# All Questions

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### Why choose an authenticated encryption mode instead of a separate MAC?

What are cryptographic reasons to choose an authenticated-encryption mode of operation (such as GCM) over a traditional encryption mode plus an independent MAC, or vice versa? Assume there is no ...
16k views

### RSA with small exponents?

Just to establish notation with respect to the RSA protocol, let $n = pq$ be the product of two large primes and let $e$ and $d$ be the public and private exponents, respectively ($e$ is the inverse ...
1k views

### Security of RSA for paranoids with padding?

RSA for Paranoids (RSAP) (in CryptoBytes v1n3), also known as Unbalanced RSA, is a variant of RSA proposed in 1995 by Adi Shamir, as a mean to increase the RSA public modulus size while keeping ...
10k views

### Predicting values from a Linear Congruential Generator

I have learnt that Linear Congruential Random Number Generators are not cryptographically secure - my understanding is that given an LCG of the form: ...
8k views

### Is TrueCrypt's multiple/cascading encryption safe?

Is TrueCrypt use of cascading encryption safe? Is it useful? TrueCrypt is arguably one of the most popular and widely used encryption applications in use today, yet it seems to use a very ...
6k views

### Could we break MD5 entirely in the future?

Even of today MD5 is (sadly) still heavyly used in some applications. Even big tools like ApacheMD5. But even today there are more then enough MD5 hashes which are still not cracked. According to ...
12k views

### Why is the IV passed in the clear when it can be easily encrypted?

The initialization vector (IV) is exclusive or'd against the plain text before encryption for the first block sent in order to prevent an attacker from learning that duplicate message blocks are being ...
670 views

### Message-Recovery variant of Ed25519 signature?

What would be a Message-Recovery variant of the Ed25519 signature scheme? Ed25519-MR should be simple to use, fast, with a strong security argument, and striving to stay out of the patent minefield, ...
4k views

2k views

### Hash functions and the Avalanche effect

Informally, the Avalanche effect says that two similar, but not identical, inputs should produce radically different outputs when fed through a hash function. I've seen, at least, two formal ...
15k views

### In end-to-end encryption, doesn't the server need to be trusted?

Applications like WhatsApp use end to end encryption. WhatsApp says that only the users share a specific key and no third party can view the messages. But I do not understand how the two users agree ...
250k views

### How secure is AES-256?

The cipher AES-256 is used among other places in SSL/TLS across the Internet. It's considered among the top ciphers. In theory it's not crackable since the combinations of keys are massive. Although ...
4k views

### Random oracle model proofs and programmability

Proving the security of a scheme with the random oracle model (ROM) involves two steps: first you prove that the scheme is secure in an idealized world where a random oracle exists, and then you ...