I am reading through an information security book right now, and a confusing question poses itself to me:
"Could you use a MAC as a HMAC? That is, does a MAC satisfy the same properties that a HMAC satisfies?"
The book then goes on to give a hint about how MACs are computed by CBC mode of a given symmetric block cipher that involves K the key, and to consider when K is known to an attacker for both HMAC and MAC.
Here's the confusing part: Isn't a MAC just a code created from a MAC algorithm, while a HMAC is a type of MAC algorithm? I do not see how any of these hints could be applicable to the question when a MAC and a HMAC are so clearly similar (to a novice).
Am I right in this thinking?