2,009 research outputs found
Key recycling in authentication
In their seminal work on authentication, Wegman and Carter propose that to
authenticate multiple messages, it is sufficient to reuse the same hash
function as long as each tag is encrypted with a one-time pad. They argue that
because the one-time pad is perfectly hiding, the hash function used remains
completely unknown to the adversary.
Since their proof is not composable, we revisit it using a composable
security framework. It turns out that the above argument is insufficient: if
the adversary learns whether a corrupted message was accepted or rejected,
information about the hash function is leaked, and after a bounded finite
amount of rounds it is completely known. We show however that this leak is very
small: Wegman and Carter's protocol is still -secure, if
-almost strongly universal hash functions are used. This implies
that the secret key corresponding to the choice of hash function can be reused
in the next round of authentication without any additional error than this
.
We also show that if the players have a mild form of synchronization, namely
that the receiver knows when a message should be received, the key can be
recycled for any arbitrary task, not only new rounds of authentication.Comment: 17+3 pages. 11 figures. v3: Rewritten with AC instead of UC. Extended
the main result to both synchronous and asynchronous networks. Matches
published version up to layout and updated references. v2: updated
introduction and reference
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