Perfect message authentication codes are robust to small deviations from uniform key distributions

Abstract

We investigate the impact of (possible) deviations of the probability distribution of key values from a uniform distribution for the information-theoretic strong, or perfect, message authentication code. We found a simple expression for the decrease in security as a function of the statistical distance between the real key probability distribution and the uniform one. In a sense, a perfect message authentication code is robust to small deviations from a uniform key distribution.