Network security- Message authentication

Editor's Notes

• #2: Stallings Figure 12.5 illustrates the overall operation of HMAC: HMACK = Hash[(K+ XOR opad) || Hash[(K+ XOR ipad) || M)] where: K+ is K padded with zeros on the left so that the result is b bits in length ipad is a pad value of 36 hex repeated to fill block opad is a pad value of 5C hex repeated to fill block M is the message input to HMAC (including the padding specified in the embedded hash function) Note that the XOR with ipad results in flipping one-half of the bits of K. Similarly, the XOR with opad results in flipping one-half of the bits of K, but a different set of bits. In effect, pseudorandomly generated two keys from K. HMAC should execute in approximately the same time as the embedded hash function for long messages. HMAC adds three executions of the hash compression function (for Si, So, and the block produced from the inner hash). A more efficient implementation is possible by precomputing the internal hash function on (K+ XOR opad) and (K+ XOR ipad) and inserting the results into the hash processing at start & end. With this implementation, only one additional instance of the compression function is added to the processing normally produced by the hash function. This is especially worthwhile if most of the messages for which a MAC is computed are short.
• #3: Stallings Figure 12.8 shows the structure of CMAC. It uses the blocksize of the underlying cipher (ie 128-bits for AES or 64-bits for triple-DES). The message is divided into n blocks M1..Mn, padded if necessary. The algorithm makes use of a k-bit encryption key K and an n-bit constant K1 or K2 (depending on whether the message was padded or not). For AES, the key size k is 128,192, or 256 bits; for triple DES, the key size is 112 or 168 bits. The two constants K1 & K2 are derived from the original key K using encryption of 0 and multiplication in GF(2^n), as detailed in the text.