One of the two core security protocols in IPSec is the Authentication Header (AH). This is another protocol whose name has been well chosen: AH is a protocol that provides authentication of either all or part of the contents of a datagram through the addition of a header that is calculated based on the values in the datagram. What parts of the datagram are used for the calculation, and the placement of the header, depends on the mode (tunnel or transport) and the version of IP (IPv4 or IPv6).

The operation of the AH protocol is surprisingly simple—especially for any protocol that has anything to do with network security. It can be considered analogous to the algorithms used to calculate checksums or perform CRC checks for error detection. In those cases, a standard algorithm is used by the sender to compute a checksum or CRC code based on the contents of a message. This computed result is transmitted along with the original data to the destination, which repeats the calculation and discards the message if any discrepancy is found between its calculation and the one done by the source.

This is the same idea behind AH, except that instead of using a simple algorithm known to everyone, we use a special hashing algorithm and a specific key known only to the source and the destination. A security association between two devices is set up that specifies these particulars so that the source and destination know how to perform the computation but nobody else can. On the source device, AH performs the computation and puts the result (called the Integrity Check Value or ICV) into a special header with other fields for transmission. The destination device does the same calculation using the key the two devices share, which enables it to see immediately if any of the fields in the original datagram were modified (either due to error or malice).

It's important that I point out explicitly that just as a checksum doesn't change the original data, neither does the ICV calculation change the original data. The presence of the AH header allows us to verify the integrity of the message, but doesn't encrypt it. Thus, AH provides authentication but not privacy (that's what ESP is for. No, I don’t mean using a psychic, I mean the other IPSec core protocol!)