Fast authentication codes based on random polynomial residue classes

The verification of the authenticity of a text document or a datafile is one of the main applications of cryptographic techniques. A common used technique for this purpose is the application of a message authentication code (MAC). Usually the MAC computation has to be done in software. Based on the relationship between error-correcting codes and so-called families of almost universal hash functions, and the error-correcting codes using polynomial residue classes we describe an efficient procedure for a MAC computation which is much faster than the standard MAC constructions using MD5 or SHA and uses much less key bits than the fast MACs based on bucket hashing.