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authorLinus Nordberg <linus@nordberg.se>2021-11-16 12:18:42 +0100
committerLinus Nordberg <linus@nordberg.se>2021-11-16 12:18:42 +0100
commit90a7a4d9f5ac4118380c462aedcd2ae691ed1411 (patch)
treefa70ffb6e30ddf6ec5e0a308bd7404aaf9046d8b
parent8c7d8f925b00f8ab81735c08a69176e1e4efa07d (diff)
add text
Punting on all crypto agility for now. Let's make a separate proposal out of the contents of the section "Related questions".
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+Should Sigsum adopt the signature format used by SSH?
+
+The signature format used by Sigsum is close to what is used by
+SSH. If we were to change our formats to match SSH's format our
+Signers, Logs and Witnesses could benefit from existing SSH tooling,
+most notably ssh-agent and its support for PKCS#11 providers.
+
+This proposal suggests that we change what we're signing both for tree
+heads and signer's statements (in tree leaves) to use SSH's signing
+format with the hash being a hash over our current data structures
+(struct tree_head and struct statment).
+
+This proposal notably does not suggest any changes to Sigsum's lack of
+crypto agility, i.e. whether we should support signing with any other
+key types than ed25519, most notably RSA keys or NIST curves. Same is
+true for hash algorithms, ie whether anything else than sha256 for
+hashing the message should be supported.
+
+
+# What do we sign?
+
+https://git.sigsum.org/sigsum/tree/doc/api.md
+
+## Tree leaves
+
+Tree leaves contain a signer's statement, a signature and a key hash.
+
+Statements are signed by Signers.
+Statements are verified by Verifiers and Monitors.
+
+ u64 shard_hint;
+ u8 checksum[32];
+
+
+## Tree heads
+
+Tree heads are signed by Logs and Witnesses.
+Tree heads are verified verified by Verifiers, Witnesses and Monitors.
+
+ u64 timestamp;
+ u64 tree_size;
+ u8 root_hash[32];
+ u8 key_hash[32];
+
+
+# What does ssh-agent sign?
+
+https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable/blob/master/PROTOCOL.sshsig
+
+ #define MAGIC_PREAMBLE "SSHSIG"
+
+ byte[6] MAGIC_PREAMBLE
+ string namespace
+ string reserved
+ string hash_algorithm
+ string H(message)
+
+The string data type is represented as a uint32 in network byte order
+followed by that many octets of data (RFC4251, section 5).
+
+## The namespace field
+
+A context string is what in the SSH signature format documentation is
+called namespace. Requiring a context string that is unique per
+"interpretation domain" stops cross-protocol attacks where the same
+key is used for multiple applications.
+
+Sigsum would use statement-v0@sigsum.org and treehead-v0@sigsum.org
+for namespace.
+
+## The reserved field
+
+Sigsum would ignore this field.
+
+## The hash_algorithm field
+
+Sigsum would use "sha256".
+
+## The H(message) field
+
+This is the SHA256 or SHA512 hash of the message to be signed.
+
+Sigsum would use sha256(struct tree_head) and sha256(struct
+statement).
+
+
+# SSH wire format
+
+Header = "-----BEGIN SSH SIGNATURE-----"
+Data = Base64-encoded data described below
+Footer = "-----END SSH SIGNATURE-----"
+
+The data part is first encoded as a string (uint32 + data) and then
+Base64-encoded, broken up with newlines every 76:th octet.
+
+Data:
+
+ #define MAGIC_PREAMBLE "SSHSIG"
+ #define SIG_VERSION 0x01
+
+ byte[6] MAGIC_PREAMBLE
+ uint32 SIG_VERSION
+ string publickey
+ string namespace
+ string reserved
+ string hash_algorithm
+ string signature
+
+The publickey field contains the public key corresponding to the
+secret key making the signature, serialised according to SSH
+serialisation rules. Note that the signature algorithm is NOT encoded
+in the publickey field and need to be communicated elsewhere.
+
+The namespace field is the same as above (section "What does ssh-agent sign?").
+
+The hash_algorithm field is one of "sha256" and "sha512".
+
+The signature field contains the signature over what's described above
+(section "What does ssh-agent sign?") using the private key
+corresponding to the publickey field, encoded according to SSH
+encoding rules.
+
+# Related questions
+
+- Adding a length field, even indirectly through a type field
+ determining length, opens up for a class of attacks iff the data is
+ controlled by the attacker _and_ needs to be parsed. Note that
+ verifying a signature requires the message to be serialised, not
+ necessarily parsed.
+
+- hash algorithms: sha256, sha512
+ currently: sha256
+
+- RSA, yes no?
+ - currently: no, signature fields are fixed at 64 bytes
+ - variable length signature fields would be necessary, or using a
+ fixed sized field of 512 bytes (for allowing keys up to 4096 bits
+ in size)
+
+- More curves, ie NIST?