Re: [TLS] HSM-friendly Key Computation

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 4:42 AM, Ilari Liusvaara <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 05:30:42PM -0400, Michael StJohns wrote:
> > On 4/22/2015 1:37 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> > >If we're using HKDF-Extract, can we just key off different labels?
> > >
> > >-Ekr
> > >
> >
> > Basically, no.
> >
> > What you want to do is specify as part of the mixins (e.g. 'info' - e.g.
> the
> > collection of label and context)  a set of fields that describe 1) how
> the
> > key stream is going to be broken up (eg. lengths of the sub keys), 2)
> what
> > algorithms will use each of the parts of the key stream, and 3) whether
> or
> > not those parts are allowed to be exported/extracted.
>
> In TLS 1.2 P_hash (which underlies TLS PRF), the corresponding field is
> seed,
> right?
>
> So inside that (or whatever the equivalent), serialize:
> - Label
> - Lengths, types and exportable flags of subkeys
> - Context
>
> ?
>
> Properly serializing that would avoid the well-known TLS 1.2 screwup in
> PRF defintion (which got copied to "dh based key exchange" draft).
>

Can elaborate on this?

The DH-based key exchange draft uses HKDF and uses separate
labels for each use of HKDF-Expand so that (for instance) exporters
and key generation have different labels.



> Also, it occurs to me that if PRF has salt input (like HKDF), one should
> stick something non-secret but variable there (e.g. client random, or
> suitable handshake hash, or something).


Based on talking to Hugo, my understanding is that the best way
to do this is by incorporating the handshake hash at the HKDF-Expand
stage, as in:

client_write_key = HKDF-Expand(Secret, "client write key" + session_hash,
                                 SecurityParameters.enc_key_length)


Some outputs share a (key,salt)
> pair. Keys should be combined by serialization.


If you're referring to how we combine (say) the static DH and the ephemeral
DH, what we had discussed was running K1 through HKDF-Extract to
generate PRK1 and then using PRK1 as the salt for HKDF-Extract on
PRK2. I.e.,

   PRK1 = HKDF-Extract(0, K1)
   PRK2 = HKDF-Extract(0, K2)

-Ekr