Cryptography Stack Exchange
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Why can an elliptic curve private key be 1?

I often see in papers (e.g. this one) that for an elliptic curve with generator point $G$ and order $n$ the private key $d$ can take on any integer value in the range $[1, n)$. When $d = 1$ the corresponding public key $Q = dG$ is of course then…
puzzlepalace
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Do I need to worry about timing attacks in Base64 encoding/decoding of private keys?

Do I need to worry about timing attacks in Base64 encoding/decoding of private keys? This is a common operation (ex. PEM keys) and is variable time in typical implementations.
Demi
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What is the difference between PBE and symmetric key encryption?

What is the difference between PBE (password based encryption) and symmetric-key algorithms? My understanding is that symmetric-key algorithms like AES and Twofish are used in PBE. Hence PBE is just a technique which employs symmetric-key…
Rahul Khimasia
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On Linux, does /dev/random unblocking imply that /dev/urandom is seeded?

Linux has the familiar problem that /dev/random blocks too much (insisting on being information-theoretically secure), while /dev/urandom doesn't block enough (it will return data before it's been adequately seeded). The new getrandom() system call…
Daniel Franke
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Why x00 is usually avoided in salt?

In .NET Framework, there is a cryptographic Random Number Generator (RNG) provider which enables to generate a cryptographically strong sequence of random bytes. This provider contain, among others, two methods: GetBytes which generates a sequence…
Arseni Mourzenko
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Distribution of hash values

I was wondering if the uniform distribution of hash values is a generally required criteria for cryptographic hash functions. The english wikipedia article only mentions four main properties. But it looks like the commonly used algorithms show a…
masinger
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How does the index of coincidence work in the Kasiki test?

I'm starting to learn about cryptanalysis and I am having a bit of difficulty understanding the Kasiski test's index of coincidence. I have a book (Cryptography Theory And Practice by Douglas Stinson) about it that I'm going through, but it seems to…
norman
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Is an android encrypted SDcard readable/decryptable easily by a desktop machine?

If I encrypt my SDCard on my android phone using the built-in encryption software, and my phone dies for whatever reason, would I be able to easily by just using the pin/password to access that data later on my desktops [OS X, Windows and Linux]?
McGafter
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Why should the RSA private exponent have the same size as the modulus?

Consider the generation of an RSA key pair with a given modulus size $n$ and a known, small public exponent $e$ (typically $e = 3$ or $e = 65537$). A common method is to generate two random primes numbers of size $n/2$ (or very close), and check at…
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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What is the difference between SHA-3(Keccak) and previous generation SHA algorithms?

SHA-1 and SHA-2 share the same structure and mathematical operation as their predecessors - SHA-0 and MD5. Both SHA-0 and MD5 have been broken. This is one of the main reasons why SHA-1 is considered insecure and is being phased out for SHA-2. NIST…
prakharjain
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Are there reasonably secure online voting implementations e.g. for student council elections?

Assume a university want to elect the student council. This was done via paper ballot and there is a need to reach more students for voting, so electronic voting is on the table. While researching existing solutions I came across Helios: helios…
kei1aeh5quahQu4U
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Hash function from narrower block cipher operated in CBC-encryption mode?

I am trying to build a public hash function (thus collision-resistant and preimage-resistant, and more generally behaving like a random oracle), with input a message $M$ of fixed size $|M|=m\cdot b$ bits, and output the hash $H(M)$ of fixed size…
fgrieu
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AES Inverse Key Schedule

I have a 128-bit input-block and the corresponding cipher-block given. Additionally I have the last round-key given. Is it now possible to get (calculate) the associated cipher-key? I already implemented the normal key-schedule with the rcon to…
Tom
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Why SIVP Is Worst Case Problem?

I just started to study lattice Cryptography. I'm now studying worst-case to average-case reduction for SIS. In previous question, "worst means any and average means random". And I wonder why the Shortest Independent Vectors Problem(SIVP) is the…
Jonghyun Kim
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Is it possible to recover an RSA modulus from its signatures?

Let's say that you have some small number of RSA signatures of known data: you know some pairs $(m_k, c_k)$ such that ${c_k}^e \equiv m_k \pmod n$. If you know $e$, because probably it's one of $\{3, 17, 65537\}$, is it possible to recover $n$?
Myria
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