# Tag Info

6

Using a MAC on the plaintext may potentially leak information about the plaintext (MAC algorithms do not necessarily ensure confidentiality of the data they are applied to, although some MAC algorithms like HMAC seem pretty safe). If you want to avoid this (theoretical) problem, then you should encrypt the MAC on the plaintext (i.e. MAC-then-encrypt, not ...

4

From the sound of your questions, it almost appears that you have some confusion between the CBC-MAC key and the CBC-MAC tag. The CBC-MAC algorithm takes the message (in this case, most likely the ciphertext) and a secret key; it outputs a tag (which can be public). The security property of CBC-MAC is that someone who does not know the key cannot generate ...

3

In general signature creation contains the hashing part within the algorithm. A signature algorithm may also contain a padding mechanism such as PKCS#1 v1.5 or PSS for RSA. Finally it contains a one-way trap door function (modular exponentiation within RSA). Encryption has other requirements, and uses a different padding mechanism. Basically you are ...

2

encrypt it with the message author's private key This statement makes me uncomfortable. Normally, in asymmetric cryptography, one encrypts with the public key and signs with the private key. Did you mean “sign it with the message author's private key”? Otherwise, I would not accept your protocol without a clear, detailed explanation of what encryption ...

2

A symmetrically encrypted hash is not a secure MAC. You should use either an authenticated encryption scheme or a secure MAC in encrypt-then-MAC. With asymmetric encryption, it may be secure – "encrypting" with the author's private key means you are actually signing the message which is fine. However, you need to use the actual asymmetric primitive, not ...

2

Small addition: You do not lose integrity when using encrypt-then-MAC. Since encryption is an injection, distinct plaintexts produce distinct ciphertexts, so plaintext forgery implies ciphertext forgery, which is hard if encrypt-then-MAC is secure.

1

As additional detail, while the two keys need to be distinct and secret, you can derive the CBC-MAC key and the CBC encryption key from the same master key. Generate a random master key, then use any key derivation algorithm with two different salts to derive the authentication and encryption keys. For example, $K(m, \text{'auth'})$ and $K(m, \text{'enc'})$ ...

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