Sortix
Sortix Download Manual Development Source Code News Blog More
current nightly

Sortix nightly manual

This manual documents Sortix nightly, a development build that has not been officially released. You can instead view this document in the latest official manual.

NAME

CMAC_CTX_new, CMAC_Init, CMAC_Update, CMAC_Final, CMAC_CTX_copy, CMAC_CTX_get0_cipher_ctx, CMAC_CTX_cleanup, CMAC_CTX_free — Cipher-based message authentication code

SYNOPSIS

#include <openssl/cmac.h>
CMAC_CTX *
CMAC_CTX_new(void);
int
CMAC_Init(CMAC_CTX *ctx, const void *key, size_t key_len, const EVP_CIPHER *cipher, ENGINE *engine);
int
CMAC_Update(CMAC_CTX *ctx, const void *in_data, size_t in_len);
int
CMAC_Final(CMAC_CTX *ctx, unsigned char *out_mac, size_t *out_len);
EVP_CIPHER_CTX *
CMAC_CTX_get0_cipher_ctx(CMAC_CTX *ctx);
void
CMAC_CTX_cleanup(CMAC_CTX *ctx);
void
CMAC_CTX_free(CMAC_CTX *ctx);

DESCRIPTION

CMAC is a message authentication code algorithm that can employ an arbitrary block cipher using a symmetric key.
The present manual page describes low-level functions implementing CMAC. Instead of using these functions directly, application programs normally call EVP_PKEY_CTX_new_id(3) with an argument of EVP_PKEY_CMAC and then pass the resulting EVP_MD_CTX object to EVP_DigestInit_ex(3).
The CMAC API is object-oriented. Calculating a message authentication code requires a CMAC_CTX object. Usually, the functions CMAC_CTX_new(), CMAC_Init(), CMAC_Update(), CMAC_Final(), and CMAC_CTX_free() need to be called in this order.
CMAC_CTX_new() allocates a new CMAC_CTX object, initializes the embedded EVP_CIPHER_CTX object, and marks the object itself as uninitialized.
CMAC_Init() selects the given block cipher for use by ctx. Functions to obtain suitable EVP_CIPHER objects are listed in the CIPHER LISTING section of the EVP_Cipher(3) manual page. Unless key is NULL, CMAC_Init() also initializes ctx for use with the given symmetric key that is key_len bytes long. In particular, it calculates and internally stores the two subkeys and initializes ctx for subsequently feeding in data with CMAC_Update(). The engine argument is ignored; passing NULL is recommended.
If ctx is already initialized, CMAC_Init() can be called again with key and cipher both set to NULL and key_len set to 0. In that case, any data already processed is discarded and ctx is re-initialized to start reading data anew.
CMAC_Update() processes in_len bytes of input data pointed to by in_data. Depending on the number of input bytes already cached in ctx, on in_len, and on the block size, this may encrypt zero or more blocks. Unless in_len is zero, this function leaves at least one byte and at most one block of input cached but unprocessed inside the ctx object. CMAC_Update() can be called multiple times to concatenate several chunks of input data of varying sizes.
CMAC_Final() stores the length of the message authentication code in bytes, which equals the cipher block size, into *out_len. Unless out_mac is NULL, it encrypts the last block, padding it if required, and copies the resulting message authentication code to out_mac. The caller is responsible for providing a buffer of sufficient size.
CMAC_CTX_copy() performs a deep copy of the already initialized in_ctx into out_ctx.
CMAC_CTX_cleanup() zeros out both subkeys and all temporary data in ctx and in the embedded EVP_CIPHER_CTX object, frees all allocated memory associated with it, except for ctx itself, and marks it as uninitialized, such that it can be reused for subsequent CMAC_Init().
CMAC_CTX_free() calls CMAC_CTX_cleanup(), then frees ctx itself. If ctx is NULL, no action occurs.

RETURN VALUES

CMAC_CTX_new() returns the new context object or NULL in case of failure. It succeeds unless memory is exhausted.
CMAC_Init(), CMAC_Update(), CMAC_Final(), and CMAC_CTX_copy() return 1 on success or 0 on failure. CMAC_Init() fails if initializing the embedded EVP_CIPHER_CTX object fails. The others fail if in_ctx is uninitialized. CMAC_Update() and CMAC_Final() also fail if encrypting a block fails, and CMAC_CTX_copy() if copying the embedded EVP_CIPHER_CTX object fails, which can for example happen when memory is exhausted.
CMAC_CTX_get0_cipher_ctx() returns an internal pointer to the EVP_CIPHER_CTX object that is embedded in ctx.

ERRORS

The CMAC code itself does not use the <openssl/err.h> framework, so in general, the reasons for failure cannot be found out with ERR_get_error(3). However, since the EVP_Cipher(3) functions are used internally, entries may still get pushed onto the error stack in some cases of failure.

SEE ALSO

EVP_aes_128_cbc(3), EVP_Cipher(3), EVP_DigestInit(3), EVP_PKEY_CTX_new_id(3), HMAC(3)

STANDARDS

Morris Dworkin, Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: The CMAC Mode for Authentication, National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST Special Publication 800-38B, https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-38B, Gaithersburg, Maryland, May 2005, updated October 6, 2016.

HISTORY

These functions first appeared in OpenSSL 1.0.1 and have been available since OpenBSD 5.3.
Copyright 2011-2025 Jonas 'Sortie' Termansen and contributors.
Sortix's source code is free software under the ISC license.
#sortix on irc.sortix.org
@sortix_org