# All Questions

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### Why don't we use H(m||k) as a MAC? [duplicate]

HMAC seems a bit complicated. Why can't we use $H(m||k)$ as a MAC? Unlike $H(k||m)$, length extension attacks won't work. Is there some other obvious attack?
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### NTRU crypto from unseen.is; myth busting help

I am always on the look out for privacy enhancing technologies. I stumbled upon the service from unseen.is. I had a look at their site (specifically here) and even though I lack knowledge there are a ...
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### Can I use asymmetric encryption for more powerful write-protection?

I have a game that I am developing which uses a locally-stored internal database. It does not matter to me whether a user can read the file (which, to me, means I don't need a symmetric cipher), but I ...
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### Why does CTR mode XOR the plaintext into the output of the block cipher rather than XORing the plaintext into the input of the block cipher?

As I understand it, CTR mode essentially turns a block cipher into a stream cipher like so: ...
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### Is it meaningful to consider the leakage of master key of KGC?

In the Identity-based cryptography, the user's private key in the systems is delivered by the key generation center(KGC). My question is : Is it meaningful to consider the leakage of master key of ...
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### Questions about OAEP for RSA

I have two questions about OAEP for RSA. How are the number of bits to pad with 0 chosen? For example, if I'm sending a 255 byte message with RSA-2048 I have 8 unused bits (1 byte). Should I split ...
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### OpenSSL PBKDF2 documentation

I'm using OpenSSL 0.9.8 on OSX Maverick, and I want to use a PBKDF but I can't find any doc/man about it on OpenSSL's website. I'm working on QCA, an OpenSSL wrapper for Qt, and when I arrived there ...
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### How does TLS generate the shared secret?

From many readings, I got to know that TLS generates master shared secrets using pre-master keys and uses the DH algorithm to generate the shared secret/Master secret. What values during the hello ...
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### Machine Learning with Encryption [duplicate]

Machine Learning is sometimes associated with cryptography. Many of such cross field studies have been majorly done in use of machine learning for cryptanalysis/decryption. I am interested in knowing ...
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### Frequency of letters change by the length of the texts?

In terms of the frequency of letters, how is it possible to have different frequent letters when the length of the text I'm analyzing is shorter? At the moment, I'm comparing the frequencies of a ...
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### Check the validity of a rsa key pair with only the public key? [duplicate]

I am currently developing a messaging application that uses rsa end to end encryption. The client generates permanent rsa keys, and sends the public key to my server for account management. As it ...
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### If $G'(s)=G(s0^{|s|})$ and $G$ is a PRNG, is $G'$ necessarily a PRNG? [closed]

I argue it is because there should be no more correlation between the outputs $G(s0^{|s|})$ than between the outputs $G(s)$. Thus we can say the $G'(s)$ is a PRNG that satisfies $|G'(s)| \geq 4|s|$. ...
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### Which data to share in CTR mode?

Suppose I've got two clients $A$ and $B$. Client $A$ encrypts data in CTR (Counter) mode to get a ciphertext. What information will client $B$ have to receive from $A$ to decrypt the ciphertext? Just ...
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### Need Help Reversing my Encryption Algorithm [closed]

So I wrote a simple encryption algorithm (Not very secure, just a starting point. I don't want criticism on it.) and I have been having trouble finding a way to decrypt the text. The algorithm is here ...
192 views

### File Encryption (EFS method)

I'm implementing (for learning purposes) a file encryptor, which uses the following method (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypting_File_System). I have 3 kind of keys: RSA public/private, AES ...
241 views

### Derive both MAC and AES keys from same PBKDF2?

When doing password-based encryption, is it OK to create one instance of PBKDF2 from the password, and then use it to create both the AES key and the MAC key? (Or should a new instance of PBKDF2 be ...
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### Where i can find an AES implementation in python?

Where i can find a "reviewed" version of AES implementation in python. Not an API like PyCrypto whereby you can call AES algorithms in a single line.
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### Determine the iteration times using Pollard's rho Method for factoring

Let's say, we have a large number $n=181937053$ and $f(x)=x^2+1$. And also we know that $n=12391 \times 14683$. The problem is that ,using Pollard rho method, can we find the algorithm iteration ...
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### How to calculate the time it'll take to crack RSA or DH?

Sometimes the easiest way to describe security of a type of cryptography is to say that "the time it takes to solve for an x-bit key would be y years". How would one go about doing such a calculation ...
1k views

### Why Elliptic curve cryptography are not popular in practice

RSA and ElGamal can be implemented using the technique of Elliptic curves. I am confused on why the it seems that Elliptic curves are not so popular in cryptographic applications since they provide ...
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### Z*p Generator (Cyclic Group) in java

I am trying to implement ElGamal in java without using the in-built libraries. The problem occurs when I am trying to find the generators of the number(in this case 11). Everything works perfectly ...
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### ElGamal signature without calculating the inverse

I stumbled upon this question in some textbook. Propose a variant of ElGamal signature scheme such that there is no need to calculate the inverse $k^{-1}$ as it is usually done using the EEA. ...
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### ElGamal signature - exploiting fallacious implementation

This question is related to ElGamal signature scheme as defined here ElGamal signature without calculating the inverse Show how one could exploit an implementation ElGamal signature scheme in which ...
386 views

### Mapping between subgroups and the integers

This question is a companion to the equivalent question on elliptic curves. Preliminaries Diffie-Hellman, Elgamal, DSA, etc. are examples of protocols that work in the integers modulus a large prime ...
471 views

### ElGamal message signatures retrieving the secret value x

If the GCD(r, p-1) is small and the value k is used to sign a message using ElGamal is also small. Then the secret value of x can be determined. Why is this true? How would one retrieve x?
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### Why can't Diffie-Hellman be used for signing?

I understand that signing is often a case of hashing data and then encrypting the hash with the private key. What properties keep Diffie-Hellman from being useful for this?
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### Homomorphic encryption for vector addition

Building on the question and answer from Addition-only PHE in F# which ponders homomorphic cryptosystems to navigate, relatively, a single dimension without revealing absolute position (an encrypted ...
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### Retrieve cryptographic key knowing cyphertext and plaintext [duplicate]

I was curious about cryptography so I started to learn about symmetric encryption. From what I understand a symmetric encryption works as follow: PlainText -> (Encrypt)K -> Cipher text -> ...
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I know about PBKDF2, bcrypt, scrypt, etc. and while I'm not a crypt professional, I think I understand why are they better than just "hash(pass+salt)". But a colleague of mine surprised me with the ...
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### How to generate initial vectors during DPA attack on stream cipher in real life?

I was trying to understand the procedure of the DPA attack on Stream cipher (like Mickey-128). I learned that, the attacker need to build hypothetical power consumption matrix with different initial ...