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Class 4

Cryptographic hash functions provide integrity checks against malicious modifications by making it computationally infeasible to find collisions or preimages. They are constructed using compression functions in the Merkle-Damgard construction. While CRCs and checksums can detect random errors, they are not secure against intentional modifications. Message authentication codes (MACs) provide integrity of message transmission and are built from hash functions like HMAC.

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17 views11 pages

Class 4

Cryptographic hash functions provide integrity checks against malicious modifications by making it computationally infeasible to find collisions or preimages. They are constructed using compression functions in the Merkle-Damgard construction. While CRCs and checksums can detect random errors, they are not secure against intentional modifications. Message authentication codes (MACs) provide integrity of message transmission and are built from hash functions like HMAC.

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Mubeen Naeem
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Cryptographic Hash Functions

Beyond CRCs
Hash functions
• A hash function is a mathematical, efficiently
computable function that has fixed size
output:
– F : {0, 1}N  {0,1}n , where N > n
– F: {0, 1}*  {0,1}n
• In cryptography, the first type of hash function
is often called a compression function, with
the name hash function reserved for the
unbounded domain type.
Checksums and CRCs
• Used to provide integrity checks against random
faults.
• Not sufficient for protection against malicious or
intentional modification.
– Easy to make changes and re-compute the CRC to match.
• In the past, it was believed that the use of CRCs
within encryption was sufficient to provide integrity.
However, that is no longer considered adequate:
– Example: The use of CRCs in the WEP protocol resulted in
a serious vulnerability, allowing for powerful active attacks.
Cryptographic hash functions
• There security of hash functions is defined
empirically, if the following problems are
found to be computationally infeasible:
– One way:
• Given y, find x such that h(x) = y
– Second pre-image resistant:
• Given x, find y x such that h(x) = h(y)
– Collision-resistant:
• Find y, x, with y x such that h(x) = h(y)
Constructing hash functions
• Since constructing secure hash functions is a
difficult problem, the following approach has
been taken in practice:
– Construct a good compression function. Since the
domain of compression functions are “small” they
are easier to test for the desired properties.
• Use the MD construction (next) to turn a one-
way, collision-resistant compression function
into a hash function with similar properties.
Merkle-Damgard (MD)
Applications of Hash
Functions
• System integrity protection:
• For password verification, eliminating
the need to keep passwords
• As building blocks for message
authentication codes (MACs) and
digital signature algorithms.
Message-extension attacks
• Since most hash functions are built
using the Merkle-Damgard construction,
they are vulnerable to length-extension
attacks:
– Given h(M) and length of M = len(M) and
adversary can find h(M || M’) for chosen M’.
– To prevent this, MAC should be used
instead of hashes to provide integrity of
message transmission.
Message Authentication
Codes
• Message authentication codes, like
block ciphers, are symmetrically-keyed
cryptographic primitives.
• Like cryptographic hash functions,
MACs take arbitrary-length input and
produce a fixed length output.
• Not invertible.
• Require a key.
Using MACs

Sender Receiver
M, T
MAC MAC
M M

T T’
Building MACs from hash
functions
• HMAC is a MAC from hash functions.
• Let h be the hash function. Assume
• L = block length of compression function input
• Let K be the key, K’ be the key padded with
0’s to length L.
• HMAC(K, M) = h(K’opad || h(K’ipad||M) )
• ipad = 0x363636...3636
• opad = 0x5c5c5c...5c5c (both of length L)

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