Re: HalfSipHash Acceptable Usage

[Jason A. Donenfeld]

Hi George,

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 7:34 AM, George Spelvin
<linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In fact, I have an idea.  Allow me to make the following concrete
> suggestion for using HalfSipHash with 128 bits of key material:
>
> - 64 bits are used as the key.
> - The other 64 bits are used as an IV which is prepended to
>   the message to be hashed.
>
> As a matter of practical implementation, we precompute the effect
> of hashing the IV and store the 128-bit HalfSipHash state, which
> is used just like a 128-bit key.
>
> Because of the way it is constructed, it is obviously no weaker than
> standard HalfSipHash's 64-bit security claim.
>
> I don't know the security of this, and it's almost certainly weaker than
> 128 bits, but I *hope* it's at least a few bits stronger than 64 bits.
> 80 would be enough to dissuade any attacker without a six-figure budget
> (that's per attack, not a one-time capital investment).  96 would be
> ample for our purposes.
>
> What I do know is that it makes a brute-force attack without
> significant cryptanalytic effort impossible.

Depends who's doing the cryptanalytic effort I guess.

Please don't roll your own crypto. It's a dangerous road. Putting
homebrew crypto into the kernel would be an error. Let's stick with
the constructions and security margins that the cryptographers give
us. JP made that fairly clear, I thought.

There are already people working on this problem who undergo peer
review and a career devoted to solving these problems. One result for
small systems that need 128-bit security is Chaskey, which you can go
read about if you're curious.

Jason