more about HMAC-SHA-1 security question



What people said so far is indeed true. I understand that it is not
possible to recover the HMAC-SHA-1 key by mere knowing of one or
several random pairs of its input and output values - that hash
function would be of no use if that was possible, yet it is said to be
secure...

However, let's for now hypothetically assume an unusual scenario: that
an attacker could freely choose the input value of the hash and read
the corresponding output value. Only the function itself the attacker
has no access to (meaning reading the source code or the key in
machine code or whatever), which means that the Hash key is still a
secret. Still, could it be possible to make conclusions about the key?
For example if the attacker first tries the value 00000, then the
value 00001 and so on all of them through? Let's assume that the
attacker can choose any value he/she wants any number of times and
read its corresponding output value. Maybe little conclusions can be
made when looking at each output value that sum themselves up if the
operation is done a billion times or so?

I believe that by targeted changing of bits in the Hash input values
(in the hypothetical scenario I described) and by then analyzing the
corresponding output values it could be possible to conclude about the
HMAC-SHA-1 key. Maybe there exist sorts of defined rules which bits
change in the output streams if the key has a 0 at the beginning and
so on, even if those rules must be newly defined for each hash, key
and output value length. And in this context I'm NOT thinking of a
table where all hashes with all keys are precomputed!

Ideas?
.



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