Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2008/216

A New Multi-Linear Universal Hash Family

Palash Sarkar

Abstract: A new universal hash family is described. Messages are sequences over a finite field $\rF_q$ while keys are sequences over an extension field $\rF_{q^n}$. A linear map $\psi$ from $\rF_{q^n}$ to itself is used to compute the output digest. Of special interest is the case $q=2$. For this case, we show that there is an efficient way to implement $\psi$ using a tower field representation of $\rF_{q^n}$. From a practical point of view, the focus of our constructions is small hardware and other resource constrained applications. For such platforms, our constructions compare favourably to previous work.

Category / Keywords: universal hash function, tower field, message authentication code, resource constrained devices

Publication Info: Submitted to DCC on 30 August, 2010

Date: received 14 May 2008, last revised 14 Dec 2010

Contact author: palash at isical ac in

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: Handling variable length messages has been simplified and a standard encoding technique works.

Version: 20101215:051543 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2008/216

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