lib-q-mac (EXPERIMENTAL_NON_NIST)

EXPERIMENTAL_NON_NIST — pre-standard. qCW-MAC is not a NIST-standardized MAC. NIST's approved message authentication codes are HMAC (FIPS 198-1), KMAC (SP 800-185), CMAC and GMAC (SP 800-38B / 38D); this crate implements none of them. The construction follows a recent research paper (Boneh–Zhandry, ePrint 2026/271) and has not been audited or reviewed by a human cryptographer. Use lib-q-hash's KMAC/HMAC paths where a standardized MAC is required.

Quantum Carter-Wegman MAC (qCW-MAC) targeting splitting unforgeability (SU) against quantum adversaries (Boneh-Zhandry, ePrint 2026/271).

Security target

The SU rows below record what is tested, not what is proven. Property tests over bounded query counts are evidence against regressions; they are not a security proof, and no proof of SU for this implementation has been reviewed.

| Property | Status | |----------|--------| | SU stability (bounded queries) | Property tests in tests/su_properties.rs — tested, not proven | | SU exclusiveness (bounded queries) | Property tests in tests/su_properties.rs — tested, not proven | | Wire budget | N/A (definitional primitive) |

API

• QcwMacKey::generate
• QcwMac::sign
• QcwMac::verify

KAT export

Schema: qcw-mac-kat-v1

cargo test -p lib-q-mac kat_regenerate_vectors -- --ignored

Output: tests/vectors/qcw-mac-v1.json

Features

| Feature | Default | Purpose | |---------|:-------:|---------| | alloc | yes | Heap-backed tag buffers | | std | no | Standard library RNG | | random | no | Secure key generation |

Subresource integrity (SHA-384)

Paths in integrity-manifest.json are relative to the package root (including web/ and nodejs/ when both ship).