# Tagged Questions

HMAC is a method for constructing a message authentication code based on a cryptographic hash function.

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### If you know the messages, and the results of HMAC(key, message) can you find the key?

If the attacker has 1 billion 4KB (random-noise) messages and sha256-HMACs for those messages (all using the same key), can they calculate the key that was used, before the universe dies?
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### Is the result of HMAC-sha256 distinguishable from random noise?

Is if the result of HMAC-sha256 distinguishable from random noise? If so, given: a collection of 1000 keys, and 1000 messages of random noise, 100 signed by each of only 10 of those keys Can ...
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I built a system that allowed users to generate an unlimited number of email addresses. Instead of storing each one in a db, I created addresses dynamically and made the address an hmac signed ...
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### Equivalent key size between HMAC and AES?

I have seem comparison between AES and RSA, e.g., AES 128 bit key is equivalent to RSA modulus 3072 bits. Is there such comparison between AES key size and HMAC?
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### Hashing - Digital Signing and Trivial Stretching

Two very basic questions: 1. Digital Signing Why is it not possible to just simply replace the hash value from the request? Examples: ...
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### Using Permutation polynomial to compute a MAC

Is the following MAC secure? For a block $y_i$ in a file, we defined a MAC as follows: $Mac_i:PRF(k,i) \cdot g^{y_i \cdot r_i} \bmod p$. Where $p$ is a prime number, $g \in \mathbb{G}$,$PRF(k,i)$ is ...
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Given is a system, which does provide only implementations of fast hash algorithms (MD5, SHA1, SHA-256, SHA-512). There is no implementation of PBKDF2, bcrypt or scrypt available. The system does ...
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### wireless network security protocol

In network security, encryption and integrity done by the same algorithm that is AES-CCM in that MIC generated by CBC-MAC and encryption done by CTR mode. So suppose I want to do encryption with any ...
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### Performing HMAC with random key before MAC comparison

In Laravel (a PHP framework) I can see that they calculate a HMAC with a random key over the final HMAC before comparison. This additional HMAC calculation is of course performed for both the ...
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### How to implement HMAC SHA-256

I am trying to figure out how the HMAC SHA-256 hashing algorithm works. I know that we have to use the following: H (K ^ opad)|| H ((K ^ ipad)|| text)). The ...
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### Updating the secret key used for HMAC

I am designing a distributed system, composed by a set of physically distributed embedded devices (8 bit cores with less than 1 KB of RAM). The devices need to be able to authenticate the originator ...
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### Integrity protection in wireless sensor networks [closed]

I have done a lab about wireless sensor nodes and got in touch with encryption for the very first time. There are some questions on my sheet, especially on integrity protection (the attacker wants to ...
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As always we are trying to improve password storage; before just adding new ways of storing our password we need to define what threats we will mitigate by adding in a new way to store our password. ...
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### How to use HMAC for authenticating multiple messages

The standard HMAC function, $H(K, m)$, authenticates a single message $m$. Instead, I'd like to authenticate 2 messages, like this: $$H'(K, m_1, m_2)$$ The simplest solution, $H(K, m_1||m_2)$, ...
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### Encryption and HMAC in a PSKC file

This is the PSKC standard https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc6030.txt In Section 6.1 6.1. Encryption Based on Pre-Shared Keys They have the following ...
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### How many times can a key be used for HMAC-SHA256 before it needs to be rotated?

If I wanted to use hmac for proving that a value hadn't been tampered with, how many times can I use a key before it needs to be rotated?
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### Specific example of a MAC in TLS?

This seems like quite a dumb question, but I really don't know if I'm finding a answer anywhere. I understand that if i access a website that is secured with TLS, we exchange ciphersuites and so on, ...
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### How does SafeNet MobilePass calculate the counter for following passwords?

Original Question: How does SafeNet MobilePASS generate passwords? The algorithm to calculate passwords was implemented by the author of the original question here: ...
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It is written in the HMAC paper that the $ipad=0x36$ and $opad=0x5c$ were chosen such that it maximize the Hamming-Distance of the part of the key used in the inner and outer part of the HMAC process. ...
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### secure embedded/microcontroller crypto using AES-ctr with hmac-sha2

The embedded device is a low-power 8-bit microcontroller (memory usage is constrained to about 10kb code, 1kb ram). As the device is battery-powered and manual service should be minimal, more powerful ...
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### if using cbc+hmac dealing with small size of data(less than 128bit) , will it cause any problem?

if use AES-cbc,HMAC-SHA256, and there is some txt needed to be enc, and I divide this txt into small packages with variable length, then enc them. some of these package can be less than 128bit. Is ...
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### What happens when cbc+hmac get a replay attack?

If it use AES-CBC and HMAC-SHA256 for message send online, and someone try to replay attack on this message. Can the attack be successful? what will be happen when attacking?
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### Is the output of AES-CBC + MAC the same size as the input?

I use AES-CBC and HMAC-SHA256 to encrypt a text file. Will the output be larger in size than the input or will it be the same size? Is it more secure secure if the size of the output is larger?
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### Key derivation for AES-Encryption key and HMAC

Okay so I have two options for how I would derive two keys for AES encryption and HMAC they are as follows: Run BCrypt on a users passphrase and then use the bouncy castle implementation of HKDF in ...
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### Using bcrypt derived keys for encryption?

Sorry for this ignorant question but I am currently weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of BCrypt over PBKDF2 and from what I have read BCrypt is considered more secure but from what I have ...
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### ASCII input to HMAC weaker than raw bytes?

In various cryptographic programs I've written (most have been toy problems, but this current one is not) I have taken a slothful approach to performing a message digest (hash) of numerical input. I ...
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### Why HMAC=H(message|key) is unsafe? [duplicate]

As mentioned in wikipedia, HMAC=H(message|key) is not safe, but I don't know the reason. Anyone can tell me why? or give me an example? Thank you in advance.
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### IPsec authentication and encryption lgorithms

I am looking for the implementation of IPsec security algorithms for both authentication and Encryption. Is there any open source implementation available for the same ? And if someone supposed to ...
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### Storing salts and iteration number?

I have a function that derives two sub-keys from one passphrase using PBKDF2 one which is used as a encryption key the other for HMAC generation, because these two sub-keys will need to be regenerated ...
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### HMAC_DRBG Generate Process: requesting N bytes at once different from requesting N bytes in total?

Am I correct in assuming that HMAC_DRBG would return different results if I, e.g. first request 4 bytes followed by a request of another 4 bytes instead of asking for 8 bytes at once? It seems that ...
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### Can adding nonces make challenge response authentications weaker?

In a custom protocol we want to replace an aged tiger32 based challenge response authentication. I suggested that we use something existing, so threw HMAC into the room. As per wikipedia it works as: ...
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### How is HMAC hashed message decrypted on the receiver side

We know that MAC algorithm and key are used in both sender and receiver side to get the matching MAC tages to prove that the data is authentic. Now in HMAC we know that, it makes use of crytographic ...
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### PBKDF2 Salt and Password Ordering

I am currently reading about PBKDF2, and understand that the salt is used only once, while the password is used multiple times in the computation of the final key (see this question). How would the ...
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### Is it secure to derive an AES key from a MAC?

I'm working on a project where we need to encrypt a large number of files and store them on the cloud. And I'm wondering if the following process would be secure (we have a “Hardware Security Module” ...
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### Regular MACs vs Carter-Wegman MAC

Carter-Wegman MAC variants (VMAC, UMAC etc) are known to be very fast and efficient when compared to MAC algorithms that are based on block ciphers and compression functions (like HMAC, CMAC etc). ...
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### How can finding a collision help an attacker with tampering messages with HMAC

As stated in the HMAC RFC (RFC 2104): The strongest attack known against HMAC is based on the frequency of collisions for the hash function H. How can a collision benefit an attacker? I would ...
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### Block-cipher based vs Hash based MAC

When it comes to MAC algorithms one can have many choices. CBC-MAC, CMAC, PMAC etc are some MAC algorithms that rely on block ciphers (ex AES) to generate a MAC. On the other hand HMAC is very popular ...
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### Are there any cryptographic flaws in my webhook signing process?

Out of band my services have exchanged secret keys. These secret keys are then used to prevent two things of the webhooks (HTTP calls triggered by Service A to Service B when an event occurs in ...
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### Is HMAC-SHA-1 secure?

Although SHA-1 theoretically has collisions, HMAC-SHA-1 which is based on SHA-1 is still widely used (in TLS for example) and is considered to be secure. How is that possible?
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### Combining two keys

What is the most secure way to combine two "random" keys X of size k (k ≤ 512 bits) and Y of size 512 bits in one key Z of size k? Result Z will be used for encryption/decryption with various ...
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### CMAC vs HMAC security strength

From the perspective of a Birthday Paradox attack, isn't it true that CMAC based on AES-128 is weaker than HMAC-SHA-1? The attack on CMAC-AES-128 requires about $2^{64}$ operations whereas the same ...
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### A way around digital signatures?

Scenario: I have to protect the integrity of some files that will be exchanged between entities $A$, $B$, $C$. Entity $A$ creates the file (e.g. configuration) and sends it to $B$ and $C$. Entities ...
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### Key Derivation from random salted seed, HMAC and HMAC based KDF

I would like to generate a key which would be good enough to be used for encryption with AES in a mobile environment. My idea is to use as a seed ''random attributes'' from a mobile device. Is hashing ...
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### Publicly Verifiable Authenticator

I am working on a Block Storage system, where I have the need to encrypt and authenticate blocks by a client, but also want the server to be able to detect bit corruption while minimizing the work ...
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### Are HMACs based on hashes with larger bit-lengths also more secure?

When doing encrypt-then-mac, I can choose to use a hmac as the MAC. For example, I could use a hash like SHA-256 or SHA-512 (by using it as a keyed hash) to create that HMAC. Does it increase ...
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### Does adding a salt to the message before HMAC processing add any security?

An HMAC function is designed to verify message integrity, i.e., that the message has not been tampered with. It is generally (always?) implemented by using a hashing function ...
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### Is there a standard way to use a nonce with HMAC?

Many protocols use HMAC on messages that include a nonce, but they don't seem to do it in a consistent way. For example, in OAuth the nonce is in the middle of an URL-encoded key-value string, like ...
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### Encrypt-then-MAC: full random keys or keys derived from master key?

I have this scenario where I use Encrypt-then-MAC (AES256-CBC and HMAC-SHA256) with keys generated by a CSPRNG (specifically, SecureRandom in Java). I'd like to know which is better: Use the CSPRNG ...