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Questions tagged [cryptography]

Questions concerning the mathematics of secure communication. Relevant topics include elliptic curve cryptography, secure key exchanges, and public-key cryptography (eg. the RSA cryptosystem).

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Is this obfuscation scheme unbreakable?

I've just come across this popular article about a breakthrough (which can be purchased here), published in Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2013 IEEE 54th Annual Symposium by a team of ...
Chandan Singh Dalawat's user avatar
23 votes
5 answers
1k views

Securing privacy of "who communicates with whom" under Orwell-like conditions

Assume that there is a big and powerful country with an information-greedy secret service which has backdoors to all internet nodes throughout the world which permit him to observe all exchanged data ...
Stefan Kohl's user avatar
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17 votes
5 answers
981 views

Mathematics of privacy?

I wonder to which extent the current public debate on privacy issues (not only by state sniffing, but e.g. by microtargetting ads too an issue) offers interesting questions in mathematics? Can we ...
Thomas Riepe's user avatar
  • 10.8k
0 votes
0 answers
262 views

Lattice basis reductions and finding minimal values

While reading several articles about lattice basis reduction I am left with a few questions. For one, I came across this piece of text Let $\alpha$ and $\beta \in \mathbb{R}$. Also let $X>0$ and $...
Zoe's user avatar
  • 1
12 votes
1 answer
577 views

Are there very strongly pseudorandom permutations?

A pseudorandom permutation can be defined formally as a function $\phi$ from $\{0,1\}^k\times\{0,1\}^n$ to $\{0,1\}^n$ such that for every $x\in\{0,1\}^k$ the function $\phi_x:y\mapsto\phi(x,y)$ is a ...
gowers's user avatar
  • 29k
1 vote
0 answers
115 views

Collision resistance of hash functions after permuting one hash digest

Given a hash function H and a fixed permutation pi of the digest set. Consider "collisions" of the form H(x) = pi(H(x')). How is resistance against this kind of ...
Timo Hanke's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
3k views

Will quantum computing kill cryptography ? [closed]

I apologize as this question is not really mathematical, and therefore perhaps not well-suited for this site. Please feel free to close it if you think it is not. My reason for asking it here is that ...
Joël's user avatar
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17 votes
3 answers
23k views

Which hard mathematical problems do you have to solve to earn bitcoins ?

A virtual currency called bitcoins has been in the news recently. It is said that in order to "mine" bitcoins, you have to solve hard mathematical problems. Now, there are two kinds of mathematical ...
Chandan Singh Dalawat's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
748 views

Pairing on elliptic curve

Let $E(\mathbb{F_q})$ - elliptic curve. $G_1 = E(\mathbb{F_q})[r]$. $|G_1| = r$. $k$ is minimal such $r | q^k - 1$. $\pi_q$ - $q$-power Frobenius endomorphism. $G_2 = E(\mathbb{F_{q^k}})[r] \cap ...
Alexey's user avatar
  • 9
9 votes
4 answers
1k views

The "interplay" between additive and multiplicative structure in a field

A field is an ordered triple $(F, +,\cdot)$ of a set $F$ and binary operations $+,\times$ on $F$ such that $(F,+)$ and $(F\backslash 0,\times)$ are abelian groups satisfying the distributive laws $\...
Favst's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
267 views

Is Guillou-Quisquater existentially unforgeable against adaptive message attack under a random oracle model?

First of all, the Guillou-Quisquater digital signature scheme is: Note everything is $\bmod n$. Message is denoted by $m$. Private key: $s$ Public key: Hash function $H$, $e$, $L=s^e\bmod n$ To sign: ...
Samuel Reid's user avatar
  • 1,441
10 votes
1 answer
2k views

Attack on CRT-RSA

The survey paper of Prof. Dan Boneh entitled "Twenty years of attacks on the RSA cryptosystem" mentioned that (Page 5) one can attack CRT-RSA in square root of decryption exponent. However no ...
user29295's user avatar
  • 125
0 votes
2 answers
524 views

cryptographic primitive process

Is there a cryptographic primitive process/method for creating cryptographic tools like symmetric encryption/decryption, Hash code generator, MAC generator and Random number generator? ...
Auth's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
143 views

Knowing md5(c+x), is it possible to find md5(x)?

Suppose: md5(c1 + x) = c2 md5(x) = y Is it possible to find y, if c1 and c2 are known and x is uknown? Basically, I know md5(salt + key) and I want to find md5(key).
Max Selivanov's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
316 views

Cryptography and Availability

Hi, Here is a question in cryptography which is probably naive, and a reference request. Suppose I have 3 matrices(I1, I2, and I3 -same size) that I want to combine them some how(? do not know yet) ...
Shanti's user avatar
  • 1
20 votes
2 answers
2k views

Bitcoin Research

I have recently been assigned to advise a student on a senior thesis. She has taken linear algebra, introductory real analysis, and abstract algebra. Her interest is in cryptography. And she has a ...
Joe Johnson's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
204 views

Is there a security analysis of the GQ digital signature scheme?

I'm doing summer cryptography research and I am have been looking for a security analysis of the Guillou-Quisquater (GQ) digital signature scheme, but I have been unable to find one. Since this is not ...
Samuel Reid's user avatar
  • 1,441
6 votes
1 answer
453 views

Computing the correlation between two vectors without divulging them

Alice and Bob respectively know a vector of $N$ real numbers $u$ and $v$. They would both like to know $\rho = \langle u,v \rangle/N$ but Alice does not want Bob to gain anymore information about $u$ ...
Arthur B's user avatar
  • 1,902
2 votes
3 answers
398 views

Generating a set of integer passwords that can be securely authenticated

First, apologies for the title. This is an odd question, and I couldn't come up with a simple title for it. My question is as follows. Given a positive integer $k$, determine a set of properties $S$ ...
Vincent Tjeng's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
337 views

Cryptography and iterations

Hi, Here is a question in cryptography which is probably naive, and a reference request. I was wondering about the following key-exchange scheme, which is a variant on Diffie-Hellman. Consider a ...
Pierre's user avatar
  • 2,287
5 votes
1 answer
423 views

Fastest algorithm to compute (a^(2^N))%m?

Hi. There are well-known algorithms for cryptography to compute modular exponentiation $a^b\%c$ (like Right-to-left binary method here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_exponentiation). But do ...
Vincent's user avatar
  • 151
0 votes
0 answers
191 views

Asymtotic Complexity Analysis using logarithms and binomial coefficients

On page 11 of "Smaller decoding exponents: ball-collision decoding" by Berstein et.al. they have the formula \begin{equation}\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} \frac{1}{n}\log_{2}\left(\dbinom{k_{1}}{p_{1}}\...
Nick Peterson's user avatar
1 vote
3 answers
1k views

Weil pairing, Kummer theory, help to decrypt what Wikipedia says

I do not quite understand the sentence in the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weil_pairing Section "Formulation" line 3: "... for given points $P,Q \in E(K)[n]$, where $E(K)[n]=\{T \...
Alexander Chervov's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
214 views

factorising an integer with certain bound on the factors

Can we count the no. of $x$ where $ p^{\alpha -1} < x < p^{\alpha}$ , $gcd(x, 2p)=1$ and if $d |x$ and $d < p ^{\beta}$ for some $1< \beta<\alpha-1$ then $ \frac {x} {d} > p^{\alpha -...
Kamalakshya's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
288 views

Is it (believed to be) possible to algorithmically generate Diffie-Hellman tuples without "being able to know" one of the discrete logs involved (formal definition given in question)?

Is it (believed to be) possible, in the various standard examples of groups in which discrete log/Diffie Hellman are hard (including multiplicative groups in modular arithmetic and elliptic curves, ...
Michael Cohen's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
756 views

Any nice examples of small cancellation theory appearing in applied mathematics?

Are there any nice discussions of applications of small cancellation theory, or other cases of the word problem, in applied mathematics or algorithms for seemingly non-group theoretic problems? I ...
Jeff Burdges's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
711 views

Factoring and Index Calculus and duality between DL and factoring via compuational problems made easy through them

If factoring is in $P$ (with a blazing fast polynomial time in $P$), would it affect the index calculus algorithm used for Discrete Log calculation in any serious way? Other connections $1.)$ "...
user16007's user avatar
  • 800
2 votes
0 answers
688 views

Elliptic Curves and cryptography. Recommended Reading [closed]

I have been studying RSA cryptography and want to extend this to ECC. I am interested in any books on the topic, that start off with basic principles of elliptic curves as I have almost zero knowledge ...
JarvisP's user avatar
  • 133
1 vote
0 answers
343 views

Diophantine approximation

Say absolute values of $a,b,c$ is $O(log^{k}{n})$ for some positive constant $k$. Given positive integer $n$ that is reasonably large, we cannot always find integers $a,b,c$ such that $|a{b^{c}} - n|$ ...
user16007's user avatar
  • 800
10 votes
3 answers
3k views

Reduction from factoring to solving Pell equation

The paper Polynomial-Time Quantum Algorithms for Pell's Equation and the Principal Ideal Problem claims There are reductions from factoring to solving Pell’s equation, and from solving Pell’s ...
joro's user avatar
  • 25.4k
3 votes
0 answers
257 views

Oracle separating FIP for bounded-depth Frege from FIP for Frege (and hardness conditions on DDH)

Is there an oracle such that in the relativized world, bd-Frege (bounded depth Frege propositional proof system) has FIP (feasible interpolation property) but Frege does not have FIP? Such an oracle ...
Kaveh's user avatar
  • 5,502
3 votes
0 answers
458 views

Does this algorithm exist - a secret secret?

I'm not quite sure how to phrase this question mathematically, so I am going to express it in words first: Let us suppose I have a secret $m_1$ and a plausible innocent secret $m_2$. Is there an ...
Damien Zammit's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
3k views

Weil pairing and Miller's algorithm

I'm studying Weil pairing and its applications in cryptography. I already know that it can be defined like this: $$w(P, Q) = (-1)^n\frac{f_P(Q)}{f_Q(P)}\frac{f_Q}{f_P}(\mathcal{O})$$ where $\textrm{...
Jasiu's user avatar
  • 131
8 votes
0 answers
1k views

Question on randomness extractors

Person A has a source $W$ with min-entropy($W$) = $k$. He also has an extra piece of information about the random source, denoted with $y$, such that min-entropy($W|y$) = $k/3$. The adversary doesn't ...
Omega's user avatar
  • 81
13 votes
2 answers
9k views

Encrypting a message for multiple recipients

Let $m$ be a secret message that needs to be sent to $n >1$ recipients. Let each recipient $r_i$ have a public key $p_i$ and private key $s_i$. Is there a scheme such that we can encrypt the ...
Balaji's user avatar
  • 179
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

Elliptic curve over finite field: scalar multiplication

I'm implementing arithmetics for elliptic curves over secp256r1 as a homework assignment. For scalar multiplication, the assignment specifically specifies that $k$ is "any hexidecimal encoded integer"...
Jonas WS's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
950 views

Torus based cryptography

In cryptography one needs finite groups $G$ in which the discrete logarithm problem is infeasible. Often they use the multiplicative group $\mathbb{G}_m(\mathbb{F}_p)$ where $p$ is a prime number of ...
Sebastian Petersen's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
667 views

A silly question: is the number of points on a Jacobian (of a curve, over a finite field) known?

In a cryptography book I read that people does not known how to compute the number of points on a Jacobian of a hyperelliptic curve $C$ over a finite field $F_q$? Is this true? It seems easy to ...
Mikhail Bondarko's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
744 views

What can I say about the permutation $\alpha\beta$ if I know the permutation $\beta\alpha$?

I'm looking into a secret sharing scheme that has a secret permutation $\theta$ which has the cycle structure (n/2)+(n/2) (i.e. two (n/2)-cycles). The permutation $\theta$ is decomposed into two ...
Douglas S. Stones's user avatar
16 votes
4 answers
3k views

Zero-knowledge proof of positivity

If I have committed to a number x by revealing g^x mod p, can I prove that 0 < x mod (p-1) < (p-1)/2, i.e. that x is positive, without leaking any more information about x? My bounty is ending ...
0 votes
0 answers
562 views

Reducing two variable linear Diophantine equation to modular inversion

I'm in the field of secure multiparty computation using Homomrphic encryption or secret sharing. I want to implement a secure protocol to compute the GCD of two encrypted numbers. To calculate the ...
Mohammad Alaggan's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
3k views

Is there a two-party multiplicative and additive secret sharing scheme ?

A secret sharing scheme such as Shamir's secret sharing allow to perform addition and multiplication for secret values so far as there is at least 3 participants. Addition of two secret values is done ...
Mohammad Alaggan's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
710 views

Predicting if something is a code

I'm trying to help a non-mathematical friend by posting a question of his here. He studies literature and has come across a book which is written in a made-up language. The book is hundreds of pages,...
user3628's user avatar
  • 265
5 votes
2 answers
3k views

Whitening a random bit sequence

Given an (infinite) stream of uncorrelated random bit with a known "reasonable" bias (say 15-85% 1's) I want to whiten it, e.i. produce a shorter stream of bits that has no bias. The restriction is ...
BCS's user avatar
  • 205
1 vote
1 answer
737 views

Matrix Conjugates over Finite Fields

Thinking about Diffe-Hillman for matrices brought me to the following question. Given $\mathbb{F}_{p^k}$ the finite field with $p^k$ elements when can we find non-trivial solutions to $\begin{...
B. Bischof's user avatar
  • 4,842
4 votes
2 answers
331 views

Good quality data/packages for statistical/structure analysis of words in the English language

From time to time I find myself wishing to calculate basic statistics on words in the English language. For example, today I found myself wanting a graph of the number of English words vs. their ...
Q.Q.J.'s user avatar
  • 2,123
12 votes
5 answers
2k views

Introducing Cryptology to Undergraduates

This summer I am going to give some lectures to some REU students. I am still tossing around ideas for what I am going to talk about, but one thing I would at least like to give one or two lectures on,...
B. Bischof's user avatar
  • 4,842
68 votes
8 answers
43k views

Example of a good Zero Knowledge Proof

I am working on my zero knowledge proofs and I am looking for a good example of a real world proof of this type. An even better answer would be a Zero Knowledge Proof that shows the statement isn't ...
George's user avatar
  • 699
6 votes
5 answers
6k views

Analog to the Chinese Remainder Theorem in groups other than Z_n.

The idea hit me when I was in my Elliptic Curve Cryptography class. $Z_n \leftrightarrow Z_{f_1} \times Z_{f_2} \times ...$ where $f_1 \times f_2 \times ... = n$ and $\{f_1, f_2, ...\}$ are pairwise ...
Ross Snider's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
5k views

modular exponentation for RSA, why is 2^16 + 1 commonly chosen?

I know that the number 216 + 1 is commonly used for RSA, since 0b 1 0000 0000 0000 0001 only contains two 1 bits. Many sites explain that this makes modular exponentiation faster, but I haven't come ...
sj steve's user avatar