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Cryptography

Zero Knowledge: SNARKs vs. STARKs

Introduction With the rise of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, zero-knowledge proof technology is increasing in popularity due to the variety its applicable use cases, such as verifiable computation and privacy-preservation. In this article, we aim to review the class of zero-knowledge proof constructions by Ben-Sasson, Bentov, Horesh and Riabzev (BBHR18) in 2018 that overcomes the abovementioned […]

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Cryptography CTF writeups

PlaidCTF 2015 – Crypto/Parlor2

After going bankrupt last year, the folks behind parlor from last year have decided to set up a new betting service! PlaidCTF 2015 – Crypto/Parlor2 We were given a gambling application where we could choose some modulus [latex] \text{mod }o[/latex]. This modulus would be used by the server to compute a random number [latex] r […]

Categories
Cryptography CTF writeups

PlaidCTF 2015 – Crypto/Lazy

My knapsack brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like “that crypto is hard” (note: this flag is not in the flag{} format) PlaidCTF 2015 – Crypto/Lazy The challenge provided a few files: pubkey.txt, ciphertext.txt, knapsack.py, utils.py. After inspecting the code, it seems that the contents of ciphertext.txt was encrypted using Merkle-Hallman knapsack (MHK) cryptography, […]