Re: Use of CRC to verify encrypted data integrity

Unknown wrote:
>By encrypting the combination, does the CRC gain cryptographic security
>(setting aside the fact that it is very short)?

No.

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/wep-mob01.pdf

>Are there any other recommendations which can be done in a very short
>amount of space? MD5 and other longer hashes are too long for my desired
>application.

SHA1-HMAC or AES-OMAC, truncated as necessary.

But beware that if the MAC is too short, then it will be possible
for an attacker to forge messages just by blind luck (no matter which
scheme you use). Exactly how long is sufficient is likely to depend
on the details of your application and your security requirements.
.