Re: [TLS] Consensus for AEAD IV

[Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>]

On 4/26/2015 6:26 PM, Yoav Nir wrote:
> Both CCM and GCM use a concatenation of the explicit IV (which is obviously not secret and allowed to be predictable) with a salt that is derived from the keying material. This concatenation forms the nonce which is input to the AEAD.

Which protocol are we talking about?

CCM and GCM - as generic functions - use a per message Nonce.  CCM 
defines a block formatting function (Appendix A of the Nist Document)  
that takes a nonce of 1-15 octets.  David Mc Grew's RFC on AEAD 
functions APIs fixes the length of that nonce to 12 bytes because that's 
the most common length for GCM.  That per message nonce (back to the 
generic again) can be created from the combination of a per-session 
nonce and a sequence number, randomly generated or derived from key 
material.

HSMs generally implement the generic interfaces described in the base 
CCM and GCM documents, and David Mc Grew's RFC on AEAD is a subset of 
those possibilities and is therefor usable with the generic interfaces.


>
> RFC 4309 (CCM) says "The salt value need not be secret, but it MUST NOT be predictable prior to the beginning of the security association.”
> RFC 4106 (GCM) says "The salt SHOULD be unpredictable (i.e., chosen at random) before it is selected, but need not be secret.”

In IPSEC GCM, the IV is explicitly included in each packet  (see section 
3.1 of RFC4106) and hence is not secret in any way shape or form.

In IPSEC CCM, the IV is also explicitly included in each packet - see 
section 3 and 3.1 of RFC 4309.  Hence, also never secret in any way 
shape or form.



> The ChaCha20-Poly1305 for IPsec draft does the same thing, and in fact so does RFC 5288 (AES-GCM for TLS 1.2)

Citing your own draft as proof of your own argument is a bit.... well...

In any event, I note that your IPSEC draft doesn't actually describe the 
ESP payload format, so without that, I'd make the assumption that the IV 
is included before the payload as is described in the IPSEC ESP document.

>
> So no, that salt (and by extension, the proposed 96-bit value) need not be secret, but it’s never transmitted.
In which of the above?  Maybe in the chacha20 draft... but not in the 
other two.

And RFC5288 does it the wrong way - getting IV (session nonce) material 
from the same key stream as key material.  That hopefully will be fixed 
with TLS1.3.  It would have been much more preferable to use a zero 
session nonce than extract it from the key stream.

>   This also shows that there is good precedent for generating such a doesn’t-really-need-to-be-secret value from the key_block or KEYMAT.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't.  It just shows a continuous misunderstanding 
of the problems with doing it this way.  There are ways to mitigate this 
a bit - but they require ensuring complete cryptographic isolation from 
key generation and a method of non-secret but not disclosed information 
that can still be used with the generic interfaces.

There was a good precedence for using RC4 and MD5 because they were fast 
and in wide use, but we've learned.

Later, Mike


>
> Yoav
>
>> On Apr 27, 2015, at 12:28 AM, Michael StJohns <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> On 4/26/2015 2:20 PM, Ilari Liusvaara wrote:
>>>> There is no reason to treat the 96 bit quantity as secret and no one else
>>>>> does.
>>> (To lesser extent, IPSEC, there the session nonce is 32 bits and secret).
>>>
>> This is directly from section 2.3 of the IPSec ESP RFC 4303
>>
>>
>>> With regard to ensuring the alignment of the (real) ciphertext in the
>>>     presence of an IV, note the following:
>>>
>>>           o For some IV-based modes of operation, the receiver treats
>>>             the IV as the start of the ciphertext, feeding it into the
>>>             algorithm directly.  In these modes, alignment of the start
>>>             of the (real) ciphertext is not an issue at the receiver.
>>>
>>>
>>>           o In some cases, the receiver reads the IV in separately from
>>>             the ciphertext.  In these cases, the algorithm specification
>>>             MUST address how alignment of the (real) ciphertext is to be
>>>             achieved.
>> And RFC4309 - CCM mode has this:
>>
>>> ESP Payload
>>>
>>>    The ESP payload is composed of the IV followed by the ciphertext.
>>>    The payload field, as defined in [ESP], is structured as shown in
>>>    Figure 1.
>>>
>>>        0                   1                   2 3
>>>        0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
>>> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
>>>       |                     Initialization Vector                     |
>>>       |                            (8 octets)                         |
>>> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
>>> |                                                               |
>>>       ~                  Encrypted Payload (variable)                 ~
>>> |                                                               |
>>> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
>>> |                                                               |
>>>       ~                 Authentication Data (variable)                ~
>>> |                                                               |
>>> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
>>
>>
>> Again, newer modes may have done something else, but the above is strong indication that IVs were not generated as secrets as a general matter.
>>
>> Later, Mike
>>
>
>