6.4 Choosing a Message Authentication Code

6.4.1 Problem

You need to use a MAC (which yields a tag that can only be computed correctly on a piece of data by an entity with a particular secret key), and you want to understand the important concerns so you can determine which algorithm best suits your needs.

6.4.2 Solution

In most cases, instead of using a standalone MAC, we recommend that you use a dual-use mode that provides both authentication and encryption all at once (such as CWC mode, discussed in Recipe 5.10). Dual-use modes can also be used for authentication when encryption is not required.

If a dual-use mode does not suit your needs, the best solution depends on your particular requirements. In general, HMAC is a popular and well-supported alternative based on hash functions (it's good for compatibility), and OMAC is a good solution based on a block cipher (which we see as a strong advantage). If you care about maximizing efficiency, a hash127-based MAC is a reasonable solution (though it has some limitations, so CMAC may be better in such cases; see Recipe 6.13 and Recipe 6.14).

We recommend against using RMAC and UMAC, for reasons discussed in the following section.

6.4.3 Discussion

Do not use the same key for encryption that you use in a MAC. See Recipe 4.11 for how to overcome this restriction.

As with hash functions, there are a large number of available algorithms for performing message authentication, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. Besides algorithms designed explicitly for message authentication, some encryption modes such as CWC provide message authentication as a side effect. (See Recipe 5.4 for an overview of several such modes, and Recipe 6.10 for a discussion of CWC.) Such dual-use modes are designed for general-purpose needs, and they are high-level enough that it is far more difficult to use these modes in an insecure manner than regular cryptography.

Table 6-2 lists interesting message authentication functions, all with provable security properties assuming the security of the underlying primitive upon which they were based. This table also compares important properties of those functions. When comparing speeds, we used an x86-based machine and unoptimized implementations for testing. Results will vary depending on platform and other operating conditions. Speeds are measured in cycles per byte; lower numbers are better.

Table 6-2. MACs and their properties

MAC	Built upon	Small message speed (64 bytes)[4]	Large message speed (8K)	Appropriate for hardware	Patent restric-tions	Parallel-izable
CMAC	A universal hash and AES	~18 cpb	~18 cpb	Yes	No	Yes
HMAC-SHA1	Message digest function	90 cpb	20 cpb	Yes	No	No
MAC127	hash127 + AES	~6 cpb	~6 cpb	Yes	No	Yes
OMAC1	AES	29.5 cpb	37 cpb	Yes	No	No
OMAC2	AES	29.5 cpb	37 cpb	Yes	No	No
PMAC-AES	Block cipher	72 cpb	70 cpb	Yes	Yes	Yes
RMAC	Block cipher	89 cpb	80 cpb	Yes	No	No
UMAC32	UHASH and AES	19 cpb	cpb	No	No	Yes
XMACC-SHA1	Any cipher or MD function	162 cpb	29 cpb	Yes	Yes	Yes

^[4] All timing values are best cases based on our empirical testing, and assume that the data being processed is already in cache. Do not expect that you'll quite be able to match these speeds in practice.

Note that our considerations for comparing MACs are different from our considerations for comparing cryptographic hash functions. First, all of the MACs we discuss provide a reasonable amount of assurance, assuming that the underlying construct is secure (though MACs without nonces do not resist the birthday attack without additional work; see Recipe 6.12). Second, all of the cryptographic hash functions we discussed are suitable for hardware, patent-free, and not parallelizable.

Let's look briefly at the pros and cons of using these functions.

CMAC

CMAC is the MAC portion of the CWC encryption mode, which can be used in a standalone fashion. It's built upon a universal hash function that can be made to run very fast, especially in hardware. CMAC is discussed in Recipe 6.14.

HMAC

HMAC, discussed in Recipe 6.10, is a widely used MAC, largely because it was one of the first MAC constructs with provable security—even though the other MACs on this list also have provable security (and the proofs for those other MACs tend to be based on somewhat more favorable assumptions). HMAC is fairly fast, largely because it performs only two cryptographic operations, both hashes. One of the hashes is constant time; and the other takes time proportional to the length of the input, but it doesn't have the large overhead block ciphers typically do as a result of hash functions having a very large block size internally (usually 64 bytes).

HMAC is designed to take a one-way hash function with an arbitrary input and a key to produce a fixed-sized digest. Therefore, it cannot use block ciphers, unless you use a construction to turn a block cipher into a strong hash function, which will significantly slow down HMAC. If you want to use a block cipher to MAC (which we recommend), we strongly recommend that you use another alternative. Note that HMAC does not use a nonce by default, making HMAC vulnerable to capture replay attacks (and theoretically vulnerable to a birthday attack). Additional effort can thwart such attacks, as shown in Recipe 6.12.

MAC127

MAC127 is a MAC we define in Recipe 6.14 that is based on Dan Bernstein's hash127. This MAC is very similar to CMAC, but it runs faster in software. It's the fastest MAC in software that we would actually recommend using.

OMAC1, OMAC2

OMAC1 and OMAC2, which we discuss in Recipe 6.11, are MACs built upon AES. They are almost identical to each other, working by running the block cipher in CBC mode and performing a bit of additional magic at the end. These are "fixed" versions of a well-known MAC called CBC-MAC. CBC-MAC, without the kinds of modifications OMAC1 and OMAC2 make, was insecure unless all messages MAC'd with it were exactly the same size. The OMAC algorithms are a nice, general-purpose pair of MACs for when you want to keep your system simple, with only one cryptographic primitive. What's more, if you use an OMAC with AES in CTR mode, you need only have an implementation of the AES encryption operation (which is quite different code from the decryption operation). There is little practical difference between OMAC1 and OMAC2, although they both give different outputs. OMAC1 is slightly preferable, as it has a very slight speed advantage. Neither OMAC1 nor OMAC2 takes a nonce. As of this writing, NIST is expected to standardize OMAC1.

PMAC

PMAC is also parallelizable, but it is protected by patent. We won't discuss this MAC further because there are reasonable free alternatives.

RMAC

RMAC is another MAC built upon a block cipher. It works by running the block cipher in CBC mode and performing a bit of additional magic at the end. This is a mode created by NIST, but cryptographers have found theoretical problems with it under certain conditions;^[5] thus, we do not recommend it for any use.

^[5] In particular, RMAC makes more assumptions about the underlying block cipher than other MACs need to make. The extra assumptions are a bit unreasonable, because they require the block cipher to resist related-key attacks, which are not well studied.

UMAC32

On many platforms, UMAC is the reigning speed champion for MACs implemented in software. The version of UMAC timed for Table 6-2 uses 64-bit tags, which are sufficient for most applications, if a bit liberal. That size is sufficient because tags generally need to have security for only a fraction of a second, assuming some resistance to capture replay attacks. 64 bits of strength should easily last years. The 128-bit version generally does a bit better than half the speed of the 64-bit version. Nevertheless, although there are a few things out there using UMAC, we don't recommend it. The algorithm is complex enough that, as of this writing, the reference implementation of UMAC apparently has never been validated. In addition, interoperability with UMAC is exceptionally difficult because there are many different parameters that can be tweaked.

XMACC

XMACC can be built from a large variety of cryptographic primitives. It provides good performance characteristics, and it is fully parallelizable. Unfortunately, it is patented, and for this reason we won't discuss it further in this book.

All in all, we personally prefer MAC127 or CMAC. When you want to avoid using a nonce, OMAC1 is an excellent choice.

6.4.4 See Also

Recipe 4.11, Recipe 5.4, Recipe 5.10, Recipe 6.9 through Recipe 6.14