J Cryptol (2021) 34:36 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00145-021-09399-8 The Design and Evolution of OCB Ted Krovetz Computer Science Department, California State University, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, California 95819, USA
[email protected] Phillip Rogaway Department of Computer Science, Kemper Hall of Engineering, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA
[email protected] Communicated by Tetsu Iwata. Received 20 December 2019 / Revised 26 August 2020 / Accepted 14 September 2020 Abstract. We describe OCB3, the final version of OCB, a blockcipher mode for au- thenticated encryption (AE). We prove the construction secure, up to the birthday bound, assuming its underlying blockcipher is secure as a strong-PRP. We study the scheme’s software performance, comparing its speed, on multiple platforms, to a variety of other AE schemes. We reflect on the history and development of the mode. Keywords. AEAD, Authenticated encryption, CAESAR competition, Cryptographic standards, Fast software encryption, Modes of operation, OCB. 1. Introduction Schemes for authenticated encryption (AE) symmetrically encrypt a message in a way that ensures both its confidentiality and authenticity. OCB is a well-known algorithm for achieving this aim. It is a blockcipher mode of operation, the blockcipher usually being AES. There are three main variants of OCB. The first, now called OCB1 (2001) [39], was mo- tivated by Charanjit Jutla’s IAPM [24]. A second version, now called OCB2 (2004) [18, 38], added support for associated data (AD) [37] and redeveloped the mode using the idea of a tweakable blockcipher [30]. OCB2 was recently found to have a disastrous bug [17].