Cryptography Stack Exchange
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1500 questions
89
votes
8 answers

Guarding against cryptanalytic breakthroughs: combining multiple hash functions

Assume I want to design a protocol (or data format or similar) including some cryptographic hash, and want it to be as future-proof as possible, i.e. I want to avoid that breakthroughs in cryptography make my old data insecure. If I use only one…
Paŭlo Ebermann
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88
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10 answers

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 on the shared key. It must have been transferred…
AV94
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88
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4 answers

What are the practical differences between 256-bit, 192-bit, and 128-bit AES encryption?

AES has several different variants: AES-128 AES-192 AES-256 But why would someone prefer use one over another?
samoz
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87
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11 answers

Is modern encryption needlessly complicated?

RSA, DES, AES, etc., all use (relatively) complicated mathematics to encrypt some message with some key. For each of these methods, there have been several documented vulnerabilities found over the years. Some even believe that there is a…
Ozzah
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86
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5 answers

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 NSA has categorized this in Suite B, they have…
Gustav
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84
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3 answers

What is the difference between a digest and a hash function?

I was wondering about the difference between these two terms... What is the difference between a digest and a hash function?
sekmo
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82
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9 answers

Should I use ECB or CBC encryption mode for my block cipher?

Can someone tell me which mode out of ECB and CBC is better, and how to decide which mode to use? Are there any other modes which are better?
midhunhk
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78
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12 answers

Who is responsible for ensuring the trustworthiness of certificate authorities?

Background I am a novice in the field of cryptography and cyber-security, and while studying asymmetric-key encryption, I learned about the potential of a man-in-the-middle attack. To mitigate this threat, people came up with certificate authorities…
AlanSTACK
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78
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5 answers

How are primes generated for RSA?

As I understand it, the RSA algorithm is based on finding two large primes (p and q) and multiplying them. The security aspect is based on the fact that it's difficult to factor it back into p and q. Now, since RSA keys are so large (often 1024 bits…
Vilx-
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77
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8 answers

How do I explain zero knowledge proof to my 7 year old cousin?

How do I explain zero knowledge proof to my 7 year old cousin?
Nathan Aw
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77
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8 answers

Layman's explanation of encryption backdoors

In the media, I sometimes read about "backdoors" in encryption algorithms. I'd like to understand what such a backdoor actually consists of. Is it: a) a hidden weakness in the math formulas that can cause security to be broken by brute force in a…
forthrin
76
votes
4 answers

How come Public key cryptography wasn't discovered earlier?

I became interested in crypto lately and read about symmetric and public key crypto algorithms. I understand how crucial the discoveries of the 1970s like RSA, DES and DH were in advancing the technology. I just don't understand how public key…
pls no
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76
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2 answers

What is safer: ZipCrypto or AES-256?

Like in title: which one of these encryption methods (ZipCrypto, AES-256) is more secure and why? I am asking about it because I'd like to know which should be preferred when compressing files with Zip.
alex
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76
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3 answers

Impacts of not using RSA exponent of 65537

This RFC says the RSA Exponent should be 65537. Why is that number recommended and what are the theoretical and practical impacts & risks of making that number higher or lower? What are the impacts of making that value a non-Fermat number, or…
makerofthings7
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75
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3 answers

How does one attack a two-time pad (i.e. one time pad with key reuse)?

My question might appear the same as the question Taking advantage of one-time pad key reuse?, but actually I did read all the answers and none of them helped me with the details I need. I am new to cryptography and my problem is with two time pad…
Samer Makary
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