# Questions tagged [mac]

(or message authentication code), a short piece of information used to authenticate a message, and the algorithm to create and check such information, using a secret key.

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### Designated verifier signature from Diffie–Hellman and a MAC

Here is an idea for a designated verifier signature scheme. Suppose Alice and Bob know each other’s public keys and Alice wants to send a message to Bob, such that only he will be convinced of its ...
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### Proof check: Forgery for a MAC

I'm looking at the MAC defined as follows: $$\text{Mac}_k(m)=\langle r,f_k(r\oplus m)\rangle$$ where $r$ is uniformly chosen at random (each time) and $f_k$ is a PRF. Vrfy is the canonical one. I'm ...
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### Proving a derived MAC is secure via reduction

I don't have a very specific question, but reductions have been a weaker suit of mine and I was wondering if there is a secure MAC scheme, and a derived MAC' that uses MAC but modifies it in some way, ...
54 views

### What does a deterministic MAC actually mean? [closed]

Does a MAC that's deterministic mean it uses a PRF? Thanks for the help!
176 views

### Is KMAC just SHA-3-256(KEY || message)

According to keccak strengths you have: Unlike SHA-1 and SHA-2, Keccak does not have the length-extension weakness, hence does not need the HMAC nested construction. Instead, MAC computation can be ...
257 views

### Is $H(k || m) \oplus k$ secure?

It is known that $H(k || m)$ (when using SHA1) is an insecure MAC function since it is vulnerable to hash length extension. But what about $H(k || m) \oplus k$? A normal hash length extension seems to ...
51 views

### Why are des-cbc-hmac and rc4-hmac-exp considered weak in kerberos?

Kerberos uses des-cbc-hmac (mac and encrypt) and rc4-hmac-exp based on md5 (mac and encrypt I think) in their encryptions. Those encryptions are considered as weak and should not be used. Why are they ...
28 views

### MAC Security - MAC verification queries

In the applied cryptography book by Boneh and Shoup, Chapter 6 on MACs, it is stated that an adversary that is also capable of requesting the challenger for verification queries (in addition to ...
302 views

### Does hashing an ECB encryption with a strong hash function produce a secure MAC?

Does applying a strong hash function like SHA-256 to the ECB-encryption of a message (using some secret key $K$) produce a secure mac? For example, given a message $m$, would a simple mac construction ...
65 views

### What authenticated encryption do kerberos use in windows?

I have learned about the kerberos protocol and seen that the windows version uses a couple of authenticated encryption schemas (like rc4-hmac-md5). What type of authenticated encryption is it? Is it a:...
18 views

### layout scheme to store encrypted files

I'm working on a little hobby project to better understand crypto. https://app.gitbook.com/@noojee/s/dvault/ The aim is to make it easy to encrypt a set of files into a 'vault' and decrypt them at a ...
67 views

### What benefit is gained when combining AES GCM/GMAC with ECDSA?

This is a real world question (and as I'm not an expert in cryptography I have only some basic knowledge in terms of just using it, not a deep understanding how ist works under the hood.): A system ...
58 views

### AWS signature v4 key derivation

Generating Authorization header with AWS signature v4 involves deriving signing key as follows: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signature-v4-examples.html ...
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### How to compose multiple values to MAC authenticate?

If the data I want to authenticate consists of multiple values and I compute a MAC simply concatenating the values, an adversary can "shift" characters within those values without ...
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### Is the following derived MAC where the output is XOR'ed with the key secure?

Hey I'm wondering if the following scheme is secure or not , I tried reductions and some tries to prove that it not must be secure but I feel completely stuck . More details: It's just any reduction ...
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### Algorithm to validate 1 of N inputs is part of output hash

Is there an algorithm that allows proofing that an input x1 was used as 1 out of N inputs to create an output hash y, without ...
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### TLS 1.3 Handshake - Usage of MAC and Digital Signature for CertificateVerify and Finished Message

I was wondering, why the TLS 1.3 handshake employs two different 'messages' that compute an authentication code over the whole handshake. As far as I understand, the CertificateVerify "message&...
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### Is it possible to do partial message authentication?

I want to authenticate part of a message, not all of it, while creating the MAC over the entire message. Let's say I create a 16B MAC over one hundred message blocks that are 64B each. Then I send one ...
62 views

### Why is xor'ing plaintext blocks and encrypting the resulting checksum not a secure MAC using CTR mode? [closed]

Consider message $P$ being split into $n$ blocks that match the block size of the underlying block cipher. The message has fixed length and the length is always a multiple of the block size. ...
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### Is 64-bit SHA-256 IV-based MAC for fixed-length messages reasonably secure?

I want to use truncate8(SHA256-nopad(IV=secret, message)) as a 64-bit MAC, where message is guaranteed to be exactly one hash ...
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In the Length extension attack of Wikipedia The following information summarizes the relevant information provided on the page at the time of posting this question. The provided parameters are secret ...
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### AES GCM : is it acceptable to return the wrong plaintext if the tag is incorrect?

Let's start by saying I'm no cryptography expert, I'm just a developer, so feel free to correct me (using words, not downvotes) if what I'm saying is non-sense. Context: I'm doing some crypto as a ...
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### Is the tag in a MAC scheme a fixed size?

I've been reading up on MAC schemes. But I cannot seem to find out whether the tag's that are output by running MAC(m) is of a fixed size? I can find a lot of stuff talking about the tag space being a ...
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### Constructing a mac scheme secure to regular definition but insecure to special case

The mac-forge security game for mac schemes looks like this: $k \leftarrow \operatorname{Gen}(1^n)$; $(m,t) \leftarrow A^{\operatorname{MAC}_k(⋅)}(1^n)$; Let $Q$ denote the set of all queries that $A$...
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### IND-CCA insecurity of modified CBC encrypt + MAC scheme

I've been puzzling over the following proof for the past couple of days. Since a block cipher in CBC mode can be used to build both an IND-CPA secure encryption scheme and a EUF-CMA secure block, a ...
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### Why does AES_GCM sometimes has a SHA for integrity? [duplicate]

For example the following suite: TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 From what I understand the SHA384 at the end is used to authenticate the message, which is exactly what MAC does, and the mode ...
21 views

### Why doesn't appending a message to a key instead of vice versa defeat length extension attack? [duplicate]

It's well established that H(K||M) is vulnerable to length extension attacks for SHA-2 and other hashing algorithms, and instead an HMAC construction should be used. However - why can't H(M||K) be ...
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### Is nonce-less Encrypt-then-HMAC as secure as poly1305

While reading https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/88732/87450 I noticed that it suggests encrypt-then-HMAC as a defense for partition attacks. However as far as I know unlike poly1305, HMAC does not ...
155 views

### Hash and (MAC) based signatures using zk-SNARK

I was wondering if we could use any general symmetric key MAC, a collision resistant hash $H$ and zk-SNARK (or any general NIZK scheme) to construct a signature scheme. I have a MAC key $k$, which is ...
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### Is Poly1305 enough for cascading ciphers? [duplicate]

ChaCha20 along with Poly1305 provides confidentiality and integrity. Now suppose I cascade AES on top of ChaCha20. Is it safe to assume that the Poly1305 MAC is still secure, even if I cascade ...
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### Authentication tag length and post-quantum security

The recommended hash length for post-quantum security seems to be either 384-bits or 512-bits. 512-bits gives 256-bit collision resistance, and 256-bit security is obviously ideal for post-quantum ...
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### HKDF Bit Security

I've always understood the bit security of hash functions to be related to their output size (eg. collision resistance). However, I recently came across a table from a Wickr blog post that lists HKDF-...
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### Forgery of the Carter-Wegman MAC

Consider the nonce-based Carter-Wegman MAC which works on key space $K=\{0,1\}^n \times \{0,1\}^n,$ message space $M=\{0,1\}^{mn}$, nonce space $N=\{0,1\}^n$ and the tag space $T=\{0,1\}^n$ as follows:...
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### Insecure pseudo random functions

Let $F$ be a pseudo-random function. Show that the following constructions are insecure as message authentication codes (in each case $K \in \{0,1\}^n$ is the private key): $(a)$ To authenticate a ...