RSA Labs FAQ -- Algorithms and Techniques Menu

#

### [Back to the Main Table of Contents]

# II. Algorithms and Techniques

## A. Public-Key Encryption and Digital Signatures

### 1. General

Question 3. What is Public-Key Cryptography?

Question 4. What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Public-Key Cryptography Compared with Secret-Key Cryptography?

Question 5. Do Digital Signatures Help Detect Altered Documents and Transmission Errors?

Question 6. What is a One-Way Function?

Question 7. What is the Significance of One-Way Functions for Cryptography?

###

### [ Back to Index]

###

### 2. RSA

Question 8. What is RSA?

Question 9. How Fast is RSA?

Question 10. What Would it Take to Break RSA?

Question 11. Are Strong Primes Necessary in RSA?

Question 12. How Large a Modulus (Key) Should be Used in RSA?

Question 13. How Large Should the Primes be?

Question 14. Can Users of RSA run out of Distinct Primes?

Question 15. How do You Know if a Number is Prime?

Question 16. How is RSA used for Encryption in Practice?

Question 17. How is RSA Used for Authentication in Practice? What are RSA Digital Signatures?

Question 18. What are the Alternatives to RSA?

Question 19. Is RSA Currently in Use Today?

Question 20. Is RSA an Official Standard Today?

Question 21. Is RSA a De Facto Standard?

Question 22. Is RSA Patented?

Question 23. Can RSA be Exported from the United States?

###

### [ Back to Index]

###

### 3. Diffie-Hellman

Question 24. What is Diffie-Hellman?

Question 25. What is Authenticated Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement?

###

### [ Back to Index]

###

### 4. DSA

Question 26. What are DSA and DSS?

Question 27. Is DSA Secure?

Question 28. Is the Use of DSA Covered by Any Patents?

###

### [ Back to Index]

###

### 5. Other Public-Key Encryption and Signature Algorithms

Question 29. What is the ElGamal Cryptosystem?

Question 30. What are Elliptic Curves?

Question 31. What are Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems?

Question 32. What are Knapsack Cryptosystems?

Question 33. What is LUC?

Question 34. What is the McEliece Cryptosystem?

Question 35. What is Merkle's Tree Signature Scheme?

Question 36. What is Probabilistic Encryption?

Question 37. What is the Rabin Signature Scheme?

###

### [ Back to Index]

###

### 6. Special Digital Signature Schemes

Question 38. What are Special Signature Schemes?

Question 39. What is a Blind Signature Scheme?

Question 40. What is a Designated Confirmer Signature?

Question 41. What is a Fail-stop Signature Scheme?

Question 42. What is a Group Signature?

Question 43. What is a One-time Signature Scheme?

Question 44. What is an Undeniable Signature Scheme?

###

### [Back to Main Table of Contents]

###

### 7. Factoring and Discrete Logarithms

Question 45. What is the Factoring Problem?

Question 46. What is the Significance of Factoring in Cryptography?

Question 47. Has Factoring Been Getting Easier?

Question 48. What are the Best Factoring Methods in Use Today?

Question 49. What are the Prospects for a Theoretical Factoring Breakthrough?

Question 50. What is the RSA Factoring Challenge?

Question 51. What is RSA-129?

Question 52. What is the Discrete Logarithm Problem?

Question 53. Which is Easier: Factoring or Discrete Logarithm?

###

### [ Back to Main Table of Contents]

###

## B. Block Ciphers

### 1. General

Question 54. What is a Block Cipher?

Question 55. What is an Iterated Block Cipher?

Question 56. What is a Feistel Cipher?

Question 57. What is Exhaustive Key Search?

Question 58. What is Differential Cryptanalysis?

Question 59. What is Linear Cryptanalysis?

Question 60. What is a Weak Key for a Block Cipher?

Question 61. What are Algebraic Attacks?

Question 62. How Can Data Compression be Used With Encryption?

Question 63. At What Point Does an Attack Become Practical?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

### 2. DES

Question 64. What is DES?

Question 65. Has DES been Broken?

Question 66. How Does One Use DES Securely?

Question 67. Should One Test for Weak Keys in DES?

Question 68. Can DES be Exported from the United States?

Question 69. What are the Alternatives to DES?

Question 70. Is DES a Group?

Question 71. What is DES with Independent Subkeys?

Question 72. What is Triple-DES?

Question 73. How does One Use Triple-DES in CBC Mode?

Question 74. What are G-DES, DESX?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

### 3. Other Block Ciphers

Question 75. What is RC2?

Question 76. What is RC5?

Question 77. What is IDEA?

Question 78. What is SAFER?

Question 79. What is FEAL?

Question 80. What is Skipjack?

Question 81. What is Blowfish?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

### 4. Modes and Multiple Encryption

Question 82. What are the ECB and CBC Modes?

Question 83. What are the CFB and OFB modes?

Question 84. What are the Counter and PCBC Modes?

Question 85. What is Multiple Encryption?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

## C. Stream Ciphers

Question 86. What is a Stream Cipher?

Question 87. What is RC4?

Question 88. What is SEAL?

Question 89. What is a Linear Feedback Shift Register?

Question 90. What are Shift Register Cascades?

Question 91. What are the Shrinking and Self-Shrinking Generators?

Question 92. What Other Stream Ciphers Are There?

Question 93. What is a One-time Pad?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

## D. Hash Functions

Question 94. What is a Hash Function?

Question 95. What is a birthday attack?

Question 96. How does the length of a hash value affect security?

Question 97. What is a compression function?

Question 98. What are pseudo-collisions?

Question 99. What are MD2, MD4 and MD5?

Question 100. What is the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA and SHA-1)?

Question 101. What Other Hash Functions Are There?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

## E. Other Techniques

### 1. Message Authentication Codes

Question 102. What are Message Authentication Codes (MACs)?

###

### [Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

### 2. Secret Sharing

Question 103. What are Secret Sharing Schemes?

Question 104. What is Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme?

Question 105. What is Blakley's Secret Sharing Scheme?

Question 106. What are Visual Secret Sharing Schemes?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

### 3. Zero Knowledge

Question 107. What are Interactive Proofs and Zero-Knowledge Proofs?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###

### 4. Digital Timestamping

Question 108. How do Digital Timestamps Support Digital Signatures?

###

### [ Back to The Main Table of Contents]

###

## F. New Technologies

Question 109. What is Quantum Computing?

Question 110. What is Quantum Cryptography?

Question 111. What is DNA Computing?

###

### [ Back to the Main Table of Contents]

###