Is AES_CMAC specified to double ciphered zeroes during initialization? Reading the SIV RFC https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5297#page-9, I found that the S2V function starts by calculating the MAC of a "zero" block, doubles it and then XORs further data to the result.

Now looking at the BouncyCastle implementation, the exact same thing happens during the initialization of AES-CMAC.

How do I have to understand the S2V specification? Do I have to do all the "zero" stuff and doubling and XORing? Or does this already happen inside the AES-CMAC function? Would that mean, that AES-CMAC(key, plaintext) is equivalent to S2V(key, plaintext)?
Do I have to do all the "zero" stuff and doubling and XORing?


If you are implementing the S2V primitive, using an AES-CMAC function, then yes, you will need to do all that "zero" stuff and doubling and XORing.

Yes, if you peek inside the AES-CMAC function, you will find some logic that looks sort of like this; processing an all zero block, doubling the result, and doing some xor's with it.  However, CMAC is doing something a bit different with it (the result of the processed 0 block goes at the end of the chain, not at the beginning), and in any case, the S2V primitive assumes the CMAC logic as a primitive; what CMAC does internally is actually irrelevant to how to implement S2V.


  Would that mean, that AES-CMAC(key, plaintext) is equivalent to S2V(key, plaintext)?


No, if you look at the RFC, then the S2V of a vector that consists of a single plaintext (remember, S2V takes a vector of plaintexts) would be either:


AES-CMAC( key, plaintext XOR AES( key, 0 )) (for plaintexts >= 128 bits; the xor applies to the end of the plaintext), or
AES-CMAC( key, PAD(plainext) XOR double(AES( key, 0 ))) (for plaintexts &lt; 128 bits).