Authenticated Encryption: Relations among Notions and Analysis of the Generic Composition Paradigm

An authenticated encryption scheme is a symmetric encryption scheme whose goal is to provide both privacy and integrity. We consider two possible notions of authenticity for such schemes, namely integrity of plaintexts and integrity of ciphertexts, and relate them, when coupled with IND-CPA (indistinguishability under chosen-plaintext attack), to the standard notions of privacy IND-CCA and NM-CPA (indistinguishability under chosen-ciphertext attack and nonmalleability under chosen-plaintext attack) by presenting implications and separations between all notions considered. We then analyze the security of authenticated encryption schemes designed by “generic composition,” meaning making black-box use of a given symmetric encryption scheme and a given MAC. Three composition methods are considered, namely Encrypt-and-MAC, MAC-then-encrypt, and Encrypt-then-MAC. For each of these and for each notion of security, we indicate whether or not the resulting scheme meets the notion in question assuming that the given symmetric encryption scheme is secure against chosen-plaintext attack and the given MAC is unforgeable under chosen-message attack. We provide proofs for the cases where the answer is “yes” and counter-examples for the cases where the answer is “no.”