Square Hash: Fast Message Authentication Via Optimized Universal Hash Functions?

This paper introduces two new ideas in the construction of fast universal hash functions geared towards the task of message authen-tication. First, we describe a simple but novel family of universal hash functions that is more eecient than many standard constructions. We compare our hash functions to the MMH family studied by Halevi and Krawczyk 13]. All the main techniques used to optimize MMH work on our hash functions as well. Second, we introduce additional techniques for speeding up our constructions; these techniques apply to MMH and may apply to other hash functions. The techniques involve ignoring certain parts of the computation, while still retaining the necessary statistical properties for secure message authentication. Finally, we give implementation results on an ARM processor. Our constructions are general and can be used in any setting where universal hash functions are needed; therefore they may be of independent interest.