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CRYPTO 2021: Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2021 pp 585–615Cite as

On Tight Quantum Security of HMAC and NMAC in the Quantum Random Oracle Model

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNSC,volume 12825)

Abstract

HMAC and NMAC are the most basic and important constructions to convert Merkle-Damgård hash functions into message authentication codes (MACs) or pseudorandom functions (PRFs). In the quantum setting, at CRYPTO 2017, Song and Yun showed that HMAC and NMAC are quantum pseudorandom functions (qPRFs) under the standard assumption that the underlying compression function is a qPRF. Their proof guarantees security up to \(O(2^{n/5})\) or \(O(2^{n/8})\) quantum queries when the output length of HMAC and NMAC is n bits. However, there is a gap between the provable security bound and a simple distinguishing attack that uses \(O(2^{n/3})\) quantum queries. This paper settles the problem of closing the gap. We show that the tight bound of the number of quantum queries to distinguish HMAC or NMAC from a random function is \(\Theta (2^{n/3})\) in the quantum random oracle model, where compression functions are modeled as quantum random oracles. To give the tight quantum bound, based on an alternative formalization of Zhandry’s compressed oracle technique, we introduce a new proof technique focusing on the symmetry of quantum query records.

Keywords

  • Symmetric-key cryptography
  • Post-quantum cryptography
  • Provable security
  • Quantum security
  • Compressed oracle technique
  • HMAC
  • NMAC

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Please do not confuse the notions of standard/quantum security with the standard model or the quantum random oracle model. The two notions are independent of the models, and it is possible that a scheme has quantum security in the standard model or standard security in the quantum random oracle model.

  2. 2.

    n is the length of chaining values, and m is the length of message blocks.

  3. 3.

    Note that there is no IV involved in NMAC and the key-length is always \(n+n=2n\).

  4. 4.

    Actually, the previous work [32] did not give concrete security bound, but we can reasonably deduce that the security is guaranteed up to \(O(2^{n/8})\) quantum queries. We have the bound \(O(2^{n/5})\) instead of \(O(2^{n/8})\) if we assume a conjecture. See Section A of this paper’s full version [20] for details. .

  5. 5.

    In [34] Zhandry showed that \(F^h_1\) is indifferentiable from a QRO when h and g are QROs. His result implies qPRF security of \(F^h_1\) up to \(O(2^{n/4})\) quantum queries, while Proposition 1 guarantees security up to \(O(2^{n/3})\) queries. .

  6. 6.

    We consider \(F_2\) instead of \(\mathsf{RF}\) so that there exists a useful correspondence between “good” databases for \(F^h_1\) and those for \(F_2\), which we will elaborate later.

  7. 7.

    We use the symbols u and \(\zeta \) to denote n-bit strings and v to denote an m-bit string.

  8. 8.

    In Zhandry’s paper that introduced the compressed oracle technique, quantum indifferentiability of the fixed-input-length Merkle-Damgåd construction is proved [34]. Note that the variable-input-length Merkle-Damgåd construction that is used in HMAC and NMAC is not indifferentiable in the random oracle model even in the classical setting [13]. In addition, the security bound of the indifferentiability is proved up to \(O(2^{n/4})\) (but not \(O(2^{n/3})\)) quantum queries in [34]. Thus, we start from the proof technique used in [18, 19] instead of [34].

  9. 9.

    Some technical errors are contained in the Asiacrypt version of the previous work [18], which are corrected in the revised version [19]. Our technical overview in this section and formal proofs in later sections are based on the revised version. For completeness, we do not rely on any propositions in [18, 19] that is related to the technical errors in [18]. The propositions from [18, 19] that we use in this paper are the ones of which correctness can be confirmed just by straightforward algebraic calculation (Proposition 2 and Proposition 3).

  10. 10.

    This may seem somewhat strange, but some differences between quantum oracles and classical oracles are explained by using this strange property.

  11. 11.

    This holds due to the following reasoning. For simplicity, assume that nothing has been directly queried to h before, and \(D_f\) has \((i-1)\) entries \((u_1,\alpha _1),\dots ,(u_{i-1},\alpha _{i-1})\) (other cases can be shown similarly). Then \(|\mathsf {Equiv}(D_f,D_h)|\) is equal to the number of choices of the tuple \((\alpha _1,\dots ,\alpha _{i-1})\) such that \(\alpha _j \ne \alpha _k\) for \(j \ne k\). Hence \(|\mathsf {Equiv}(D_f,D_h)| = \left( {\begin{array}{c}2^n\\ i-1\end{array}}\right) \). In addition, the number of \((D'_f,D'_h) \in {\mathsf {Equiv}}(D_f,D_h)\) such that \(\alpha _j = \tilde{\zeta }\) for some j is \((i-1)\cdot \left( {\begin{array}{c}2^n\\ i-2\end{array}}\right) \). Thus the ratio is \((i-1)\cdot \left( {\begin{array}{c}2^n\\ i-2\end{array}}\right) / \left( {\begin{array}{c}2^n\\ i-1\end{array}}\right) = \frac{(i-1)}{(2^n-i+2)} \le O(i/2^n)\).

  12. 12.

    Here, the bit “0” concatenated with each f(i) is redundant, but it is necessary so that the notation for \(\mathsf{stO}\) is compatible with that for the recording standard oracle with errors introduced later.

  13. 13.

    The proposition is a formal restatement of Proposition 1 in Sect. 1.2 for the case \(u\in \{0,1\}^{n+m'}\).

  14. 14.

    To be precise, we have to use the symbol \((v,\zeta )\) instead of (u, v) when \(j=2i\) since we always use the symbol \(v||\zeta \) to denote an input to h. However, here we use (u, v) to simplify notations. In the proof we use the symbol \(a^{(2i)}_{v{\zeta }yzD_fD_gD_h}\) instead of \(a^{(2i)}_{uvyzD_fD_gD_h}\).

  15. 15.

    Pre-good databases are defined in the complete proof of Proposition 5 presented in Section C of this paper’s full version [20].

  16. 16.

    To be more precise, we sometimes include small “good” terms into the new bad vector so that the analysis will be easier.

  17. 17.

    Actually the proof for offline queries are even simpler because the offline oracle is just a single random oracle h while the online oracles consist of two random functions.

  18. 18.

    These conditions are satisfied for usual concrete hash functions such as SHA-2. Recall that \((\{0,1\}^m)^+\) is the set of bit strings of length positive multiple of m bits.

  19. 19.

    \({\mathcal O}^h\) will be \(\mathsf {HMAC}^h_K\), \(\mathsf {NMAC}^h_{K_1,K_2}\), or a random function.

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Acknowledgements

The second author was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K11675.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NTT Secure Platform Laboratories, Tokyo, Japan

    Akinori Hosoyamada

  2. Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Akinori Hosoyamada & Tetsu Iwata

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  1. Akinori Hosoyamada
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Correspondence to Akinori Hosoyamada .

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  1. Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA

    Tal Malkin

  2. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Chris Peikert

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Hosoyamada, A., Iwata, T. (2021). On Tight Quantum Security of HMAC and NMAC in the Quantum Random Oracle Model. In: Malkin, T., Peikert, C. (eds) Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2021. CRYPTO 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12825. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84242-0_21

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