# HMAC usage in hybrid encryption scheme [duplicate]

Consider the following hybrid encryption scheme (B3||4 is for concatenated IV and AES-CBC encrypted message):

-------------------------------------------------------------------
|     Encrypted with RSA     | HMAC  |    |                       |
|     HMAC_KEY || AES_KEY    |  of   | IV | AES-CBC Encrypted MSG |
|   (using PK of recipient)  | B3||4 |    |                       |
-------------------------------------------------------------------


Let's say some message was encrypted with AES-128-CBC with a randomly generated secret key and IV. Then the HMAC was calculated for blocks 3-4 concatenated together. And then the HMAC key and AES encryption key was encrypted with RSA using a public key of a recipient (B).

My question is do I need to include HMAC or even any other digest in such a packet that would be transmitted over reliable connection (let's say TCP) from sender (A) to receiver (B)?

Is the following simplified scheme is worse in terms of security?

-----------------------------------------------------------
|     Encrypted with RSA     |    |                       |
|           AES_KEY          | IV | AES-CBC Encrypted MSG |
|   (using PK of recipient)  |    |                       |
-----------------------------------------------------------


My thoughts:

• As message will be 100% delivered to a receiver there is not way it can be damaged during the transmission
• With MITM attack there is no way to alter the encrypted message in a meaningful way so it would be still decryptable with the key from a block 1.
• There is no better way to manipulate transmitted data then to substitute the whole packet to other one which would hold other message and AES encryption key.
• In order to prevent altering in the way described above it's enough to sign the AES key in the block 1 with secret key of a sender (and add the signature to the first block). In such a way the receiver can verify that the key was indeed send by the original sender.
• If with the above tweak MITM would alter 3rd or 2nd block of a packet the decryption would not be possible at all - so there is no way to spoof the message leaving the signed key in the first block as is.

The only thing I can think about is some way to alter the block 3 so it would be still decryptable. Is it possible to accomplish for an attacker?

• – user991 Apr 10 '17 at 12:22
• @RickyDemer thanks for the reference! It rather a good argument to use HMAC. – ddnomad Apr 10 '17 at 12:27