Papers

Theory basics for using cryptography by non-cryptographers.

101 resources1 categoriesView Original

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A

A Computational Introduction to Number Theory a...

By Victor Shoup, excellent starters book on math universally used in cryptography.

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A Course in Cryptography

Lecture notes by Rafael Pass, Abhi Shelat.

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A

A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography

By Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup. A well-balanced introductory course into cryptography, a bit of cryptanalysis and cryptography-related security.

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A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and P...

Original paper introducing RSA algorithm.

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A

A Single-Key Attack on the Full GOST Block Cipher

An attack ("Reflection-Meet-inthe-Middle Attack") on GOST block cipher that allows to recover key with 2^225 computations and 2^32 known plaintexts, by Takanori Isobe.

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A Survey of Noninteractive Zero Knowledge Proof...

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A Survey of Zero-Knowledge Proofs with Applicat...

Great intro on original ZKP protocols.

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AES submission document on Rijndael

Original Rijndael proposal by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen.

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An Overview of Cryptography

By Gary C. Kessler.

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Analysis and design of cryptographic hash funct...

Broad overview of design and cryptanalysis of various ciphers and hash functions, by Bart Van Rompay.

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A

Another Look at “Provable Security”

Inquiries into formalism and naive intuition behind security proofs, by Neal Koblitz et al.

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B

Biased Nonce Sense: Lattice Attacks against Wea...

Computing private keys by analyzing and exploiting biases in ECDSA nonces.

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B

Birthday problem

The best simple explanation of math behind birthday attack.

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C

Cache Attacks and Countermeasures: the Case of AES

Side channel attacks on AES, another view, by Dag Arne Osvik, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer.

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C

Cache timing attacks on AES

Example of designing great practical attack on cipher implementation, by Daniel J. Bernstein.

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C

ChaCha20-Poly1305 Cipher Suites for Transport L...

IETF Draft of ciphersuite family, by Adam Langley et al.

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C

Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems

Fundamental cryptography paper by Claude Shannon.

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C

Cryptanalysis of block ciphers and protocols

By Elad Pinhas Barkan.

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C

Crypto101

Crypto 101 is an introductory course on cryptography, freely available for programmers of all ages and skill levels.

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C

Cryptography I

Stanford University course on Coursera, taught by prof. Dan Boneh. Cryptography II is still in development.

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C

CryptoHack

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C

CrypTool book

Predominantly mathematically oriented information on learning, using and experimenting cryptographic procedures.

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C

Cryptopals crypto challenges

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C

Curve25519: new Diffie-Hellman speed records

Paper on Curve25519.

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D

DES is not a group

Old but gold mathematical proof that the set of DES permutations (encryption and decryption for each DES key) is not closed under functional composition. That means that multiple DES encryption is not equivalent to single DES encryption and means that the size of the subgroup generated by the set of DES permutations is greater than 10^2499, which is too large for potential attacks on DES, which would exploit a small subgroup.

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D

Detailed Elliptic Curve cryptography tutorial

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Differential Cryptanalysis of Salsa20/8

A great example of stream cipher cryptanalysis, by Yukiyasu Tsunoo et al.

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E

Elliptic Curve cryptography: A gentle introduction

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Elliptic Curve Cryptography: breaking security ...

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Elliptic Curve Cryptography: ECDH and ECDSA

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Elliptic Curve Cryptography: finite fields and ...

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Elliptic Curve Cryptography: the serpentine cou...

Historic inquiry into development of ECC and it's adoption.

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E

Explain me like I'm 5: How digital signatures a...

EdDSA explained with ease and elegance.

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E

Explicit-Formulas Database

For many elliptic curve representation forms.

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F

FIPS 197

AES FIPS document.

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F

FIPS 198-1: HMACs

The Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code FIPS document.

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F

FIPS 202: SHA3

SHA-3 Standard: Permutation-Based Hash and Extendable-Output Functions.

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G

GCM Security Bounds Reconsidered

An analysis and algorithm for nonce generation for AES GCM with higher counter-collision probability, by Yuichi Niwa, Keisuke Ohashi, Kazuhiko Minematsu, Tetsu Iwata.

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H

Handbook of Applied Cryptography

By Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot and Scott A. Vanstone. Good classical introduction into cryptography and ciphers.

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H

High-speed high-security signatures

Seminal paper on EdDSA signatures on ed25519 curve by Daniel J. Bernstein et al.

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H

How to Break MD5 and Other Hash Functions

A 2005 paper about modular differential collision attack on MD5, MD4 and other hash functions, by Xiaoyun Wang and Hongbo Yu.

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H

How to construct zero-knowledge proof systems f...

Classic paper by Goldreich, Micali and Wigderson.

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H

How to Prove a Theorem So No One Else Can Claim It

By Manuel Blum.

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How to Share a Secret

A safe method for sharing secrets.

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I

id0-rsa crypto challenges

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Information Theoretic Reductions among Disclosu...

Brassau et al.

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I

Intro to Linear & Differential Cryptanalysis

A beginner-friendly paper explaining and demonstrating techniques for linear and differential cryptanalysis.

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I

Introduction to Cryptography by Christof Paar

Video course by Christof Paar (University of Bochum in Germany). In english.

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K

Keys under Doormats

Or why cryptography shouldn't be backdoored, by a all-star committee of crypto researches from around the world.

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K

Knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems

By GoldWasser, Micali and Rackoff. Defining computational complexity of "knowledge" within zero knowledge proofs.

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K

Kyber and Dilithium

These lectures describe Kyber (ML-KEM) and Dilithium (ML-DSA), the quantum-safe lattice-based key encapsulation and signature schemes that were standardized in August 2024 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

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L

LadderLeak: Breaking ECDSA With Less Than One B...

Breaking 160-bit curve ECDSA using less than one bit leakage.

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L

Lecture Notes on Cryptography

Famous set of lectures on cryptography by Shafi Goldwasser (MIT), M. Bellare (University of California).

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Let's construct an elliptic curve: Introducing ...

Fine example of building up ECC from scratch.

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List of proposed operation modes of AES

Maintained by NIST.

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M

MAYO: Practical Post-Quantum Signatures from Oi...

The Oil and Vinegar signature scheme, proposed in 1997 by Patarin, is one of the oldest and best-understood multivariate quadratic signature schemes. It has excellent performance and signature sizes. This paper is about enhancing this algorithm in usage in the post-quantum era. Official website.

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MEGA: Malleable Encryption Goes Awry

Proof-of-concept versions of attacks on MEGA data storage. Showcasing their practicality and exploitability. Official webpage.

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Minerva: The curse of ECDSA nonces

Exploiting timing/bit-length leaks for recovering private keys from ECDSA signatures

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M

MTC3

xipher contest with more than 200 challenges of different levels, a moderated forum, and a hall-of-fame.

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M

Multi-Theorem Preprocessing NIZKs from Lattices

Construction of non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs using lattice-based preprocessing models, by Sam Kim and David J. Wu.

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N

New attacks on Keccak-224 and Keccak-256

A 2012 paper about using the combination of differential and algebraic techniques for collision attacks on SHA-3, by Itai Dinur, Orr Dunkelman, Adi Shamir.

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N

New Directions in Cryptography

Seminal paper by Diffie and Hellman, introducing public key cryptography and key exchange/agreement protocol.

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New Features of Latin Dances: Analysis of Salsa...

Analysis of Salsa20 family of ciphers, by Jean-Philippe Aumasson et al.

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Nuts and Bolts of Encryption: A Primer for Poli...

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On the Security of HMAC and NMAC Based on HAVAL...

Security analysis of different legacy HMAC schemes by Jongsung Kim et al.

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O

On the Security of Public Key Protocols

Dolev-Yao model is a formal model, used to prove properties of interactive cryptographic protocols.

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On the Security of Randomized CBC-MAC Beyond th...

Security of randomized CBC-MACs and a new construction that resists birthday paradox attacks and provably reaches full security, by E. Jaulmes et al.

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O

Ongoing Research Areas in Symmetric Cryptography

Overview of ongoing research in secret key crypto and hashes by ECRYPT Network of Excellence in Cryptology.

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P

Post-quantum cryptography

Introduction to post-quantum cryptography.

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Post-quantum cryptography - dealing with the fa...

Brief observation of mathematical tasks that can be used to build cryptosystems secure against attacks by post-quantum computers.

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Post-quantum RSA

Daniel Bernshtein's insight how to save RSA in post-quantum period.

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P

PRIMES is in P

Unconditional deterministic polynomial-time algorithm that determines whether an input number is prime or composite.

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Proofs of knowledge

A pair of papers which investigate the notions of proof of knowledge and proof of computational ability, M. Bellare and O. Goldreich.

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Proofs that yield nothing but their validity an...

By Goldreich, Micali and Wigderson, a relative to the above.

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Proxy-Mediated Searchable Encryption in SQL Dat...

An overview of existing searchable encryption schemes, and analysis of scheme built on AES-GCM, blind index and bloom filter by Eugene Pilyankevich, Dmytro Kornieiev, Artem Storozhuk.

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R

Recomendation for Block Cipher modes of operati...

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R

Recommendation for Key Management – Part 1: Gen...

Methodologically very relevant document on goals and procedures of key management.

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R

Recommendations for Discrete Logarithm-Based Cr...

Official NIST guide how securely implement elliptic curves. It also includes math shortcuts, optimizations and possible security risk of wrong algorithm implementation. (February 2023)

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R

Remote timing attacks are practical

An example in attacking practical crypto implementationby D. Boneh, D. Brumley.

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R

RFC 2631: Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement

An explanation of the Diffie-Hellman methon in more engineering terms.

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R

RSA Algorithm

Rather education explanation of every bit behind RSA.

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RSA, DH and DSA in the Wild

Collection of implementation mistakes which lead to exploits of assymetric cryptography.

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S

Salsa20 family of stream ciphers

Broad explanation of Salsa20 security cipher by Daniel J. Bernstein.

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S

Secure Communications Over Insecure Channels

Paper by R. Merkle, predated "New directions in cryptography" though it was published after it. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange is an implementation of such a Merkle system.

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S

Selecting Cryptographic Key Sizes

Classic paper from 1999 with guidelines for the determination of key sizes for symmetric cryptosystems, RSA, ECC, by Arjen K. Lenstra and Eric R. Verheul.

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S

Self-Study Course in Block Cipher Cryptanalysis

Attempt to organize the existing literature of block-cipher cryptanalysis in a way that students can use to learn cryptanalytic techniques and ways to break new algorithms, by Bruce Schneier.

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Slide Attacks on a Class of Hash Functions

Applying slide attacks (typical cryptanalysis technique for block ciphers) to hash functions, M. Gorski et al.

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Software implementation of the NIST elliptic cu...

Pracitcal example of implementing elliptic curve crypto, by M. Brown et al.

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SoK: Password-Authenticated Key Exchange – Theo...

History and classification of the PAKE algorithms.

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S

Statistical Cryptanalysis of Block Ciphers

By Pascal Junod.

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S

Stick figure guide to AES

If stuff above was a bit hard or you're looking for a good laugh.

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T

The Equivalence Between the DHP and DLP for Ell...

by K. Bentahar.

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The Galois/Counter Mode of Operation (GCM)

Original paper introducing GCM, by by David A. McGrew and John Viega.

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T

The joy of Cryptography

By Mike Rosulek. A lot of basic stuff covered really well. No ECC.

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The Security and Performance of the Galois/Coun...

Design, analysis and security of GCM, and, more specifically, AES GCM mode, by David A. McGrew and John Viega.

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The security impact of a new cryptographic library

Introductory paper on NaCl, discussing important aspects of implementing cryptography and using it as a larger building block in security systems, by Daniel J. Bernstein, Tanja Lange, Peter Schwabe.

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Too much crypto

Analysis of number of rounds for symmetric cryptography primitives, and suggestions to do fewer rounds, by Jean-Philippe Aumasson.

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Twenty Years of Attacks on the RSA Cryptosystem

Great inquiry into attacking RSA and it's internals, by Dan Boneh.

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U

Understanding cryptography: A textbook for Stud...

Textbook, great lectures and problems to solve.

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Using Encryption for Authentication in Large Ne...

By Needham, Schroeder: this is were crypto-based auth starts.

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Zero Knowledge Protocols and Small Systems

A good intro into Zero knowledge protocols.

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