Cryptographic Hash Functions
and Digital Signatures. (8hr)
4.1 Message Authentication, Message
Authentication Functions, Message
Authentication Codes
• Message authentication is a mechanism or service used to
verify the integrity of a message. Message authentication
assures that data received are exactly as sent by (i.e., contain
no modification, insertion, deletion, or replay) and that the
purported identity of the sender is valid.
• Symmetric encryption provides authentication among those who
share the secret key.
• A message authentication code (MAC) is an algorithm that
requires the use of a secret key. A MAC takes a variable-length
message and a secret key as input and produces an
authentication code. A recipient in posses sion of the secret key
can generate an authentication code to verify the integrity of the
message.
• One means of forming a MAC is to combine a cryptographic
hash function in some fashion with a secret key.
• Another approach to constructing a MAC is to use a symmetric
block cipher in such a way that it produces a fixed-length output
for a variable length input.
Message Authentication Functions
• Message authentication mechanism has two levels of
functionality.
✔ Low level : A function that produces an authenticator (A value to be
used to authenticate a message).
✔ High level : Low level function is used as a primitive in higher level
authentication that enables a receiver to verify the authenticity of a
message.
• The types of functions that may be used to pro duce an
authenticator may be grouped into three classes as :
1. Hash function: A function that maps a message of any length into a
fixed length hash value, which serves as the authenticator.(after this
section)
2. Message encryption: The ciphertext of the entire message serves as
its authenticator .
3. Message authentication code (MAC): A function of the message and
a secret key that produces a fixed-length value that serves as the
authenticator
• Message Encryption : Message encryption by itself can provide
a measure of authentication. The analysis differs for symmetric
and public-key encryption schemes.
• SYMMETRIC ENCRYPTION: Consider the straightforward use of
symmetric encryption (Figure 1a). A message K M encrypted using a
secret key transmitted from source A to destination B is shared by A
and B. If no other party knows the key, then confidentiality is provided:
No other party can recover the plaintext of the message.
• PUBLIC-KEY ENCRYPTION: The straightforward use of
public-key encryption (Figure b) provides confidentiality but not
authentication. The source (A) uses the public key Pub of the
destination (B) to encrypt M. Because only B has the
corresponding private key Prb and only B can decrypt the
message.
• This scheme provides no authentication, because any opponent
could also use B’s public key to encrypt a message and claim to
be A. To provide authentication, A uses its private key to
encrypt the message, and B uses A’s public key to decrypt
(Figure c).This provides authentication using the same type of
reasoning as in the symmetric encryption
• To provide both confidentiality and authentication, A can encrypt
M first using its private key, which provides the digital signature,
and then using B’s public key, which provides confidentiality
(Figure d). The disadvantage of this approach is that the
public-key algorithm, which is complex, must be exercised four
times rather than two in each communication.
Message Authentication Code
• An alternative authentication technique involves the use of a
secret key to generate a small fixed-size block of data, known
as a cryptographic checksum or MAC, that is appended to the
message.
• This technique assumes that two communicating parties, say A
and B, share a common secret key .When A has a message to
send to B, it calculates the MAC as a function of the message
and the key:
MAC = C(K,M)
Where,
M = input message
C = MAC function
K = shared secret key
MAC = message authentication code
• The message plus MAC are transmitted to the intended
recipient.
• The recipient per forms the same calculation on the received
message, using the same secret key, to generate a new MAC.
• The received MAC is compared to the calculated MAC (Figure
a).
Contd..
