Hello everybody

Sorry for asking again, but not having worked with stream ciphers
before, I really have no clue ... so any hint is more than welcome.

After encrypting multiple files with blowfish-cbc and distinct IV for
each file, do I need to keep the IVs secret?

Thanks
Markus

On 12/12/2012 05:56 PM, Markus Wernig wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> Thanks for the swift replies.
> 
> On 12/11/2012 11:51 AM, Jakob Bohm wrote:
> 
>>>
>>> - With a given key being reused for all encrypted files, the IV from my
>>> understanding is central to the strength of the encryption. So a unique
>>> random IV needs to be used for each file. Does this mean that for every
>>> file I have to record the IV in order to decrypt it later? Or is my
>>> understanding wrong?
>>>
>> Yes, you need to know the IV to decrypt correctly, and it should not be
>> predictable by anyone without the key, but it does not need to be secret.
> 
> Is that also true after encryption? So I can just store the IV in plain
> together with the encrypted file and it will not lessen the encryption's
> strength? My gut feeling (very uneducated ;-) tells me that this could
> allow an attack on the crypttext to somebody with access to the files.
> 
> thx again
> Markus
> 
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