Does PBC (pairing-based cryptography library) support curve25519? - cryptography

I don't know how to input a point at curve25519 using pbc.
If not, how can I calculate pairing points at curve25519?
Is there any other lib solving this?

Curve25519 is not pairing-friendly.
There are two famous libraries about pairing: MIRACL and pbc.

Related

What is the math behind the min function in Geogebra?

So as of yet, I am not profficient in programming.
I am writing a paper in mathematics and obtained different results from the GeoGebra min function and algebraical methods.
I am sure that the algebraical methods are correct, but I really want to know why the min function was faulty.
The result from the algebra was an interval between 1010 and 1011.
From GeoGebra I got a single point as a solution (1010.15898).
If you could explain to me why GeoGebra ommits all of these other solutions, I would be very thankful.
I would also appreciate if someone could direct me to the math behind the function, so I could include it in my paper and discuss its' relevance.
Thanks in advance!
GeoGebra is using a modification of the (local) optimization algorithm given in Richard Brent, Algorithms For Minimization Without Derivatives, Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1973.
See the source code for more information.

Generating Artificial Test Clusters

Most authors generated their test clusters using Milligan's algorithm (well cited paper,Milligan, G.: An algorithm for creating artificial test clusters. Psychometric 50 (1985) 123–127). And A public domain implementation of this algorithm is available from Dave Dubin (Dubin, D.: clusgen.c. http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/ ̃dubin/ (1996)). However, this link is not available. Could you please tell me if there is any other implementation of this algorithm or other ways to generate artificial test clusters? Thanks in advance!
You may want to consider using MixSim in R or CARP in C which is considered to be some sort of a modern gold standard for assessing clustering. CARP appears to be more flexible. You can get the R package from CRAN, and the C package from MLOSS
Hope this helps!

Evaluate Formal tools

What are all the factors one should consider in order to compare 3 formal verification tools?
Eg: Jaspergold, Onespin, Incisive.
From my little research, Jaspergold comes on top. But i want to do it myself on a project.
I have noted down some points such as
1.Supported languages(vhdl, sv, verilog, sva, psl,etc)
2.GUI
3.Capability(how much big design can they handle)
4.Number of Evaluation cycles
5.Performance(How fast they find proof or counter example)
With what other features can i extend this list?
Thanks!

What makes the trapdoor function in elliptic curve cryptography hard to reverse?

I've been reading this article on elliptic-curve crypto and how it works:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/
In the article, they state:
It turns out that if you have two points [on an elliptic curve], an initial point "dotted" with itself n times to arrive at a final point [on the curve], finding out n when you only know the final point and the first point is hard.
It goes on to state that the only way to find out n (if you only have the first and final points, and you know the curve eqn), is to repeatedly dot the initial point until you finally have the matching final point.
I think I understand all this - but what confuses me is - if n is the private key, and the final point corresponds to the public key (which I think is the case), then doesn't it take the exact same amount of work to compute the public key from the private, as it does the private from the public (both just have to recursively dot a point on the curve)? am I misunderstanding something about what the article is saying?
The one-way attribute of ECC and RSA is due to the Chinese Reminder Theoreom (CRT). A series of arithmetic divisions where only the remainder is kept (aka Modulo operation %), which results in information loss in the output. As a result, the person with the keys takes one direct path to generate the output - and any would-be attacker has to exhaust a massive number of possible paths in order to determine what key was used to create the output. If the simple division was used instead of a modulo - then key data would be present in the output and it couldn't be used for cryptography.
If you lived in a world where you had a powerful enough computer to exhaust all possibilities - then the CRT wouldn't be useful as a cryptographic primitive. The computers we have now a fairly powerful - so we balance the power of our modern machines with a keysize that introduces enough range of possibilities so that they cannot be exhausted in a timeframe that matters.
The CRT is a subset of the P vs NP problem set - so perhaps proving P=NP may lead to a way of undermining the oneway aspect of asymmetric cryptography. We know that there is a way to factor CRT using a quantum computer running Shor's Algorithm. Shor's Algorithm has proven that we can defeat the so-called "trapdoor", or one-way attributes of CRT, it is still however an expensive attack to conduct.
The following lecture is my favorite description of the CRT. It shows that there are many possible solutions for one direction forcing an attacker to exhaust them all and only one solution for the other:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru7mWZJlRQg
EDIT: I previously stated that n is not the private key. In your example, n is either server or client private key.
How it works is that there is a starting point known to anybody.
You select random integer k and do the "dotting operation" k-times. Then you send this new point to the server. (k is your private key)
Server does the same with the starting point, but q-times and sends it to you. (q is server's private key)
You take the point you got from server and "dot" it k-times. The final point would be the starting point "dotted" k*q-times.
Server does the same with point it got from you. And again its final point would be the starting point "dotted" q*k-times.
That means the final point (= the starting point "dotted" k*q-times) is the shared secret since all what any attacker would know is the starting point, the starting point dotted k-times and the starting point dotted q-times. And given only those data, it's practically impossible to find the final point as a product of k*q unless any of those known.
EDIT: No, it doesn't take the same time to compute k from G = kP given known values of G (sent point) and P (starting point). More in comment section and:
For rising to power, see Exponentiation by squaring.
For ECC point multiplication, see point multiplication.

Shamir's Secret Sharing using Bignum or Bigint or ....?

I've got a generic cryptographic implementation using OpenSSL's BIGNUM library in C. Standard decryption is working fine, but i would also like to implement Shamir's secret sharing (SSS).
The problem i've run across is that BIGNUM only supports whole numbers, and as part of the Lagrange interpolation for SSS, i'll need to be multiplying by negative values.
Is there any way to do this? Otherwise: I can do my SSS in another language (python?) so long as it is able to interact with the BIGNUM's produced by OpenSSL.
Any suggestions? TIA!
As you look at BIGNUM structure in OpenSSL, you'll find a flag named neg. If the BIGNUM object represents a negative number, neg will be set to 1. Also, the bn_mul() function handles the multiplication by negative number correctly. So you can implement SSS with OpenSSL, no problem!
Modular arithmetic (using groups) only provides positive results, so I presume you want to use non-modular arithmetic? In that case you could simply keep a separate variable indicating if the value is negative or not. The outcome of positive multiplication is the same except for the sign bit anyway.
It's not as clean a design as possible, but for a few methods it would probably not matter that much. You could create separate methods that mimic the BN methods except for an integer holding the value of the sign (-1, 0 or 1).