SQUASH - A new MAC with provable security properties for highly constrained devices such as RFID tags

Abstract

We describe a new function called SQUASH (which is short for SQUare-hASH), which is ideally suited to challenge-response MAC applications in highly constrained devices such as RFID tags. It is exceptionally simple, requires no source of random bits, and can be efficiently implemented on processors with arbitrary word sizes. Unlike other ad-hoc proposals which have no security analysis, SQUASH is provably at least as secure as Rabin's public key encryption scheme in this application. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.