recall the mathematics of Diffie-Hellman: Given public ...
28k views

### Why is asymmetric cryptography bad for huge data?

I've been told that asymmetric cryptography requires that the message to be encrypted be smaller than its key length. Why is this? I know about hybrid encryption, which uses symmetric encryption to ...
7k views

### How practical are side-channel attacks and how much of a concern are they?

I see a lot of research in very sophisticated side-channel attacks on crypto systems. Most (but definitely not all) seem to follow a trend, namely, the crypto system does something very dumb like ...
827 views

### How to do a literature search

How do I do a literature search of the research literature on cryptography? Assume there's some topic in cryptography I'd like to learn more about; how do I search the cryptographic research ...
18k views

### Is HMAC-MD5 considered secure for authenticating encrypted data?

I've read something to the effect that the HMAC construct is able to lessen the problem of collisions in the underlying hash. Does that mean that something like HMAC-MD5 still might be considered ...
1k views

### Are safe primes $p=2^k \pm s$ with $s$ small less recommandable than others as a discrete log modulus?

I take the definition of safe prime as: a prime $p$ is safe when $(p-1)/2$ is prime. Safe primes of appropriate size are the standard choice for the modulus of cryptosystems related to the discrete ...