Digital Signal Processing

2204 Submissions

[4] viXra:2204.0110 [pdf] submitted on 2022-04-18 00:22:10

Ġasaq: Provably Secure Key Derivation

Authors: M. Rajululkahf
Comments: 6 Pages.

This paper proposes Ġasaq; a provably secure key derivation method that, when given access to a true random number generator (TRNG), allows communicating parties, that have a pre-shared secret password p, to agree on a secret key k that is indistinguishable from truly random numbers with a guaranteed entropy of min(H(p), |k|). Ġasaq's security guarantees hold even in a post-quantum world under Grover's algorithm, or even if it turns out that P = NP. Such strong security guarantees, that are similar to those of the one time pad (OTP), became attractive after the introduction of Băhēm; a similarly provably secure symmetric cipher that is strong enough to shift cipher's security bottleneck to the key derivation function. State of art key derivation functions such as the PBKDF, or even memory-hard variants such as Argon2, are not provably secure, but rather not fully broken yet. They do not guarantee against needlessly losing password entropies; that is, the output key could have an entropy lower than password's entropy, even if such entropy is less than key's bit length. In addition to assuming that P != NP, and, even then, getting their key space square-rooted under Grover's algorithm---none of which are limitations of Ġasaq. Using such key derivation functions, as the PBKDF or Argon2, is acceptable with conventional ciphers, such as ChaCha20 or AES, as they, too, suffer the same limitations, hence none of them are bottlenecks for the other. Similarly to how a glass door is not a security bottleneck for a glass house. However, a question is: why would a people secure their belongings in a glass made structure, to justify a glass door, when they can use a re-enforced steel structure at a similar cost? This is where Ġasaq comes to offer Băhēm the re-enforced steel door that matches its security.
Category: Digital Signal Processing

[3] viXra:2204.0094 [pdf] submitted on 2022-04-16 07:14:26

Clock Synchronization in Distributed Systems

Authors: Amey Thakur, Mega Satish
Comments: 6 Pages, 7 figures, Volume 9, Issue III, International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), 2022.

Clock discrepancies are troublesome in distributed systems and pose major difficulties. To avoid mistakes, the clocks of separate CPUs must be synced. This is to ensure that communication and resource sharing are as efficient as possible. As a result, the clocks must be constantly monitored and adjusted. Otherwise, the clocks drift apart. Clock skew causes a disparity in the time values of two clocks. Both of these issues must be solved in order to make effective use of distributed system characteristics. In this study, we briefly explored the features of distributed systems and its algorithms.
Category: Digital Signal Processing

[2] viXra:2204.0084 [pdf] submitted on 2022-04-15 08:57:55

My Definition and Dram Structure

Authors: Yuji Masuda
Comments: 2 Pages.

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate in figures the similarities between My Definition and the basic DRAM structure, as well as expectations for its application.
Category: Digital Signal Processing

[1] viXra:2204.0064 [pdf] submitted on 2022-04-13 20:44:34

Băhēm: A Provably Secure Symmetric Cipher

Authors: M. Rajululkahf
Comments: 4 Pages.

This paper proposes Băhēm; a symmetric cipher that, when used with a pre-shared secret key k, no cryptanalysis can degrade its security below H(k) bits of entropy, even under Grover's algorithm or even if it turned out that P = NP. Băhēm's security is very similar to that of the one-time pad (OTP), except that it does not require the communicating parties the inconvenient constraint of generating a large random pad in advance of their communication. Instead, Băhēm allows the parties to agree on a small pre-shared secret key, such as |k| = 128 bits, and then generate their random pads in the future as they go. For any operation, be it encryption or decryption, Băhēm performs only 4 exclusive-or operations (XORs) per cleartext bit including its 2 overhead bits. If it takes a CPU 1 cycle to perform an XOR between a pair of 64 bit variables, then a Băhēm operation takes 4 / 8 = 0.5 cycles per byte. Further, all Băhēm's operations are independent, therefore a system with n many CPU cores can perform 0.5 / n cpu cycles per byte per wall-clock time. While Băhēm has an overhead of 2 extra bits per every encrypted cleartext bit, its early single-threaded prototype implementation achieves a faster /decryption/ than OpenSSL's ChaCha20's, despite the fact that Băhēm's ciphertext is 3 times larger than ChaCha20's. This support that the 2 bit overhead is practically negligible for most applications. Băhēm's early prototype has a slower /encryption/ time than OpenSSL's ChaCha20 due to its use of a true random number generator (TRNG). However, this can be trivially optimised by gathering the true random bits in advance, so Băhēm gets the entropy conveniently when it runs. Aside from Băhēm's usage as a provably-secure general-purpose symmetric cipher, it can also be used, in some applications such as password verification, to enhance existing hashing functions to become provably one-way, by using Băhēm to encrypt a predefined string using the hash as the key. A password is then verified if its hash decrypts the Băhēm ciphertext to retrieve the predefined string.
Category: Digital Signal Processing