Optimistic fair exchange (OFE) is a protocol for solving the problem of exchanging items or services in a fair manner between two parties, a signer and a verifier, with the help of an arbitrator which is called in only when a dispute happens between the two parties. In almost all the previous work on OFE, after obtaining a partial signature from the signer, the verifier can present it to others...

In this paper we present new and more accurate estimates of the biases of the linear approximation of the FSM of the stream cipher SNOW 2.0. Based on improved bias estimates we also find a new linear distinguisher with bias 2−86.9 that is significantly stronger than the previously found ones by Watanabe et al. (2003) and makes it possible to distinguish the output keystream of SNOW 2.0 of lengt...

The bit-search generator (BSG) was proposed in 2004 and can be seen as a variant of the shrinking and self-shrinking generators. It has the advantage that it works at rate 1/3 using only one LFSR and some selection logic. We present various attacks on the BSG based on the fact that the output sequence can be uniquely defined by the differential of the input sequence. By knowing only a small par...

A distinguishing r-labeling of a digraph G is a mapping λ from the set of vertices of G to the set of labels {1, . . . , r} such that no nontrivial automorphism of G preserves all the labels. The distinguishing number D(G) of G is then the smallest r for which G admits a distinguishing r-labeling. From a result of Gluck (David Gluck, Trivial set-stabilizers in finite permutation groups, Can. J....

In Mexico's territory, the center of origin and domestication of maize (Zea mays), there is a large phenotypic diversity of this crop. This diversity has been classified into "landraces." Previous studies have reported that genomic variation in Mexican maize is better explained by environmental factors, particularly those related with altitude, than by landrace. Still, landraces are extensively...

Knot theory is actively studied both by physicists and mathematicians as it provides a connecting centerpiece for many physical mathematical theories. One of the challenging problems in knot distinguishing mutant knots. Mutant knots are not distinguished colored HOMFLY-PT polynomials either symmetric or antisymmetric representations $SU(N)$. Some can be simplest non-symmetric representation $[2...