Certifying RSA public keys with an efficient NIZK

In many applications, it is important to verify that an RSA public key ( N,e ) specifies a permutation, in order to prevent attacks due to adversarially-generated public keys. We design and implement a simple and efficient noninteractive zero-knowledge protocol (in the random oracle model) for this task. The key feature of our protocol is compatibility with existing RSA implementations and standards. The protocol works for any choice of e. Applications concerned about adversarial key generation can just append our proof to the RSA public key without any other modifications to existing code or cryptographic libraries. Users need only perform a one- time verification of the proof to ensure that raising to the power e is a permutation of the integers modulo N . For typical parameter settings, the proof consists of nine integers modulo N; generating the proof and verifying it both require about nine modular exponentiations.https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/057.pdfFirst author draf

Organic produce from the Republic of South Africa. Exploring the conditions for enhancing trade in organic vegetables, fruit and wine

Conditions for enhancing the trade in organic products between the Netherlands and the Republic of South Africa were assessed by means of a SWOT analysis, based on information acquired through interviews and desk research. There is a large potential to enhance the trade in organic products between the two countries, although the following issues need to be addressed: the finalisation of the RSA legislation on organic production (which will enable large enough volumes to be produced and traded), skills development and the presence of an effective platform for organic production in the RS

Security Estimates for Quadratic Field Based Cryptosystems

We describe implementations for solving the discrete logarithm problem in the class group of an imaginary quadratic field and in the infrastructure of a real quadratic field. The algorithms used incorporate improvements over previously-used algorithms, and extensive numerical results are presented demonstrating their efficiency. This data is used as the basis for extrapolations, used to provide recommendations for parameter sizes providing approximately the same level of security as block ciphers with $80,$ $112,$ $128,$ $192,$ and $256$-bit symmetric keys

Efficient noninteractive certification of RSA moduli and beyond

In many applications, it is important to verify that an RSA public key (N; e) speci es a permutation over the entire space ZN, in order to prevent attacks due to adversarially-generated public keys. We design and implement a simple and e cient noninteractive zero-knowledge protocol (in the random oracle model) for this task. Applications concerned about adversarial key generation can just append our proof to the RSA public key without any other modi cations to existing code or cryptographic libraries. Users need only perform a one-time veri cation of the proof to ensure that raising to the power e is a permutation of the integers modulo N. For typical parameter settings, the proof consists of nine integers modulo N; generating the proof and verifying it both require about nine modular exponentiations. We extend our results beyond RSA keys and also provide e cient noninteractive zero- knowledge proofs for other properties of N, which can be used to certify that N is suitable for the Paillier cryptosystem, is a product of two primes, or is a Blum integer. As compared to the recent work of Auerbach and Poettering (PKC 2018), who provide two-message protocols for similar languages, our protocols are more e cient and do not require interaction, which enables a broader class of applications.https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/057First author draf

Security Issues of the Digital Certificates within Public Key Infrastructures

The paper presents the basic byte level interpretation of an X.509 v3 digital certificate according to ASN.1 DER/BER encoding. The reasons for byte level analysis are various and important. For instance, a research paper has mentioned how a PKI security may be violated by MD5 collision over information from the certificates. In order to develop further studies on the topic a serious knowledge about certificate structure is necessary.digital certificates, certificates authority, ASN.1 DER/BER, PKI