aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/docs/hazmat/primitives/symmetric-encryption.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'docs/hazmat/primitives/symmetric-encryption.rst')
-rw-r--r--docs/hazmat/primitives/symmetric-encryption.rst13
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/docs/hazmat/primitives/symmetric-encryption.rst b/docs/hazmat/primitives/symmetric-encryption.rst
index f4d0457a..30896a05 100644
--- a/docs/hazmat/primitives/symmetric-encryption.rst
+++ b/docs/hazmat/primitives/symmetric-encryption.rst
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ an "encrypt-then-MAC" formulation as `described by Colin Percival`_.
provider.
If the backend doesn't support the requested combination of ``cipher``
- and ``mode`` an :class:`cryptography.exceptions.UnsupportedAlgorithm`
+ and ``mode`` an :class:`~cryptography.exceptions.UnsupportedAlgorithm`
will be raised.
.. method:: decryptor()
@@ -352,6 +352,16 @@ Modes
Do not reuse an ``initialization_vector``
with a given ``key``.
+ .. note::
+
+ Cryptography will emit a 128-bit tag when finalizing encryption.
+ You can shorten a tag by truncating it to the desired length, but this
+ is **not recommended** as it lowers the security margins of the
+ authentication (`NIST SP-800-38D`_ recommends 96-bits or greater).
+ If you must shorten the tag the minimum allowed length is 4 bytes
+ (32-bits). Applications **must** verify the tag is the expected length
+ to guarantee the expected security margin.
+
:param bytes tag: The tag bytes to verify during decryption. When encrypting
this must be None.
@@ -390,3 +400,4 @@ Insecure Modes
.. _`described by Colin Percival`: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-06-11-cryptographic-right-answers.html
.. _`recommends 96-bit IV length`: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/BCM/documents/proposedmodes/gcm/gcm-spec.pdf
+.. _`NIST SP-800-38D`: http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-38D/SP-800-38D.pdf