Hey! I'm David, the author of the Real-World Cryptography book. I'm a crypto engineer at O(1) Labs on the Mina cryptocurrency, previously I was the security lead for Diem (formerly Libra) at Novi (Facebook), and a security consultant for the Cryptography Services of NCC Group. This is my blog about cryptography and security and other related topics that I find interesting.

# Talk: RSA and LLL attacks posted March 2015

I posted previously about my researches on RSA attacks using lattice's basis reductions techniques, I gave a talk today that went really well and you can check the slides on the github repo

Also on SlideShare

I wanted to record myself so I could have put that on youtube along with the slides but... I completely forgot once I got on stage. But this is OK as I got corrected on some points, it will make the new recording better :) I will try to make it as soon as possible and upload it on youtube.

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# End to End encryption for Yahoo mail users (plugin) posted March 2015

Yahoo has released a plugin that allows end to end encryption for yahoo mail users. It's seems to be part of the new "yahoo" redesign:

we’ve heard you loud and clear: We’re building the best products to ensure a more secure user experience and overall digital ecosystem.

It's open sourced and they also setup a bug bounty program (from 50$to 15,000$)

While at this stage we’re rolling out the source code for feedback from the wider security industry

More on their tumblr (this sounds weird).

Glancing over the code it looks like it's cumbersome to use:

The extension requires a keyserver implementing this API to fetch keys for other users.

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# Survey on RSA Attacks using Lattice reduction techniques (LLL) posted March 2015

And here's the survey of what I talked about previously: https://github.com/mimoo/RSA-and-LLL-attacks/raw/master/survey_final.pdf

It's my first survey ever and I had much fun writing it! I don't really know if I can call it a survey, it reads like a vulgarization/explanation of the papers from Coppersmith, Howgrave-Graham, Boneh and Durfee, Herrmann and May. There is a short table of the running times at the end of each sections. There is also the code of the implementations I coded at the end of the survey.

If you spot a typo or something weird, wrong, or badly explained. Please tell me!

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# Implementation of Boneh and Durfee attack on RSA's low private exponents posted March 2015

I've Implemented a Coppersmith-type attack (using LLL reductions of lattice basis). It was done by Boneh and Durfee and later simplified by Herrmann and May. The program can be found on my github.

The attack allows us to break RSA and the private exponent d. Here's why RSA works (where e is the public exponent, phi is euler's totient function, N is the public modulus):

$ed = 1 \pmod{\varphi(N)}$ $\implies ed = k \cdot \varphi(N) + 1 \text{ over } \mathbb{Z}$ $\implies k \cdot \varphi(N) + 1 = 0 \pmod{e}$ $\implies k \cdot (N + 1 - p - q) + 1 = 0 \pmod{e}$ $\implies 2k \cdot (\frac{N + 1}{2} + \frac{-p -q}{2}) + 1 = 0 \pmod{e}$

The last equation gives us a bivariate polynomial $f(x,y) = 1 + x \cdot (A + y)$. Finding the roots of this polynomial will allow us to easily compute the private exponent d.

The attack works if the private exponent d is too small compared to the modulus: $d < N^{0.292}$.

To use it:

• look at the tests in boneh_durfee.sage and make your own with your own values for the public exponent e and the public modulus N.
• guess how small the private exponent d is and modify delta so you have d < N^delta
• tweak m and t until you find something. You can use Herrmann and May optimized t = tau * m with tau = 1-2*delta. Keep in mind that the bigger they are, the better it is, but the longer it will take. Also we must have 1 <= t <= m.
• you can also decrease X as it might be too high compared to the root of x you are trying to find. This is a last recourse tweak though.

Here is the tweakable part in the code:

# Tweak values here !
delta = 0.26 # so that d < N^delta
m = 3        # x-shifts
t = 1        # y-shifts # we must have 1 <= t <= m

# Pretty diagrams with Tikz in LaTeX posted March 2015

Because studying Cryptography is also about using LaTeX, it's nice to spend a bit of time understanding how to make pretty documents. Because, you know, it's nicer to read.

Here's an awesome quick introduction of Tikz that allows to make beautiful diagram with great precision in a short time:

And I'm bookmarking one more that seems go way further.

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# Babun, Cmder and Tmux posted February 2015

I've used Cmder for a while on Windows. Which is a pretty terminal that brings a lot of tools and shortcuts from the linux world. I also have Chocolatey as packet manager. And all in all it works pretty great except Cmder is pretty slow.

I've ran into Babun yesterday, that seems to be kind of the same thing, but with zsh, oh-my-zsh and another packet manager: pact. The first thing I did was downloading tmux and learning how to use it. It works pretty well and I think I have found a replacement for Cmder =)

Here is a video of what is tmux:

# Implementation of Coppersmith attack (RSA attack using lattice reductions) posted February 2015

I've implemented the work of Coppersmith (to be correct the reformulation of his attack by Howgrave-Graham) in Sage.

You can see the code here on github.

I won't go too much into the details because this is for a later post, but you can use such an attack on several relaxed RSA models (meaning you have partial information, you are not totally in the dark).

I've used it in two examples in the above code:

## Stereotyped messages

For example if you know the most significant bits of the message. You can find the rest of the message with this method.

The usual RSA model is this one: you have a ciphertext c a modulus N and a public exponent e. Find m such that m^e = c mod N.

Now, this is the relaxed model we can solve: you have c = (m + x)^e, you know a part of the message, m, but you don't know x. For example the message is always something like "the password today is: [password]". Coppersmith says that if you are looking for N^1/e of the message it is then a small root and you should be able to find it pretty quickly.

let our polynomial be f(x) = (m + x)^e - c which has a root we want to find modulo N. Here's how to do it with my implementation:

dd = f.degree()
beta = 1
epsilon = beta / 7
mm = ceil(beta**2 / (dd * epsilon))
tt = floor(dd * mm * ((1/beta) - 1))
XX = ceil(N**((beta**2/dd) - epsilon))
roots = coppersmith_howgrave_univariate(f, N, beta, mm, tt, XX)

You can play with the values until it finds the root. The default values should be a good start. If you want to tweak:

• beta is always 1 in this case.
• XX is your upper bound on the root. The bigger is the unknown, the bigger XX should be. And the bigger it is... the more time it takes.

## Factoring with high bits known

Another case is factoring N knowing high bits of q.

The Factorization problem normally is: give N = pq, find q. In our relaxed model we know an approximation q' of q.

Here's how to do it with my implementation:

let f(x) = x - q' which has a root modulo q.
This is because x - q' = x - ( q + diff ) = x - diff mod q with the difference being diff = | q - q' |.

beta = 0.5
dd = f.degree()
epsilon = beta / 7
mm = ceil(beta**2 / (dd * epsilon))
tt = floor(dd * mm * ((1/beta) - 1))
XX = ceil(N**((beta**2/dd) - epsilon)) + 1000000000000000000000000000000000
roots = coppersmith_howgrave_univariate(f, N, beta, mm, tt, XX)

What is important here if you want to find a solution:

• we should have q >= N^beta
• as usual XX is the upper bound of the root, so the difference should be: |diff| < XX
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# Nothing up my sleeve numbers posted February 2015

Why does the round constants in sha1 have those specific values?

Kt is the round constant of round t;

from SH1-1 - Wikipedia:

The constant values used are chosen to be nothing up my sleeve numbers: the four round constants k are 230 times the square roots of 2, 3, 5 and 10. The first four starting values for h0 through h3 are the same with the MD5 algorithm, and the fifth (for h4) is similar.

In cryptography, nothing up my sleeve numbers are any numbers which, by their construction, are above suspicion of hidden properties. They are used in creating cryptographic functions such as hashes and ciphers. These algorithms often need randomized constants for mixing or initialization purposes. The cryptographer may wish to pick these values in a way that demonstrates the constants were not selected for a nefarious purpose, for example, to create a backdoor to the algorithm. These fears can be allayed by using numbers created in a way that leaves little room for adjustment. An example would be the use of initial digits from the number π as the constants. Using digits of π millions of places into its definition would not be considered as trustworthy because the algorithm designer might have selected that starting point because it created a secret weakness the designer could later exploit.