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Curve25519 for ephemeral key exchange in Transport Layer Security (TLS)
draft-ietf-tls-curve25519-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Simon Josefsson , Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard
Last updated 2015-06-12
Replaces draft-josefsson-tls-curve25519
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draft-ietf-tls-curve25519-00
Network Working Group                                       S. Josefsson
Internet-Draft                                                    SJD AB
Updates: 4492, 5246 (if approved)                    M. Pegourie-Gonnard
Intended status: Informational                    Independent / PolarSSL
Expires: December 11, 2015                                  June 9, 2015

Curve25519 for ephemeral key exchange in Transport Layer Security (TLS)
                      draft-ietf-tls-curve25519-00

Abstract

   This document specifies the use of Curve25519 for ephemeral key
   exchange in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, as well as
   its DTLS variant.  It updates RFC 5246 (TLS 1.2) and RFC 4492
   (Elliptic Curve Cryptography for TLS).

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on December 11, 2015.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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1.  Introduction

   In [Curve25519] [I-D.irtf-cfrg-curves], a new elliptic curve function
   for use in cryptographic applications was specified.  Curve25519 is a
   Diffie-Hellman function designed with performance and security in
   mind.

   [RFC4492] defines the usage of elliptic curves for authentication and
   key agreement in TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, and these mechanisms are also
   applicable to TLS 1.2 [RFC5246].  The use of ECC curves for key
   exchange requires the definition and assignment of additional
   NamedCurve IDs.  This document specify that value for Curve25519, as
   well as the minor changes in key selection and representation that
   are required to accommodate for Curve25519's slightly different
   nature.

   This document only describes usage of Curve25519 for ephemeral key
   exchange (ECDHE).  It does not define its use for signature, since
   the primitive considered here is a Diffie-Hellman function; the
   related signature scheme, Ed25519, is outside the scope of this
   document.  The use of Curve25519 with long-term keys embedded in
   X.509 certificates is also out of scope here.

1.1.  Requirements Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

2.  Data Structures and Computations

2.1.  Cryptographic computations

   All cryptographic computations are done using the Curve25519 function
   defined in [Curve25519] [I-D.irtf-cfrg-curves].  In this memo, this
   function is considered as a black box that takes as input a (secret
   key, public key) pair and outputs a public key.  Public keys are
   defined as strings of 32 bytes.  Secret keys are defined as 255 bits
   numbers such as the high-order bit (bit 254) is set, and the three
   lowest-order bits are unset.  In addition, a common public key,
   denoted by G, is shared by all users.

   An ECDHE key exchange using Curve25519 goes as follows.  Each party
   picks a secret key d uniformly at random and computes the
   corresponding public key x = Curve25519(d, G).  Parties exchange
   their public keys (see Section 2.3) and compute a shared secret as
   x_S = Curve25519(d, x_peer).  This shared secret is used directly as

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   the premaster secret, which is always exactly 32 bytes when ECDHE
   with Curve25519 is used.

   A complete description of the Curve25519 function, as well as a few
   implementation notes, are provided in Appendix A.

2.2.  Curve negotiation and new NamedCurve value

   Curve negotiation uses the mechanisms introduced by [RFC4492],
   without modification except the following restriction: in the
   ECParameters structure, only the named_curve case can be used with
   Curve25519.  Accordingly, arbitrary_explicit_prime_curves in the
   Supported Curves extension does not imply support for Curve25519,
   even though the Curve25519 function happens to be defined using an
   elliptic curve over a prime field.

   The reason for this restriction is that explicit_prime is only suited
   to the so-called Short Weierstrass representation of elliptic curves,
   while Curve25519 uses a different representation for performance and
   security reasons.

   This document adds a new NamedCurve value for Curve25519 as follows.

         enum {
              Curve25519(TBD1),
         } NamedCurve;

   Curve25519 is suitable for use with DTLS [RFC6347].

   Since Curve25519 is not designed to be used in signatures, clients
   who offer ECDHE_ECDSA ciphersuites and advertise support for
   Curve25519 in the elliptic_curves ClientHello extension SHOULD also
   advertise support for at least one curve suitable for ECDSA.  Servers
   MUST NOT select an ECDHE_ECDSA ciphersuite if there are no common
   curves suitable for ECDSA.

2.3.  Public Key representation and new ECPointFormat value

   This section defines a new point format suitable to encode Curve25519
   public keys, as well as an identifier to negotiate this new format in
   TLS, and includes guidance on their use.

   The curves defined in [RFC4492] define a public key as a point on the
   curve.  In order to exchange public keys, the points are serialized
   as a string of bytes using one of the formats defined in [SEC1].
   These encodings begin with a leading byte identifying the format,
   followed by a string of bytes, whose length is uniquely determined by
   the leading byte and curve used.

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   Since Curve25519 public keys already are string of bytes, no
   serialization is needed.  However, a leading byte with value 0x41 is
   prepended to the public key to identify the format.  The goal,
   besides consistency with the SEC1 formats, is to allow using other
   formats with Curve25519 in the future if needed.

   In order to negotiate this format in TLS, a new ECPointFormat is
   defined as follows.

         enum {
              montgomery_x_le(TBD2),
         } ECPointFormat;

   This format is currently the only format defined for use with
   Curve25519.  Clients offering Curve25519 in the Supported Elliptic
   Curves extension MUST also offer montgomery_x_le in the Supported
   Point Format extension.  Servers selecting Curve25519 for key
   exchange MUST include montgomery_x_le in their Supported Point Format
   extension.  Servers willing to use Curve25519 MUST NOT assume that
   the client supports the montgomery_x_le format if the client did not
   advertise it explicitly.

   When included in a ServerKeyExchange or ClientKeyExchange message,
   the public key is wrapped in an ECPoint structure as defined in
   [RFC4492], whose payload is as described above.  For example, a
   public key with value 2A ...  2A appears on the wire as follows
   (including the length byte of ECPoint.point).

           21 41 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A
           2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A 2A

2.4.  Public key validation

   With the curves defined by [RFC4492], each party must validate the
   public key sent by its peer before performing cryptographic
   computations with it.  Failing to do so allows attackers to gain
   information about the private key, to the point that they may recover
   the entire private key in a few requests, if that key is not really
   ephemeral.

   Curve25519 was designed in a way that the result of Curve25519(x, d)
   will never reveal information about d, provided it was chosen as
   prescribed, for any value of x.

   Let's define legitimate values of x as the values that can be
   obtained as x = Curve25519(G, d') for some d, and call the other
   values illegitimate.  The definition of the Curve25519 function shows

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   that legitimate values all share the following property: the high-
   order bit of the last byte is not set.

   Since there are some implementation of the Curve25519 function that
   impose this restriction on their input and others that don't,
   implementations of Curve25519 in TLS SHOULD reject public keys when
   the high-order bit of the last byte is set (in other words, when the
   value of the leftmost byte is greater than 0x7F) in order to prevent
   implementation fingerprinting.

   Other than this recommended check, implementations do not need to
   ensure that the public keys they receive are legitimate: this is not
   necessary for security with Curve25519.

3.  IANA Considerations

   IANA is requested to assign numbers for Curve25519 listed in
   Section 2.2 to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Parameters registry
   EC Named Curve [IANA-TLS] as follows.

               +-------+-------------+---------+-----------+
               | Value | Description | DTLS-OK | Reference |
               +-------+-------------+---------+-----------+
               |  TBD1 |  Curve25519 |    Y    |  This doc |
               +-------+-------------+---------+-----------+

   IANA is also requested to assign numbers for Curve25519 listed in
   Section 2.3 to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Parameters registry
   EC Point Format [IANA-TLS] as follows.

             +-------+-----------------+---------+-----------+
             | Value |   Description   | DTLS-OK | Reference |
             +-------+-----------------+---------+-----------+
             |  TBD2 | montgomery_x_le |    Y    |  This doc |
             +-------+-----------------+---------+-----------+

4.  Security Considerations

   The security considerations of [RFC5246] and most of the security
   considerations of [RFC4492] apply accordingly.

   Curve25519 is designed to facilitate the production of high-
   performance constant-time implementations of the Curve25519 function.
   Implementors are encouraged to use a constant-time implementation of
   the Curve25519 function.  This point is of crucial importance if the
   implementation chooses to reuse its supposedly ephemeral key pair for
   many key exchanges, which some implementations do in order to improve
   performance.

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   Curve25519 is believed to be at least as secure as the secp256r1
   curve defined in [RFC4492], also know as NIST P-256.  While the NIST
   curves are advertised as being chosen verifiably at random, there is
   no explanation for the seeds used to generate them.  In contrast, the
   process used to pick Curve25519 is fully documented and rigid enough
   so that independent verification has been done.  This is widely seen
   as a security advantage for Curve25519, since it prevents the
   generating party from maliciously manipulating the parameters.

   Another family of curves available in TLS, generated in a fully
   verifiable way, is the Brainpool curves [RFC7027].  Specifically,
   brainpoolP256 is expected to provide a level of security comparable
   to Curve25519 and NIST P-256.  However, due to the use of pseudo-
   random prime, it is significantly slower than NIST P-256, which is
   itself slower than Curve25519.

   See [SafeCurves] for more comparisons between curves.

5.  Acknowledgements

   Several people provided comments and suggestions that helped improve
   this document: Kurt Roeckx, Andrey Jivsov, Robert Ransom, Rich Salz,
   David McGrew, Simon Huerlimann.

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC4492]  Blake-Wilson, S., Bolyard, N., Gupta, V., Hawk, C., and B.
              Moeller, "Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Cipher Suites
              for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 4492, May 2006.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.

   [RFC6347]  Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
              Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, January 2012.

   [I-D.irtf-cfrg-curves]
              Langley, A., Salz, R., and S. Turner, "Elliptic Curves for
              Security", draft-irtf-cfrg-curves-01 (work in progress),
              January 2015.

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6.2.  Informative References

   [Curve25519]
              Bernstein, J., "Curve25519: New Diffie-Hellman Speed
              Records", LNCS 3958, pp. 207-228, February 2006,
              <http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11745853_14>.

   [IANA-TLS]
              Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, "Transport Layer
              Security (TLS) Parameters",
              <http://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-parameters/
              tls-parameters.xml>.

   [SafeCurves]
              Bernstein, D. and T. Lange, "SafeCurves: choosing safe
              curves for elliptic-curve cryptography.", January 2014,
              <http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/>.

   [RFC7027]  Merkle, J. and M. Lochter, "Elliptic Curve Cryptography
              (ECC) Brainpool Curves for Transport Layer Security
              (TLS)", RFC 7027, October 2013.

   [SEC1]     Certicom Research, , "Standards for Efficient Cryptography
              (SEC) 1", September 2000.

   [EFD]      Bernstein, D. and T. Lange, "Explicit-Formulas Database:
              XZ coordinates for Montgomery curves", January 2014,
              <http://www.hyperelliptic.org/EFD/g1p/
              auto-montgom-xz.html>.

   [NaCl]     Bernstein, D., "Cryptography in NaCL", March 2013,
              <http://cr.yp.to/highspeed/naclcrypto-20090310.pdf>.

Appendix A.  The curve25519 function

A.1.  Formulas

   This section completes Section 2.1 by defining the Curve25519
   function and the common public key G.  It is meant as an alternative,
   self-contained specification for the Curve25519 function, possibly
   easier to follow than the original paper for most implementors.

A.1.1.  Field Arithmetic

   Throughout this section, P denotes the integer 2^255-19 =
   0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFED.
   The letters X and Z, and their numbered variants such as x1, z2, etc.
   denote integers modulo P, that is integers between 0 and P-1 and

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   every operation between them is implictly done modulo P.  For
   addition, subtraction and multiplication this means doing the
   operation in the usual way and then replacing the result with the
   remainder of its division by P.  For division, "X / Z" means
   mutliplying (mod P) X by the modular inverse of Z mod P.

   A convenient way to define the modular inverse of Z mod P is as
   Z^(P-2) mod P, that is Z to the power of 2^255-21 mod P.  It is also
   a practical way of computing it, using a square-and-multiply method.

   The four operations +, -, *, / modulo P are known as the field
   operations.  Techniques for efficient implementation of the field
   operations are outside the scope of this document.

A.1.2.  Conversion to and from internal format

   For the purpose of this section, we will define a Curve25519 point as
   a pair (X, Z) were X and Z are integers mod P (as defined above).
   Though public keys were defined to be strings of 32 bytes, internally
   they are represented as curve points.  This subsection describes the
   conversion process as two functions: PubkeyToPoint and PointToPubkey.

       PubkeyToPoint:
       Input: a public key b_0, ..., b_31
       Output: a Curve25519 point (X, Z)
           1. Set X = b_0 + 256 * b_1 + ... + 256^31 * b_31 mod P
           2. Set Z = 1
           3. Output (X, Z)

       PointToPubkey:
       Input: a Curve25519 point (X, Z)
       Output: a public key b_0, ..., b_31
           1. Set x1 = X / Z mod P
           2. Set b_0, ... b_31 such that
               x1 = b_0 + 256 * b_1 + ... + 256^31 * b_31 mod P
           3. Output b_0, ..., b_31

A.1.3.  Scalar Multiplication

   We first introduce the DoubleAndAdd function, defined as follows
   (formulas taken from [EFD]).

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       DoubleAndAdd:
       Input: two points (X2, Z2), (X3, Z3), and an integer mod P: X1
       Output: two points (X4, Z4), (X5, Z5)
       Constant: the integer mod P: a24 = 121666 = 0x01DB42
       Variables: A, AA, B, BB, E, C, D, DA, CB are integers mod P
           1. Do the following computations mod P:
               A  = X2 + Z2
               AA = A2
               B  = X2 - Z2
               BB = B2
               E  = AA - BB
               C  = X3 + Z3
               D  = X3 - Z3
               DA = D * A
               CB = C * B
               X5 = (DA + CB)^2
               Z5 = X1 * (DA - CB)^2
               X4 = AA * BB
               Z4 = E * (BB + a24 * E)
           2. Output (X4, Z4) and (X5, Z5)

   This may be taken as the abstract definition of an arbitrary-looking
   function.  However, let's mention "the true meaning" of this
   function, without justification, in order to help the reader make
   more sense of it.  It is possible to define operations "+" and "-"
   between Curve25519 points.  Then, assuming (X2, Z2) - (X3, Z3) = (X1,
   1), the DoubleAndAdd function returns points such that (X4, Z4) =
   (X2, Z2) + (X2, Z2) and (X5, Z5) = (X2, Z2) + (X3, Z3).

   Taking the "+" operation as granted, we can define multiplication of
   a Curve25519 point by a positive integer as N * (X, Z) = (X, Z) + ...
   + (X, Z), with N point additions.  It is possible to compute this
   operation, known as scalar multiplication, using an algorithm called
   the Montgomery ladder, as follows.

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       ScalarMult:
       Input: a Curve25519 point: (X, 1) and a 255-bits integer: N
       Output: a point (X1, Z1)
       Variable: a point (X2, Z2)
           0. View N as a sequence of bits b_254, ..., b_0,
               with b_254 the most significant bit
               and b_0 the least significant bit.
           1. Set X1 = 1 and Z1 = 0
           2. Set X2 = X and Z2 = 1
           3. For i from 254 downwards to 0, do:
               If b_i == 0, then:
                   Set (X2, Z2) and (X1, Z1) to the output of
                   DoubleAndAdd((X2, Z2), (X1, Z1), X)
               else:
                   Set (X1, Z1) and (X2, Z2) to the output of
                   DoubleAndAdd((X1, Z1), (X2, Z2), X)
           4. Output (X1, Z1)

A.1.4.  Conclusion

   We are now ready to define the Curve25519 function itself.

       Curve25519:
       Input: a public key P and a secret key S
       Output: a public key Q
       Variables: two Curve25519 points (X, Z) and (X1, Z1)
           1. Set (X, Z) = PubkeyToPoint(P)
           2. Set (X1, Z1) = ScalarMult((X, Z), S)
           3. Set Q = PointToPubkey((X1, Z1))
           4. Output Q

   The common public key G mentioned in the first paragraph of
   Section 2.1 is defined as G = PointToPubkey((9, 1).

A.2.  Test vectors

   The following test vectors are taken from [NaCl].  Compared to this
   reference, the private key strings have been applied the ClampC
   function of the reference and converted to integers in order to fit
   the description given in [Curve25519] and the present memo.

   The secret key of party A is denoted by S_a, it public key by P_a,
   and similarly for party B.  The shared secret is SS.

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             S_a = 0x6A2CB91DA5FB77B12A99C0EB872F4CDF
                     4566B25172C1163C7DA518730A6D0770

             P_a = 85 20 F0 09 89 30 A7 54 74 8B 7D DC B4 3E F7 5A
                   0D BF 3A 0D 26 38 1A F4 EB A4 A9 8E AA 9B 4E 6A

             S_b = 0x6BE088FF278B2F1CFDB6182629B13B6F
                     E60E80838B7FE1794B8A4A627E08AB58

             P_b = DE 9E DB 7D 7B 7D C1 B4 D3 5B 61 C2 EC E4 35 37
                   3F 83 43 C8 5B 78 67 4D AD FC 7E 14 6F 88 2B 4F

              SS = 4A 5D 9D 5B A4 CE 2D E1 72 8E 3B F4 80 35 0F 25
                   E0 7E 21 C9 47 D1 9E 33 76 F0 9B 3C 1E 16 17 42

A.3.  Side-channel considerations

   Curve25519 was specifically designed so that correct, fast, constant-
   time implementations are easier to produce.  In particular, using a
   Montgomery ladder as described in the previous section ensures that,
   for any valid value of the secret key, the same sequence of field
   operations are performed, which eliminates a major source of side-
   channel leakage.

   However, merely using Curve25519 with a Montgomery ladder does not
   prevent all side-channels by itself, and some point are the
   responsibility of implementors:

   1.  In step 3 of SclarMult, avoid branches depending on b_i, as well
       as memory access patterns depending on b_i, for example by using
       safe conditional swaps on the inputs and outputs of DoubleAndAdd.

   2.  Avoid data-dependant branches and memory access patterns in the
       implementation of field operations.

   Techniques for implementing the field operations in constant time and
   with high performance are out of scope of this document.  Let's
   mention however that, provided constant-time multiplication is
   available, division can be computed in constant time using
   exponentiation as described in Appendix A.1.1.

   If using constant-time implementations of the field operations is not
   convenient, an option to reduce the information leaked this way is to
   replace step 2 of the SclarMult function with:

           2a. Pick Z uniformly randomly between 1 and P-1 included
           2b. Set X2 = X * Z and Z2 = Z

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   This method is known as randomizing projective coordinates.  However,
   it is no guaranteed to avoid all side-channel leaks related to field
   operations.

   Side-channel attacks are an active reseach domain that still sees new
   significant results, so implementors of the Curve25519 function are
   advised to follow recent security research closely.

Authors' Addresses

   Simon Josefsson
   SJD AB

   Email: simon@josefsson.org

   Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard
   Independent / PolarSSL

   Email: mpg@elzevir.fr

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