Re: [Crypto-panel] Review of AES-GCM-SIV

[Bjoern Tackmann <[e-mail]>]

Thanks, Kenny, and please find my updated report below.

=========================
Summary: Almost ready

Major issues: none

Minor issues:

I found the description of the encryption method comprehensible but a bit
too informal. Maybe a pseudo-code description may be easier to understand?

In that description, I stumbled particularly over the “_length block_” -
why the underscores? Also, I think it would make sense to explicitly
clarify that the 32-bit counter value for the CTR part is explicitly
allowed to overflow.

One aspect that read a bit arbitrary to me was the domain separation for
AES by setting the first bit of the last byte to 1/0, and in particular
that seemed a bit wasteful since it is evaluated only once with the bit set
to 0. Wouldn't it be simpler (and possibly even with better security, but
at the cost of limiting the length to 2^32 - 1 blocks) to not fiddle with
the bits but just use the first counter-block to compute the tag? Note that
this would certainly require re-doing some part of the security analysis,
and the gains seem moderate, so I’m fine with this comment being discarded.
(Just wanted to make sure it is discarded consciously.)

After discussion with the other reviewers: The draft is ambiguous with
respect to byte-strings vs. bit-strings. My interpretation, stemming from
the beginning of Section 4 explicitly mentioning byte-strings, is that all
strings must be properly byte-aligned. But given that, using
bytelen(additional_length) * 8 and bytelen(plaintext) * 8, i.e. bit-length,
is confusing. If the draft is supposed to deal with byte-aligned strings
only (which appears practically sensible), then this should be made clear
in the document, and byte-length should be used in the encryption.
Otherwise, the algorithms have to be specified more clearly for the case of
bit-strings that are not byte-aligned. In either case, the draft should be
clarified in this respect.


On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 3:53 PM, Paterson, Kenny <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Thanks everyone for this helpful discussion.
>
> If you want to update your reviews in the light of it, please go ahead and
> resend your reviews here. I'll then collate the three reviews we have to
> the CFRG list.
>
> Cheers
>
> Kenny
>
> On 04/07/2017 13:27, "Crypto-panel on behalf of Bjoern Tackmann"
> <[e-mail] on behalf of [e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
> >Hi all,
> >
> >On Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 2:37 PM, Tibor Jager
> ><[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >On 01/07/2017 20:34, Bjoern Tackmann wrote:
> >> Please find my review below. It's a nice piece of work and overall in
> >> quite good shape.
> >>
> >> After looking at the other reviews: I do not quite understand Tibor's
> >> comment on the bit-length vs. byte-length, given that the draft states
> >> that the scheme takes "arbitrary-length plaintext & additional data
> >> byte-strings" -- and for me the term "byte-strings" means that the
> >> byte-length of the strings is an integer.
> >
> >Indeed, this is one of the sections that suggests that it is implicitly
> >assumed that "valid" plaintexts and AD have always a byte-length which
> >is an integer.
> >
> >What I found *potentially* confusing is:
> >
> >- Then it would also be somewhat more intuitive/consistent to include
> >the byte-length of plaintext and AD in the length block. The current
> >draft includes the bit-length. (This is of course technically fine and
> >essentially just a different notation, but *could* be confusing.)
> >
> >- Also the example in Section 8 mentions the bit-length.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >I fully agree that it would be less ambiguous to do these computations in
> >terms of byte-length. I do not see any advantage of having the scheme
> >operate internally in terms of bit-length, when only byte-length strings
> >are allowed.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >- It would also make sense to let the encryption algorithm abort, if the
> >lengths of plaintexts and AD are not a multiple of 8 bits (and one could
> >ignore this check in applications where this is guaranteed by the
> >environment - but this is of course something that only the application
> >developer can decide).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Agreed.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Best,
> >Björn
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>