A new stand-alone MAC construct called SMAC

Dachao Wang; Alexander Maximov; Patrik Ekdahl; Thomas Johansson

Paper 2024/819

A new stand-alone MAC construct called SMAC

Dachao Wang, Lund University

Alexander Maximov

, Ericsson (Sweden)

Patrik Ekdahl, Ericsson (Sweden)

Thomas Johansson

, Lund University

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new efficient stand-alone MAC construct named SMAC, based on processing using the Finite State Machine (FSM) part of the stream cipher family SNOW, which in turn uses the AES round function. It offers a combination of very high speed in software and hardware with a truncatable tag. Three concrete base versions of SMAC are proposed, each offering a different security level. SMAC can also be directly integrated with an external ciphering engine in an AEAD mode. Every design decision is thoroughly justified and supported by the results of our cryptanalysis and simulations. Additionally, we introduce an aggregated mode version, SMAC-1, in which software performance reaches up to 925 Gbps (around 0.038 cycles per byte) for long messages in a single thread. To the best of our knowledge, SMAC achieves a record-breaking software performance compared to all known MAC engines.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Secret-key cryptography
Publication info: Published by the IACR in TOSC 2025
DOI: 10.46586/tosc.v2025.i1.5-43
Keywords: MAC SNOW AES
Contact author(s): dachao wang @ eit lth se
alexander maximov @ ericsson com
patrik ekdahl @ ericsson com
thomas johansson @ eit lth se
History: 2025-03-26: last of 3 revisions; 2024-05-26: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2024/819
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2024/819,
      author = {Dachao Wang and Alexander Maximov and Patrik Ekdahl and Thomas Johansson},
      title = {A new stand-alone {MAC} construct called {SMAC}},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2024/819},
      year = {2024},
      doi = {10.46586/tosc.v2025.i1.5-43},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/819}
}