After our long journey learning about and attacking common block ciphers it’s time for a new segment, this time we will dive into what is a Message Authentication Code (MAC) and common implementations. Maybe we will even dive into some common implementation mistakes, why not?!
This series will be divided into the following posts:
- Message Authentication Code (MAC)
- Encrypted CBC-MAC (ECBC)
- NMAC
- PMAC
- HMAC
- Poly1305-AES
So what is a Message Authentication Code (MAC)?
It is a way to provide message integrity without confidentiality, meaning an attacker can see a message but cannot modify it.
It’s split into two functions:
- A function that signs a message
S(key, message) -> tag
- A function that verifies a message
V(key, message, tag) -> boolean
The verification function will compute a new tag and compare it with the provided one, if they are the same it will return true, otherwise false.
Notice the key argument being passed to both functions. In order to enforce integrity both parties are required to have a shared secret key. It’s worth repeating, without a shared secret key a MAC cannot guarantee the integrity of a message.
More formally, a MAC system is considered secure if an attacker who is given the tag on arbitrary messages of his choice cannot construct a tag for some new message.
Examples
Far from being an exhaustive list, the two examples below are just there to demonstrate that technologies that are used on a daily basis also employ MACs to guarantee integrity.
Webhooks
Webhooks are usually sent with an associated MAC in order to verify authenticity and consistency of a message, as in, we know where it is coming from and that it haven’t been tampered with.
JSON Web Token (JWT)
JWTs can be signed with HMAC, which is a type of MAC in order to verify its integrity. These JWTs are usually called signed tokens and are not secret. HMAC is not the only algorithm used by JWT that can provide integrity though, RSA or ECDSA are algorithms that can provide secrecy and integrity.
Types of MAC
MACs are usually constructed in one of the following ways:
- Through block cipher algorithms
- CBC-MAC (ECBC), CMAC, PMAC, …
- Through cryptographic hash functions
- HMAC being the most well known
- Universal hashing
- UMAC-VMAC, Poly1305-AES, …
That’s all we are covering for now. Throughout future posts we will investigate some of these algorithms and explore common flaws in implementation that could be exploited by attackers.