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Basics of Cryptographic Hash Function

A cryptographic hash function maps variable-length messages to fixed-length hash values, ensuring data integrity and authentication. It can be used in various ways, such as encrypting the entire message with a hash for confidentiality or using a shared secret for authentication without encryption. Digital signatures utilize hash values encrypted with a private key, allowing verification of message integrity by anyone with the corresponding public key.

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25 views4 pages

Basics of Cryptographic Hash Function

A cryptographic hash function maps variable-length messages to fixed-length hash values, ensuring data integrity and authentication. It can be used in various ways, such as encrypting the entire message with a hash for confidentiality or using a shared secret for authentication without encryption. Digital signatures utilize hash values encrypted with a private key, allowing verification of message integrity by anyone with the corresponding public key.

Uploaded by

ariyanashiq90
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Basics of Cryptographic Hash Function

A hash function maps a variable-length message into a fixed-length hash


value, or message digest. A hash function H accepts a variable-length block
of data as input and produces a fixed-size hash value h = H(M). The kind
of hash function needed for security applications is referred to as a
cryptographic hash function.
Cryptographic Hash Function and Message Authentication

Hash functions are often used to determine whether or not data has
changed. Message authentication is a mechanism or service used to verify
the integrity of a message. Message authentication assures that data
received are exactly as sent. When a hash function is used to provide
message authentication, the hash function value is often referred to as a
message digest.

In the case of figure (a): The message plus concatenated hash code is
encrypted using symmetric encryption. Because only A and B share the
secret key, the message must have come from A and has not been altered.
The hash code provides the structure or redundancy required to achieve
authentication. Because encryption is applied to the entire message plus
hash code, confidentiality is also provided.

In the case of figure (b): Only the hash code is encrypted, using
symmetric encryption. This reduces the processing burden for those
applications that do not require confidentiality.
In the case of figure (c): It is possible to use a hash function but no
encryption for message authentication. The technique assumes that the
two communicating parties share a common secret value S. A computes
the hash value over the concatenation of M and S and appends the
resulting hash value to. Because B possesses the knowledge of S, it can
recompute the hash value to verify. Since the secret value itself is not sent,
an opponent cannot modify an intercepted message and cannot generate
a false message.

In the case of figure (d): Confidentiality can be added to the approach of


(c) by encrypting the entire message plus the hash code.
Cryptographic Hash Function and Digital Signature

In the case of the digital signature, the hash value of a message is


encrypted with a user’s private key. Anyone who knows the user’s public
key can verify the integrity of the message that is associated with the
digital signature. In this case, an attacker who wishes to alter the message
would need to know the user’s private key.

In case of (a): The hash code is encrypted, with the sender’s private key.
It also provides a digital signature, because only the sender could have
produced the encrypted hash code. In fact, this is the essence of the digital
signature technique.

In case of (b): If confidentiality as well as a digital signature is desired,


then the message as well as the private-key encrypted hash code can be
encrypted using a symmetric secret key.

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