EliMAC: Speeding Up LightMAC by around 20

Universal hash functions play a prominent role in the design of message authentication codes and the like. Whereas it is known how to build highly efficient sequential universal hash functions, parallel non-algebraic universal hash function designs are always built on top of a PRP. In such case, one...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology Vol. 2023; no. 2; pp. 69 - 93
Main Authors Dobraunig, Christoph, Mennink, Bart, Neves, Samuel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ruhr-Universität Bochum 16.06.2023
Subjects
EliHash
EliMAC
length independence
MAC
universal hashing
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Summary:Universal hash functions play a prominent role in the design of message authentication codes and the like. Whereas it is known how to build highly efficient sequential universal hash functions, parallel non-algebraic universal hash function designs are always built on top of a PRP. In such case, one employs a relatively strong primitive to obtain a function with a relatively weak security model. In this work, we present EliHash, a construction of a parallel universal hash function from non-compressing universal hash functions, and we back it up with supporting security analysis. We use this construction to design EliMAC, a message authentication code similar to LightMAC. We consider a heuristic instantiation of EliMAC with roundreduced AES, and argue that this instantiation of EliMAC is much more efficient than LightMAC, it is around 21% faster, and additionally allows for precomputation of the keys, albeit with a stronger assumption on the AES primitive than in LightMAC. These observations are backed up with an implementation of our scheme.
ISSN:2519-173X
2519-173X
DOI:10.46586/tosc.v2023.i2.69-93