Extending short key for AES256 (SNMPv3)

user_8492214 0
Viewed 49

I am currently working on security of a switch that runs SNMPv3.

I am expected to code it in such a way, that any SHA (1 - 2-512) is compatible with any AES (128 - 256C).

Everything, like the algorithms alone, works pretty well. The problem is, that its been estabilished, that we are going to use SHA for key generation for both authentification and encryption.

When I want to use, let's say, SHA512 with AES256, there's no problem, since SHA has output of 64B and I need just 32B for key for AES256.

But when I want to use SHA1 with AES256, SHA1 produces only 20B, which is insufficient for the key.

I've searched the internet through and through and I found out, that it's common to use this combination (snmpget, openssl), but I havent found a single word about how are you supposed to prolong the key.

How can I extend the key from 20B to 32B so it works?

P. S.: Yes, I know SHA isn't KDF, yes, I know it's not that common to use this combination, but this is just how it is in my job assignment.

snmp sha aes encryption
1 Answers

Here is a page discussing your exact question. In short, there is no standard way to do this (as you have already discovered), however, Cisco has adopted the approach outlined in section 2.1 of this document:

Chaining is described as follows. First, run the password-to-key algorithm with inputs of the passphrase and engineID as described in the USM document. This will output as many key bits as the hash algorithm used to implement the password-to-key algorithm. Secondly, run the password-to-key algorithm again with the previous output (instead of the passphrase) and the same engineID as inputs. Repeat this process as many times as necessary in order to generate the minimum number of key bits for the chosen privacy protocol. The outputs of each execution are concatenated into a single string of key bits.

When this process results in more key bits than are necessary, only the most significant bits of the string should be used.

For example, if password-to-key implemented with SHA creates a 40-octet string string for use as key bits, only the first 32 octets will be used for usm3DESEDEPrivProtocol.

user_62840250
Related