Re: [TLS] Comments on draft-celi-wiggers-tls-authkem-00.txt

["Kampanakis, Panos" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Uri,

If we are talking NIST Level 5 (and I am assuming you are discussing mTLS), have you calculated the total CertVerify+cert chain sizes there assuming 2 ICAs let's say? 

And would constrained devices or mediums that sweat about 5KB really be able to support PQ KEMs and Sigs at NIST Level 5?




-----Original Message-----
From: TLS <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Blumenthal, Uri - 0553 - MITLL
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2021 11:39 PM
To: Douglas Stebila <[e-mail]>; Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>
Cc: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [TLS] Comments on draft-celi-wiggers-tls-authkem-00.txt

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Let me emphasize the reasons Douglas brought up. Note that I need to use NIST Sec Level 5 algorithms. So, Kyber-1024 and Dilithium5 (other algorithms show even worse ratio between KEM and signature!).

Communications costs:
- Difference in public key sizes: 1568 bytes of Kyber vs. 2592 bytes of Dilithium => 1024 extra bytes to carry over channel each way;
- Signature: extra 4595 bytes each way, because in addition to exchanging certs (aka "signed public keys", which is inevitable) you need to sign the exchange and communicate that signature across;
- Total: 5619 extra bytes each way. For peer-to-peer broadband connections, you can say "so what?". But my links are *very* austere.

Computation costs (ballpark, on a powerful CPU):
- KEM: keygen 15us, encap 18us, decap 14us (say, double encap and decap for PFS-providing exchange);
- Signature: sign 113us, verify 55us;
- Comparison: 134us for signature-less KEM vs. 215us for TLS-like exchange => almost twice as long;
- Difference may be negligible for Intel Xeon, but for my much weaker hardware it matters.

So, for constrained environments with austere comm links, signature-less "authkem" is God-sent.
Big servers that need to support many clients (so they care how much CPU cycles and comm bytes they spend on every connection) would appreciate these savings too.

@ekr,I hope this provides convincing explanation why "authkem" is needed.

P.S. I know that Falcon has much more favorable sizes - but (a) it takes three times as long to sign, and (b) it uses FP calculations, which isn't great to implement in my environment.
--
Regards,
Uri

There are two ways to design a system. One is to make is so simple there are obviously no deficiencies.
The other is to make it so complex there are no obvious deficiencies.
                                                                                                                                     -  C. A. R. Hoare


On 7/12/21, 20:59, "TLS on behalf of Douglas Stebila" <[e-mail] on behalf of [e-mail]> wrote:

    Hi Eric,

    The main motivation is that, in some cases, post-quantum signatures are larger in terms of communication size compared to a post-quantum KEM, under the same cryptographic assumption.

    For example, the KEM Kyber (based on module LWE) at the 128-bit security level has 800-byte public keys and 768-byte ciphertexts.  The matching signature scheme Dilithium (also based on module LWE) has 1312-byte public keys and 2420-byte signatures.  Doing KEM-based server authentication rather than signature-based server authentication would thus save 2164 bytes per handshake.

    We would still need digital signatures for a PKI (i.e., the root and intermediate CAs would sign certificates using PQ digital signature schemes), but the public key of the endpoint server can be a KEM public key, not a digital signature public key.

    Douglas


    > On Jul 12, 2021, at 20:30, Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> wrote:
    >
    > Hi folks,
    >
    > I have just given draft-celi-wiggers-tls-authkem-00.txt a quick
    > read. I'm struggling a bit with the rationale, which I take to be
    > these paragraphs:
    >
    >    In this proposal we use the DH-based KEMs from [I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke].
    >    We believe KEMs are especially worth discussing in the context of the
    >    TLS protocol because NIST is in the process of standardizing post-
    >    quantum KEM algorithms to replace "classic" key exchange (based on
    >    elliptic curve or finite-field Diffie-Hellman [NISTPQC]).
    >
    >    This proposal draws inspiration from [I-D.ietf-tls-semistatic-dh],
    >    which is in turn based on the OPTLS proposal for TLS 1.3 [KW16].
    >    However, these proposals require a non-interactive key exchange: they
    >    combine the client's public key with the server's long-term key.
    >    This imposes a requirement that the ephemeral and static keys use the
    >    same algorithm, which this proposal does not require.  Additionally,
    >    there are no post-quantum proposals for a non-interactive key
    >    exchange currently considered for standardization, while several KEMs
    >    are on the way.
    >
    > I see why this motivates using a KEM for key establishment, but I'm
    > not sure it motivates this design, which seems like a fairly radical
    > change to TLS. As I understand the situation, in the post-quantum
    > world we're going to have:
    >
    > - non-interactive KEMs (as you indicate above)
    > - some sort of signature system (otherwise we won't have certificates).
    >
    > This certainly argues that we need a KEM for key establishment, but
    > not for authentication. Instead, why can't we use signatures for
    > authentication, as TLS does today? I.e., the certificates would have a
    > (potentially post-quantum) signing key in them and you then use the
    > KEM for key establishment and the signing key for authentication.
    > That would give us a design much closer to the present TLS 1.3
    > (effectively just defining a new group for the KEM).
    >
    > What am I missing?
    >
    > -Ekr
    >
    >
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