It was designed in 1983 byDonald Davies and David Clayden at theNational Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) in response to a request of the UK Bankers Automated Clearing Services. The MAA was one of the first Message Authentication Code algorithms to gain widespread acceptance.
The original specification[1][2] of the MAA was given in a combination of natural language and tables, complemented by two implementations inC andBASIC programming languages.
The MAA was adopted byISO in 1987 and became part of international standards ISO 8730[3][4] and ISO 8731-2[5] intended to secure the authenticity and integrity of banking transactions.
Later, cryptanalysis of MAA revealed various weaknesses, including feasible brute-force attacks, existence of collision clusters, and key-recovery techniques.[6][7][8][9] For this reason, MAA was withdrawn from ISO standards in 2002 but continued to be used as a prominent case study for assessing variousformal methods.[10]
The MAA has been used as a prominent case study for assessing variousformal methods.
In the early 1990s, theNPL developed three formal specifications of the MAA: one inZ,[11] one inLOTOS,[12] and one inVDM.[13][14] The VDM specification became part of the 1992 revision of the International Standard 8731-2, and three implementations were manually derived from that latter specification:C,Miranda, andModula-2.[15]
Other formal models of the MAA have been developed. In 2017, a complete formal specification of the MAA as a largeterm rewriting system was published;[16] From this specification,implementations of the MAA in fifteen different languages have been generated automatically. In 2018, two new formal specifications of the MAA, inLOTOS and LNT, have been published.[17]
^Davies, Donald W. (1985). "A Message Authenticator Algorithm Suitable for a Mainframe Computer".Advances in Cryptology – Proceedings of the Workshop on the Theory and Application of Cryptographic Techniques (CRYPTO’84), Santa Barbara, CA, USA. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 196. Springer. pp. 393–400.doi:10.1007/3-540-39568-7_30.
^International Organization for Standardization (1987). International Standard 8731-2. Approved Algorithms for Message Authentication – Part 2: Message Authenticator Algorithm (MAA) (Report). Geneva.
^International Organization for Standardization (1992). International Standard 8731-2. Approved Algorithms for Message Authentication – Part 2: Message Authenticator Algorithm (MAA) (Report). Geneva.
^International Organization for Standardization (1990). International Standard 8730. Requirements for Message Authentication (Wholesale) (Report). Geneva.
^Preneel, Bart; van Oorschot, Paul C. (1996).On the Security of Two MAC Algorithms. Advances in Cryptology – Proceedings of the International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptographic Techniques (EUROCRYPT’96), Saragossa, Spain. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 1070. Springer. pp. 19–32.doi:10.1007/3-540-68339-9_3.
^Preneel, Bart; van Oorschot, Paul C. (1999). "On the Security of Iterated Message Authentication Codes".IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.45 (1):188–199.doi:10.1109/18.746787.
^Preneel, Bart; Rumen, Vincent; van Oorschot, Paul C. (1997). "Security Analysis of the Message Authenticator Algorithm (MAA) -journal=European Transactions on Telecommunications".8 (5):455–470.doi:10.1002/ett.4460080504.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
^Rijmen, Vincent; Preneel, Bart; De Win, Erik (1996).Key Recovery and Collision Clusters for MAA(PDF). Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Security in Communication Networks (SCN’96).
^M. K. F. Lai (1991). A Formal Interpretation of the MAA Standard in Z (NPL Report DITC 184/91). Teddington, Middlesex, UK: National Physical Laboratory.
^Graeme I. Parkin; G. O’Neill (1990). Specification of the MAA Standard in VDM (NPL Report DITC 160/90). National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, Middlesex, UK.
^Graeme I. Parkin; G. O’Neill (1991). Søren Prehn; W. J. Toetenel (eds.).Specification of the MAA Standard in VDM. Formal Software Development – Proceedings (Volume 1) of the 4th International Symposium of VDM Europe (VDM’91), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 551. Springer. pp. 526–544.doi:10.1007/3-540-54834-3_31.
^R. P. Lampard (1991). An Implementation of MAA from a VDM Specification (NPL Technical Memorandum DITC 50/91). Teddington, Middlesex, UK: National Physical Laboratory.
