White-Box Implementation of the KMAC Message Authentication Code

  • Jiqiang Lu*
  • , Zhigang Zhao
  • , Huaqun Guo
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

In 2016, US NIST released the KMAC message authentication code, which is actually a keyed variant of the new-generation hash function standard SHA-3. Following the increasing use of SHA-3, it is highly anticipated that KMAC will also be increasingly widely used in various security applications. Due to the distinctions between sponge hash functions and Merkle-Damgård hash functions, white-box implementations of KMAC and HMAC are rather different. In this paper, we present an efficient white-box implementation of KMAC with strong resistance against both key extraction and code lifting attacks, which can still work with an updated user key. It has a storage complexity of about 107.7 MB, and has a running time of about 1.5 ms on a DELL Precision T5610 workstation, about 375 times slower than the original KMAC implementation without white-box protection. There are implementation variants with different trade-offs between security and performance. This is the first published white-box implementation of KMAC to the best of our knowledge, and our implementation methods can be applied to similar sponge constructions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInformation Security Practice and Experience - 15th International Conference, ISPEC 2019, Proceedings
EditorsSwee-Huay Heng, Javier Lopez
PublisherSpringer
Pages248-270
Number of pages23
ISBN (Print)9783030343385
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event15th International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience, ISPEC 2019 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Duration: 26 Nov 201928 Nov 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11879 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference15th International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience, ISPEC 2019
Country/TerritoryMalaysia
CityKuala Lumpur
Period26/11/1928/11/19

Keywords

  • Hash function
  • KMAC
  • Message authentication code (MAC)
  • SHA-3
  • Sponge construction
  • White-box cryptography

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