Re: [OAUTH-WG] PKCE: SHA256(WAT?)

[Nat Sakimura <[e-mail]>]

I do not think we need ASCII(). It is quite clear without it, I suppose.

In 4.1, I would rather do like:

 code_verifier = high entropy cryptographic random
   octet sequence using the url and filename safe Alphabet [A-Z] / [a-z]
   / [0-9] / "-" / "_" from Sec 5 of RFC 4648 [RFC4648], with length
   less than 128 characters.

Nat

2015-01-30 22:51 GMT+09:00 Brian Campbell <[e-mail]>om>:

> That's definitely an improvement (to me anyway).
>
> Checking that the rest of the document uses those notations appropriately,
> I think, yields a few other changes. And probably begs for the
> "ASCII(STRING) denotes the octets of the ASCII representation of STRING"
> notation/function, or something like it, to be put back in. Those changes
> might look like the following:
>
>
> In 4.1.:
>
> OLD:
>    code_verifier = high entropy cryptographic random ASCII [RFC0020]
>    octet sequence using the url and filename safe Alphabet [A-Z] / [a-z]
>    / [0-9] / "-" / "_" from Sec 5 of RFC 4648 [RFC4648], with length
>    less than 128 characters.
>
> NEW (maybe):
>   code_verifier = high entropy cryptographically strong random STRING
>   using the url and filename safe Alphabet [A-Z] / [a-z]
>    / [0-9] / "-" / "_" from Sec 5 of RFC 4648 [RFC4648], with length
>    less than 128 characters.
>
>
> In 4.2.:
>
> OLD:
>    S256  "code_challenge" = BASE64URL(SHA256("code_verifier"))
>
> NEW (maybe):
>    S256  "code_challenge" = BASE64URL(SHA256(ASCII("code_verifier")))
>
>
> In 4.6.:
>
> OLD:
>    SHA256("code_verifier" ) == BASE64URL-DECODE("code_challenge").
>
> NEW (maybe):
>    SHA256(ASCII("code_verifier")) == BASE64URL-DECODE("code_challenge").
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 8:37 PM, Nat Sakimura (=nat) <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
>> I take your point, Brian.
>>
>> In our most recent manuscript, STRING is defined inside ASCII(STRING) as
>>
>> STRING is a sequence of zero or more ASCII characters
>>
>> but it is kind of circular, and we do not seem to use ASCII().
>>
>> What about re-writing the section like below?
>>
>> STRING denotes a sequence of zero or more ASCII  [RFC0020]
>> <http://xml2rfc.ietf.org/cgi-bin/xml2rfc.cgi#RFC0020> characters.
>>
>> OCTETS denotes a sequence of zero or more octets.
>>
>> BASE64URL(OCTETS) denotes the base64url encoding of OCTETS, per Section 3
>> <http://xml2rfc.ietf.org/cgi-bin/xml2rfc.cgi#Terminology> producing a
>> ASCII[RFC0020] <http://xml2rfc.ietf.org/cgi-bin/xml2rfc.cgi#RFC0020>
>>  STRING.
>>
>> BASE64URL-DECODE(STRING) denotes the base64url decoding of STRING, per Section
>> 3 <http://xml2rfc.ietf.org/cgi-bin/xml2rfc.cgi#Terminology>, producing a
>> sequence of octets.
>>
>> SHA256(OCTETS) denotes a SHA2 256bit hash [RFC6234]
>> <http://xml2rfc.ietf.org/cgi-bin/xml2rfc.cgi#RFC6234> of OCTETS.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 30, 2015, at 08:15, Brian Campbell <[e-mail]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> In §2 [1] we've got "SHA256(STRING) denotes a SHA2 256bit hash [RFC6234]
>> of STRING."
>>
>> But, in the little cow town where I come from anyway, you hash
>> bits/octets not character strings (BTW, "STRING" isn't defined anywhere but
>> it's kind of implied that it's a string of characters).
>>
>> Should it say something more like "SHA256(STRING) denotes a SHA2 256bit
>> hash [RFC6234] of the octets of the ASCII [RFC0020] representation of
>> STRING."?
>>
>> I know it's kind of pedantic but I find it kind of confusing because the
>> code_verifier uses the url and filename safe alphabet, which has me second
>> guessing if SHA256(STRING) actually means a hash of the octet produced by
>> base64url decoding the string.
>>
>> Maybe it's just me but, when reading the text, I find the transform
>> process to be much more confusing than I think it needs to be. Removing and
>> clarifying some things will help. I hate to suggest this but maybe an
>> example showing the computation steps on both ends would be helpful?
>>
>> Also "UTF8(STRING)" and "ASCII(STRING)" notations are defined in §2 but
>> not used anywhere.
>>
>> And §2 also says, "BASE64URL-DECODE(STRING) denotes the base64url
>> decoding of STRING, per Section 3, producing a UTF-8 sequence of octets."
>> But what is a UTF-8 sequence of octets? Isn't it just a sequence octets?
>> The [RFC3629] reference, I think, could be removed.
>>
>> [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-spop-06#section-2
>>
>>
>> Nat Sakimura
>> [e-mail]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Nat Sakimura (=nat)
Chairman, OpenID Foundation
http://nat.sakimura.org/
@_nat_en