
It provides a way to ensure message integrity and a way to verify who sent the message. Message authentication provides two services.

Message authentication is said to protect the integrity of a message, ensuring that each message that it is received and deemed acceptable is arriving in the same condition that it was sent out-with no bits inserted, missing, or modified. Message authentication is also called data-origin authentication.

Message authentication allows one party-the sender-to send a message to another party-the receiver-in such a way that if the message is modified en route, then the receiver will almost certainly detect this.
