Economically Optimal Variable Tag Length Message Authentication

Cryptographic authentication protects messages against forgeries. In real life, messages carry information of different value and the gain of the adversary in a successful forgery and the corresponding cost of the system designers, depend on the “meaning” of the message. This is easy o see by comparing the successful forgery of a $1,000 transaction with the forgery of a $1 one. Cryptographic protocols require computation and increase communication cost of the system, and an economically optimal system must optimize these costs such that message protection be commensurate to their values. This is especially important for resource limited devices that rely on battery power. A MAC (Message Authentication Code) provides protection by appending a cryptographic tag to the message. For secure MACs, the tag length is the main determinant of the security level: longer tags provide higher protection and at the same time increase the communication cost of the system. Our goal is to find the economically optimal tag lengths when messages carry information of different values.

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