Keyed-CAHASH : a New Fast Keyed Hash Function based on Cellular Automata for Authentication

Private data transmission over arbitrary canal is considered very risky. Hence, the need for designing robust cryptographic solutions ensuring both data integrity and authentication is very attempting. Therefore, Message Authentication Code (MAC) is one of the most provably secure algorithms that ensure integrity and authentication. Using a shared secret key, the receiver checks if an alteration has happened during transmission. This MAC may be derived from hash functions using a secret key. Since it is also easily implemented, this paper concerns the design of a new keyed hash function based on cellular automata. Our suggested MAC process provides a high efficiency and robustness against MAC forgery and key recovery attacks comparing to well-known HMACs standards. Further, the obtained results show that it satisfies data integrity and authentication requirement.