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[MLS] Purpose of path_secret in the Welcome message?

Théophile Wallez <theophile.wallez@inria.fr> Thu, 22 April 2021 11:49 UTC

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From: Théophile Wallez <theophile.wallez@inria.fr>
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Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 13:49:14 +0200
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Subject: [MLS] Purpose of path_secret in the Welcome message?
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Hello,

I am a PhD student currently writing a formalization of MLS, and I was 
wondering about the use of the `path_secret` field in `GroupSecrets`.
To communicate with the group during the current epoch, it is sufficient 
to know `joiner_secret`.
Also, thanks to the concept of unmerged leaves, a newly added leaf don't 
need to know any path secret to handle an UpdatePath: knowing a path 
secret early would simply result in the fact that the leaf could decrypt 
two different `encrypted_path_secret` in `UpdatePathNode`, which does 
not seem useful.

Can someone give me some intuition for when and why this optional 
`path_secret` is used?


Best,
Théophile.

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