Study of chaos functions for their suitability in generating Message Authentication Codes

Abstract

Chaos functions are mainly used to develop mathematical models of non-linear systems. They have attracted the attention of many mathematicians owing to their extremely sensitive nature to initial conditions and their immense applicability to problems in daily life. In this paper, two widely used chaos functions the Logistic equation and the Lorenz equation are taken and analyzed. We found that these equations exhibit characteristics, which satisfy the expected properties of Message Authentication Code (MAC). We also provide a novel approach of generating MAC with higher security but with smaller key size. This is achieved by the design of the algorithm using variable Initialization Vectors (IV) instead of the constant IVs. Variable IV adds strength to the security of the message. The experimental results show that it satisfies the expected characteristics of a Message Authentication Code generation algorithm.