Γ-MAC[H, P] - A new universal MAC scheme

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new class of universal hash function families called almost regular universal (ε-ARU). Informally, an ε-ARU hash function family is almost universal, and additionally provides almost regularity. Furthermore, we present Γ-MAC[H, P], a new MAC scheme based on a ε-ARU hash function family. It is the first stateless MAC scheme based on universal hash functions, which requires only one n-bit key. Γ-MAC[H, P] is provable secure and an alternative to the Wegman-Carter-Shoup (WCS) based MAC scheme, where the security breaks apart in the nonce-reuse scenario [11, 28]. In addition, we show that Γ-MAC[H, P] can be implemented very efficiently in software. For messages longer than one kilobyte, our Γ-MAC[H,P] implementation is even faster than the optimized AES-128 implementations from Schwabe and Bernstein from the eBash project. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.