In an era marked by increasing cybersecurity threats and data breaches, ensuring secure authentication mechanisms is crucial for individuals and organizations alike. While traditional methods such as passwords and PINs offer some level of security, they are susceptible to various vulnerabilities like phishing attacks, brute-force attempts, and password reuse. Hardware security tokens provide an … [Read more...]

In an increasingly digital world, the need for secure and trustworthy communication, transactions, and document management is paramount. A digital signature is an asymmetric cryptosystem in which a sender uses a secret signing key (the private key) to calculate a value for a digital message (i.e., any data). This value allows anyone to check the indisputable authorship and integrity of the message … [Read more...]

The term Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) refers to a group of standardized cryptologic hash functions. These are used to calculate a check value for any digital data (messages) and are, among other things, the basis for creating a digital signature. The check value is used to ensure the integrity of a message. If two messages result in the same check value, the equality of the messages should be … [Read more...]

A function (in this context almost always a one-way function) is said to be collision resistant if it is "hard" to find different inputs that are mapped to the same value. Especially in the case of cryptographic hash functions, this is a common requirement, the break of which is usually considered to be a break of the complete hash function. Collision resistance is a property of cryptographic hash … [Read more...]

In the ever-evolving landscape of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, two prominent categories have emerged: security tokens and stablecoins. While both operate within the realm of blockchain technology and offer unique value propositions, they serve distinct purposes in the financial ecosystem. Understanding the differences between security tokens and stablecoins is crucial for investors, … [Read more...]

A collision attack is an attack on a cryptologic hash function with the goal of finding two different documents mapped to an identical hash value. In contrast to preimage attacks, both documents (and thus also the hash value) are freely selectable. If such collisions are found, this means, among other things, that the hash function is not suitable for cryptographic applications (data encryption, … [Read more...]

In cryptology, a key is a piece of information that parameterizes a cryptographic algorithm and thus controls it. In the simplest case, most symmetric methods of classical cryptography, a password that is used to encrypt a plaintext and thus obtain a ciphertext. Conversely, this password is again needed as a key in order to regain the plaintext from the ciphertext by decryption. In modern, … [Read more...]

Hybrid encryption, also known as hybrid encryption, is a combination of asymmetric encryption and symmetric encryption. The sender chooses a random symmetric key called a session key. With this session key, the data to be protected is symmetrically encrypted. The session key is then encrypted asymmetrically with the recipient's public key. This approach solves the key distribution problem while … [Read more...]

In previous article, we have explained the common basic phrases associated with encryption. In principle, a distinction is made between different classical and modern symmetric encryption methods and the asymmetric encryption methods, which have only been known since the 1970s. Classical encryption methods can be classified according to the alphabet used. Symmetric encryption Symmetric … [Read more...]

Encryption is the conversion of information, called plaintext, into a ciphertext (also called cipher or keytext). A secret key is used, which may only be known to authorized persons. With knowledge of the key, the ciphertext can be converted back into the plaintext, which is called decryption. Encryption is used to maintain the secrecy of information, for example in order to be able to transmit … [Read more...]

The YubiKey is a hardware security token from the company Yubico that is used with interfaces such as Lightning, Near Field Communication (NFC) or USB and a variety of protocols to identify and authenticate users on computer systems. Among other things, it allows secure passwordless authentication and is also supported, for example, by the KeePass iOS app variant KeePassium. Yubico uses … [Read more...]