Network Working Group A. Davidson
Internet-Draft Cloudflare Portugal
Intended status: Informational 13 July 2020
Expires: 14 January 2021
Privacy Pass: Architectural Framework
draft-davidson-pp-architecture-01
Abstract
This document specifies the architectural framework for constructing
secure and anonymity-preserving instantiations of the Privacy Pass
protocol. It provides recommendations on how the protocol ecosystem
should be constructed to ensure the privacy of clients, and the
security of all participating entities.
Status of This Memo
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Ecosystem participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2.1. Client identifying information . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Key management framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1. Public key registries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. Key rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3. Ciphersuites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Server running modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.1. Single-Verifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2. Delegated-Verifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.3. Asynchronous-Verifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.4. Public-Verifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.5. Bounded number of servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. Client-Server trust relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Privacy considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.1. Server key rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7.2. Large numbers of servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7.2.1. Allowing larger number of servers . . . . . . . . . . 13
7.3. Partitioning of server key material . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.4. Additional token metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.5. Tracking and identity leakage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7.6. Client incentives for anonymity reduction . . . . . . . . 15
8. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8.1. Double-spend protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8.2. Token exhaustion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8.3. Avoiding server centralization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Protocol parametrization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9.1. Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
9.2. Example parameterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
9.3. Allowing more servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
10. Extension integration policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
11. Existing applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
11.1. Cloudflare challenge pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
11.2. Trust Token API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
11.3. Zero-knowledge Access Passes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
11.4. Basic Attention Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
11.5. Token Based Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
12. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
12.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
12.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Appendix A. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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1. Introduction
The Privacy Pass protocol provides an anonymity-preserving mechanism
for authorization of clients with servers. The protocol is detailed
in [draft-davidson-pp-protocol] and is intended for use in the
application-layer.
The way that the ecosystem around the protocol is set up can have
significant impacts on the stated privacy and security guarantees of
the protocol. For instance, the number of servers issuing Privacy
Pass tokens, along with the number of registered clients, determines
the anonymity set of each individual client. Moreover, this can be
influenced by other factors, such as: the key rotation policy used by
each server; and, the number of supported ciphersuites. There are
also client behavior patterns that can reduce the effective security
of the server.
In this document, we will provide a structural framework for building
the ecosystem around the Privacy Pass protocol. The core of the
document also includes policies for the following considerations.
* How server key material should be managed and accessed.
* Compatible server issuance and redemption running modes and
associated expectations.
* How clients should evaluate server trust relationships.
* Security and privacy properties of the protocol.
* A concrete assessment and parametrization of the privacy budget
associated with different settings of the above policies.
* The incorporation of potential extensions into the wider
ecosystem.
Finally, we will discuss existing applications that make use of the
Privacy Pass protocol, and highlight how these may fit with the
proposed framework.
2. 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].
The following terms are used throughout this document.
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* Server: An entity that issues anonymous tokens to clients. In
symmetric verification cases, the server must also verify tokens.
Also referred to as the server.
* Client: An entity that seeks authorization from a server.
We assume that all protocol messages are encoded into raw byte format
before being sent. We use the TLS presentation language [RFC8446] to
describe the structure of the data that is communicated and stored.
3. Ecosystem participants
The Privacy Pass ecosystem refers to the global framework in which
multiple instances of the Privacy Pass protocol operate. This refers
to all servers that support the protocol, or any extension of it,
along with all of the clients that may interact with these servers.
The ecosystem itself, and the way it is constructed, is critical for
evaluating the privacy of each individual client. We assume that a
client's privacy refers to fraction of users that it represents in
the anonymity set that it belongs to. We discuss this more in
Section 7.
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+-----------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Ecosystem |
| |
| |
| |
| +-----+ |
| | | +-----+ |
| | C1 | <--------------------> | | |
| | | | S1 | |
| +-----+ +-------------> | | |
| | +-----+ |
| | |
| +-----+ | |
| | | <------+ |
| | C2 | |
| | | <------+ +-----+ |
| +-----+ +-------------> | | |
| | S2 | |
| +-------------> | | |
| +-----+ | +-----+ |
| | | | |
| | C3 | <------+ |
| | | |
| +-----+ |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------+
In the above diagram, the arrows indicate the open channels between a
client and a server. An open channel indicates that a client accepts
Privacy Pass tokens from this server.
If no channel exists, this means that the client chooses not to
accept tokens from (or redeem tokens with) that particular server.
We discuss the roles of servers and clients further in Section 3.1
and Section 3.2, respectively.
3.1. Servers
Generally, servers in the Privacy Pass ecosystem are entities whose
primary function is to undertake the role of the "server" in
[draft-davidson-pp-protocol]. To facilitate this, the server MUST
hold a Privacy Pass protocol keypair at any given time. The server
public key MUST be made available to all clients in such a way that
key rotations and other updates are publicly visible. The server MAY
also require additional state for ensuring this. We provide a wider
discussion in Section 4.
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Note that, in the core protocol instantiation from
[draft-davidson-pp-protocol], the redemption phase is a symmetric
protocol. This means that the server is the same server that
ultimately processes token redemptions from clients. However,
plausible extensions to the protocol specification may allow public
verification of tokens by entities which do not hold the secret
Privacy Pass keying material. We highlight possible client and
server configurations in Section 5.
The server must be uniquely identifiable by all clients with a
consistent identifier.
3.2. Clients
Clients in the Privacy Pass ecosystem are entities whose primary
function is to undertake the role of the "Client" in
[draft-davidson-pp-protocol]. Clients are assumed to only store data
related to the tokens that it has been issued by the server. This
storage is used for constructing redemption requests.
Clients MAY choose not to accept tokens from servers that they do not
trust. See Section 6 for a wider discussion.
3.2.1. Client identifying information
Privacy properties of this protocol do not take into account other
possibly identifying information available in an implementation, such
as a client's IP address. Servers which monitor IP addresses may use
this to track client redemption patterns over time. Clients cannot
check whether servers monitor such identifying information. Thus,
clients SHOULD minimize or remove identifying information where
possible, e.g., by using anonymity-preserving tools such as Tor to
interact with servers.
4. Key management framework
The key material and protocol configuration that a server uses to
issue tokens corresponds to a number of different pieces of
information.
* The ciphersuite that the server is using.
* The public keys that are active for the server.
For reasons that we address later in Section 7, the way that the
server publishes and maintains this information impacts the effective
privacy of the clients. In this section, we describe the main
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policies that need to be satisfied for a key management system in a
Privacy Pass ecosystem.
Note that we only specify a set of guidelines and recommendations for
operating a public key registry in this document. Actual
specification of such a registry and how it operates will be covered
elsewhere.
4.1. Public key registries
Server's must provide their public keys to clients along with details
about the cryptographic ciphersuite that they are using. In
Section 7, we address the importance of providing clients with
sources of truth for learning the server's key configuration.
In particular, server key material MUST be publicly available in a
tamper-proof data structure, which we refer to as a key registry. A
registry must be globally consistent. Clients using the same
registry should coordinate in some way to ensure they have a
consistent view of said registry. This can be done via gossiping or
some other mechanism. The exact mechanism for this coordination will
be described elsewhere. It is assumed there will be at least one
such mechanism.
It is RECOMMENDED that each key registry is an append-only data
structure, such as a Merkle Tree. The key registry should be
operated independently of any server that publishes key material to
the registry. This ensures that any client can make better
judgements on whether to trust the registry and, transitively, each
server.
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+--------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Ecosystem +---+ |
| | C | |
| +--------------+ <------ pkS1 ----> +---+ |
| | Registry 1 | |
| ++-------------+ <-------------- pkS1 --------> +---+ |
| | | C | |
| | +--------------+ <--------- pkS3 --------> +---+ |
| | | Registry 2 | |
| pkS1 +----^-------^-+ <--------- pkS2 --------> +---+ |
| | | | | C | |
| | pkS2 pkS3 +---+ |
| | | | |
| ++---+ +-+--+ +-+--+ |
| | S1 | | S2 | | S3 | |
| +----+ +----+ +----+ |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
While there may be multiple key registries for a given ecosystem, a
server MUST only publish its key material to a single registry. This
ensures that the server is keeping a consistent view of its key
material.
4.2. Key rotation
Token issuance associates all issued tokens with a particular choice
of key. If a server issues tokens with many keys, then this may harm
the anonymity of the Client. For example, they would be able to map
the Client's access patterns by inspecting which key each token they
possess has been issued under.
To prevent against this, servers MUST only use one private key for
issuing tokens at any given time. Servers may use two or more keys
for redemption to allow servers for seamless key rotation.
Key rotations must be limited in frequency for similar reasons. See
Section 9 for guidelines on what frequency of key rotations are
permitted.
4.3. Ciphersuites
Since a server is only permitted to have a single active issuing key,
this implies that only a single ciphersuite is allowed per issuance
period. If a server wishes to change their ciphersuite, they MUST do
so during a key rotation.
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5. Server running modes
We provide an overview of some of the possible frameworks for
configuring the way that servers run in the Privacy Pass ecosystem.
In short, servers may be configured to provide symmetric issuance and
redemption with clients. While some servers may be configured as
proxies that accept Privacy Pass data and send it to another server
that actually processes issuance or redemption data. Finally, we
also consider instances of the protocol that may permit public
verification.
The intention with providing each of these running modes is to cover
the different applications that utilize variants of the Privacy Pass
protocol. We RECOMMEND that any Privacy Pass server implementation
adheres to one of these frameworks.
5.1. Single-Verifier
The simplest way of considering the Privacy Pass protocol is in a
setting where the same server plays the role of server and verifier,
we call this "Single-Verifier" (SV).
Let S be the server, and C be the client. When S wants to issue
tokens to C, they invoke the issuance protocol where C generates
their own inputs, and S uses their secret key skS. In this setting,
C can only perform token redemption with S. When a token redemption
is required, C and S invoke the redemption phase of the protocol,
where C uses an issued token from a previous exchange, and S uses skS
to validate the redemption.
5.2. Delegated-Verifier
In this setting, each client C obtains issued tokens from a derver S
via the issuance phase of the protocol. The difference is that C can
prove that they hold a valid authorization with any verifier V. We
still only consider S to hold their own secret key. We name this
mode "Delegated-Verifier" (DV).
When C interacts with V, V can ask C to provide proof of
authorization to the separate server S. The first stage of the
redemption phase of the protocol is invoked between C and V, which
sees C send an unused redemption token to V. This message is then
used in a redemption exchange between V and S, where V plays the role
of the Client. Then S sends the result of the redemption
verification to V, and V uses this result to determine whether C has
a valid token.
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5.3. Asynchronous-Verifier
This setting is inspired by recently proposed APIs such as
[TrustTokenAPI]. It is similar to the DV configuration, except that
the verifiers V no longer interact with the server S. Only C
interacts with S, and this is done asynchronously to the
authorization request from V. Hence "Asynchronous-Verifier" (AV).
When V invokes a redemption for C, C then invokes a redemption
exchange with S in a separate session. If verification is carried
out successfully by S, S instead returns a Signed Redemption Record
(SRR) that contains the following information:
"result": {
"timestamp":"2019-10-09-11:06:11",
"verifier": "V",
},
"signature":sig,
The "signature" field carries a signature evaluated over the contents
of "result" using a long-term signing key for the server S, of which
the corresponding public key is well-known to C and V. This would
need to be published alongside other public key data for S. Then C
can prove that they hold a valid authorization from S to V by sending
the SRR to V. The SRR can be verified by V by verifying the
signature, using the well-known public key for S.
Such records can be cached to display again in the future. The
server can also add an expiry date to the record to determine when
the client must refresh the record.
5.4. Public-Verifier
We consider the case where client redemptions can be verified
publicly using the server public key. This allows for defining
extensions of Privacy Pass that use public-key cryptography to allow
public verification.
In this case, the client C obtains a redemption token from S. The
redemption token is publicly verifiable in the sense that any entity
that knows the public key for S can verify the token. This running
mode is known as "Public-Verifier" (PV).
5.5. Bounded number of servers
Each of the configurations above can be generalized to settings where
a bounded number of servers are allowed, and verifiers can invoke
authorization verification for any of the available servers.
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As we will discuss later in Section 7, configuring a large number of
servers can lead to privacy concerns for the clients in the
ecosystem. Therefore, we are careful to ensure that the number of
servers is kept strictly bounded. The actual servers can be replaced
with different servers as long as the total never exceeds this bound.
Moreover, server replacements also have an effect on client anonymity
that is similar to when a key rotation occurs. server so replacement
should only be permitted at similar intervals.
See Section 7 for more details about maintaining privacy with
multiple servers.
6. Client-Server trust relationship
It is important, based on the architecture above, that any client can
determine whether it would like to interact with a given server in
the ecosystem. Note that this decision must be taken before a client
issues a valid redemption to the server, since redemptions reveal the
anonymity set that the client belongs to.
This judgement can be based on a multitude of factors, associated
with the way that a server presents itself in the ecosystem. A non-
exhaustive list of server characteristics that a client MAY want to
check are the following.
* Which key registry a server posts their key updates to.
* How frequent key updates are issued, and which ciphersuite they
use.
* The reason given to initiate the redemption.
To aid client trust decisions, a server can publish a "Privacy Pass
policy" that documents the procedures that the server uses to ensure
that client privacy is respected. If a server does not publish such
a document then the client may choose to use its own judgement, or to
reject the server altogether.
It should be noted that the client trust decision can be made apriori
by specifying an allow-list of all servers that it accepts tokens
from. This means that these checks do not have to be performed
online.
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7. Privacy considerations
In the Privacy Pass protocol [draft-davidson-pp-protocol], redemption
tokens intentionally encode very little information beyond which key
was used to sign them. The protocol intentionally uses components
that provide cryptographic guarantees of this fact. However, even
with these guarantees, the way that the ecosystem is constructed can
be used to identify clients based on this limited information.
The goal of the Privacy Pass ecosystem is to construct an environment
that can easily measure (and maximize) the relative anonymity of any
client that is part of it. An inherent feature of being part of this
ecosystem is that any client can only remain private relative to the
entire space of users using the protocol. Moreover, by owning tokens
for a given set of keys, the client's anonymity set shrinks to the
total number of clients controlling tokens for the same keys.
In the following, we consider the possible ways that servers and
servers can leverage their position to try and reduce the anonymity
sets that clients belong to (or, user segregation). For each case,
we provide mitigations that the Privacy Pass ecosystem must implement
to prevent these actions.
7.1. Server key rotation
Techniques to introduce client "segregation" can be used to reduce
client anonymity. Such techniques are closely linked to the type of
key schedule that is used by the server. When a server rotates their
key, any client that invokes the issuance protocol in this key cycle
will be part of a group of possible clients owning valid tokens for
this key. To mechanize this attack strategy, a server could
introduce a key rotation policy that forces clients into small key
cycles. Thus, reducing the size of the anonymity set for these
clients.
We RECOMMEND that servers should only invoke key rotation for fairly
large periods of time such as between 1 and 12 weeks. Key rotations
represent a trade-off between client privacy and continued server
security. Therefore, it is still important that key rotations occur
on a fairly regular cycle to reduce the harmfulness of a server key
compromise.
With an active user-base, a week gives a fairly large window for
clients to participate in the Privacy Pass protocol and thus enjoy
the anonymity guarantees of being part of a larger group. The low
ceiling of 12 weeks prevents a key compromise from being too
destructive. If a server realizes that a key compromise has occurred
then the server should sample a new key, and upload the public key to
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the key registry; invoking any revocation procedures that may apply
for the old key.
7.2. Large numbers of servers
Similarly to the server rotation dynamic that is raised above, if
there are a large number of servers then segregation can occur. In
the FV, AV and PV running modes (Section 5), a verifier OV can
trigger redemptions for any of the available servers. Each
redemption token that a client holds essentially corresponds to a bit
of information about the client that OV can learn. Therefore, there
is an exponential loss in anonymity relative to the number of servers
that there are.
For example, if there are 32 servers, then OV learns 32 bits of
information about the client. If the distribution of server trust is
anything close to a uniform distribution, then this is likely to
uniquely identify any client amongst all other Internet users.
Assuming a uniform distribution is clearly the worst-case scenario,
and unlikely to be accurate, but it provides a stark warning against
allowing too many servers at any one time.
In cases where clients can hold tokens for all servers at any given
time, a strict bound SHOULD be applied to the active number of
servers in the ecosystem. We propose that allowing no more than 4
servers at any one time is highly preferable (leading to a maximum of
64 possible user segregations). However, as highlighted in
Section 9, having a very large user base (> 5 million users), could
potentially allow for larger values. server replacements should only
occur with the same frequency as config rotations as they can lead to
similar losses in anonymity if clients still hold redemption tokens
for previously active servers.
In addition, we RECOMMEND that trusted registries indicate at all
times which servers are deemed to be active. If a client is asked to
invoke any Privacy Pass exchange for an server that is not declared
active, then the client SHOULD refuse to retrieve the server
configuration during the protocol.
7.2.1. Allowing larger number of servers
The bounds on the numbers of servers that we proposed above are very
restrictive. This is due to the fact that we considered a situation
where a client could be issued (and forced to redeem) tokens for any
issuing key.
An alternative system is to ensure a robust strategy for ensuring
that clients only possess redemption tokens for a similarly small
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number of servers at any one time. This prevents a malicious
verifier from being able to invoke redemptions for many servers since
the client would only be holding redemption tokens for a small set of
servers. When a client is issued tokens from a new server and
already has tokens from the maximum number of servers, it simply
deletes the oldest set of redemption tokens in storage and then
stores the newly acquired tokens.
For example, if clients ensure that they only hold redemption tokens
for 4 servers, then this increases the potential size of the
anonymity sets that the client belongs to. However, this doesn't
protect clients completely as it would if only 4 servers were
permitted across the whole system. For example, these 4 servers
could be different for each client. Therefore, the selection of
servers they possess tokens for is still revealing. Understanding
this trade-off is important in deciding the effective anonymity of
each client in the system.
7.3. Partitioning of server key material
If there are multiple key registries, or if a key registry colludes
with an server, then it is possible to provide a split-view of an
server's key material to different clients. This would involve
posting different key material in different locations, or actively
modifying the key material at a given location.
Key registries should operate independently of server's in the
ecosystem, and within the guidelines stated in Section 4. Any client
should follow the recommendations in Section 6 for determining
whether an server and its key material should be trusted.
7.4. Additional token metadata
In [draft-davidson-pp-protocol], it is permissible to add public and
private metadata bits to redemption tokens. The core protocol
instantiation that is described does not include additional metadata.
However, future instantiations may use this functionality to provide
redemption verifiers with additional information about the user.
Note that any arbitrary bits of information can be used to further
segment the size of the user's anonymity set. Any server that wanted
to track a single user could add a single metadata bit to user
tokens. For the tracked user it would set the bit to "1", and "0"
otherwise. Adding additional bits provides an exponential increase
in tracking granularity similarly to introducing more servers (though
with more potential targeting).
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For this reason, the amount of metadata used by an server in creating
redemption tokens must be taken into account - together with the bits
of information that server's may learn about clients otherwise. We
discuss this more in Section 9.
7.5. Tracking and identity leakage
Privacy losses may be encountered if too many redemptions are allowed
in a short burst. For instance, in the Internet setting, this may
allow delegated or asynchronous verifiers to learn more information
from the metadata that the client may hold (such as first-party
cookies for other domains). Mitigations for this issue are similar
to those proposed in Section 7.2 for tackling the problem of having
large number of servers.
In AV, cached SRRs and their associated server public keys have a
similar tracking potential to first party cookies in the browser
setting. These considerations will be covered in a separate
document, detailing Privacy Pass protocol integration into the wider
web architecture [draft-svaldez-pp-http-api].
7.6. Client incentives for anonymity reduction
Clients may see an incentive in accepting all tokens that are issued
by a server, even if the tokens fail later verification checks. This
is because tokens effectively represent a form of currency that they
can later redeem for some sort of benefit. The verification checks
that are put in place are there to ensure that the client does not
sacrifice their anonymity. However, a client may judge the
"monetary" benefit of owning tokens to be greater than their own
privacy.
Firstly, a client behaving in this way would not be compliant with
the protocol, as laid out in [draft-davidson-pp-protocol].
Secondly, acting in this way only affects the privacy of the
immediate client. There is an exception if a large number of clients
colluded to accept bad data, then any client that didn't accept would
be part of a smaller anonymity set. However, such a situation would
be identical to the situation where the total number of clients in
the ecosystem is small. Therefore, the reduction in the size of the
anonymity set would be equivalent; see Section 7.2 for more details.
8. Security considerations
We present a number of security considerations that prevent malicious
clients from abusing the protocol.
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8.1. Double-spend protection
All issuing server should implement a robust storage-query mechanism
for checking that tokens sent by clients have not been spent before.
Such tokens only need to be checked for each server individually.
But all servers must perform global double-spend checks to avoid
clients from exploiting the possibility of spending tokens more than
once against distributed token checking systems. For the same
reason, the global data storage must have quick update times. While
an update is occurring it may be possible for a malicious client to
spend a token more than once.
8.2. Token exhaustion
When a client holds tokens for an server, it is possible for any
verifier to invoke that client to redeem tokens for that server.
This can lead to an attack where a malicious verifier can force a
client to spend all of their tokens for a given server. To prevent
this from happening, methods should be put into place to prevent many
tokens from being redeemed at once.
For example, it may be possible to cache a redemption for the entity
that is invoking a token redemption. If the verifier requests more
tokens then the client simply returns the cached token that it
returned previously. This could also be handled by simply not
redeeming any tokens for verification if a redemption had already
occurred in a given time window.
In AV, the client instead caches the SRR that it received in the
asynchronous redemption exchange with the server. If the same
verifier attempts another redemption request, then the client simply
returns the cached SRR. The SRRs can be revoked by the server, if
need be, by providing an expiry date or by signaling that records
from a particular window need to be refreshed.
8.3. Avoiding server centralization
[[OPEN ISSUE: explain potential and mitigations for server
centralization]]
9. Protocol parametrization
We provide a summary of the parameters that we use in the Privacy
Pass protocol ecosystem. These parameters are informed by both
privacy and security considerations that are highlighted in Section 7
and Section 8, respectively. These parameters are intended as a
single reference point for those implementing the protocol.
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Firstly, let U be the total number of users, I be the total number of
servers. We let M be the total number of metadata bits that are
allowed to be added by any given server. Assuming that each user
accept tokens from a uniform sampling of all the possible servers, as
a worst-case analysis, this segregates users into a total of 2^I
buckets. As such, we see an exponential reduction in the size of the
anonymity set for any given user. This allows us to specify the
privacy constraints of the protocol below, relative to the setting of
A.
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| parameter | value |
+==========================================+==================+
| Minimum anonymity set size (A) | 5000 |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| Recommended key lifetime (L) | 2 - 24 weeks |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| Recommended key rotation frequency (F) | L/2 |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| Maximum additional metadata bits (M) | 1 |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| Maximum allowed servers (I) | (log_2(U/A)-1)/2 |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| Maximum active issuance keys | 1 |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| Maximum active redemption keys | 2 |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
| Minimum cryptographic security parameter | 128 bits |
+------------------------------------------+------------------+
Table 1
9.1. Justification
We make the following assumptions in these parameter choices.
* Inferring the identity of a user in a 5000-strong anonymity set is
difficult.
* After 2 weeks, all clients in a system will have rotated to the
new key.
In terms of additional metadata, the only concrete applications of
Privacy Pass that use additional metadata require just a single bit.
Therefore, we set the ceiling of permitted metadata to 1 bit for now,
this may be revisited in future revisions.
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The maximum choice of I is based on the equation 1/2 * U/2^(2I) = A.
This is derived from the fact that permitting I servers lead to 2^I
segregations of the total user-base U. Moreover, if we permit M = 1,
then this effectively halves the anonymity set for each server, and
thus we incur a factor of 2I in the exponent. By reducing I, we
limit the possibility of performing the attacks mentioned in
Section 7.
We must also account for each user holding issued data for more then
one possible active keys. While this may also be a vector for
monitoring the access patterns of clients, it is likely to
unavoidable that clients hold valid issuance data for the previous
key epoch. This also means that the server can continue to verify
redemption data for a previously used key. This makes the rotation
period much smoother for clients.
For privacy reasons, it is recommended that key epochs are chosen
that limit clients to holding issuance data for a maximum of two
keys. By choosing F = L/2 then the minimum value of F is a week,
since the minimum recommended value of L is 2 weeks. Therefore, by
the initial assumption, then all users should only have access to
only two keys at any given time. This reduces the anonymity set by
another half at most.
Finally, the minimum security parameter size is related to the
cryptographic security offered by the protocol that is run. This
parameter corresponds to the number of operations that any adversary
has in breaking one of the security guarantees in the Privacy Pass
protocol [draft-davidson-pp-protocol].
9.2. Example parameterization
Using the specification above, we can give some example
parameterizations. For example, the current Privacy Pass browser
extension [PPEXT] has nearly 300000 active users (from Chrome and
Firefox). As a result, log_2(U/A) is approximately 6 and so the
maximum value of I should be 3.
If the value of U is much bigger (e.g. 5 million) then this would
permit I = (log_2(5000000/5000)-1)/2 ~= 4 servers.
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9.3. Allowing more servers
Using the recommendations in Section 7.2.1, it is possible to
tolerate larger number of servers if clients in the ecosystem ensure
that they only store tokens for a small number of them. In
particular, if clients limit their storage of redemption tokens to
the bound implied by I, then prevents a malicious verifier from
triggering redemptions for all servers in the ecosystem.
10. Extension integration policy
The Privacy Pass protocol and ecosystem are both intended to be
receptive to extensions that expand the current set of functionality.
As specified in [draft-davidson-pp-protocol], all extensions to the
Privacy Pass protocol SHOULD be specified as separate documents that
modify the content of this document in some way. We provide guidance
on the type of modifications that are possible in the following.
Any such extension should also come with a detailed analysis of the
privacy impacts of the extension, why these impacts are justified,
and guidelines on changes to the parametrization in Section 9.
Similarly, extensions MAY also add new server running modes, if
applicable, to those that are documented in Section 5.
Any extension to the Privacy Pass protocol must adhere to the
guidelines specified in Section 4 for managing server public key
data.
11. Existing applications
The following is a non-exhaustive list of applications that currently
make use of the Privacy Pass protocol, or some variant of the
underlying functionality.
11.1. Cloudflare challenge pages
Cloudflare uses an implementation of the Privacy Pass protocol for
allowing clients that have previously interacted with their Internet
challenge protection system to bypass future challenges [PPSRV].
These challenges can be expensive for clients, and there have been
cases where bugs in the implementations can severely degrade client
accessibility.
Clients must install a browser extension [PPEXT] that acts as the
Privacy Pass client in an exchange with Cloudflare's Privacy Pass
server, when an initial challenge solution is provided. The client
extension stores the issued tokens and presents a valid redemption
token when it sees future Cloudflare challenges. If the redemption
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token is verified by the server, the client passes through the
security mechanism without completing a challenge.
11.2. Trust Token API
The Trust Token API [TrustTokenAPI] has been devised as a generic API
for providing Privacy Pass functionality in the browser setting. The
API is intended to be implemented directly into browsers so that
server's can directly trigger the Privacy Pass workflow.
11.3. Zero-knowledge Access Passes
The PrivateStorage API developed by Least Authority is a solution for
uploading and storing end-to-end encrypted data in the cloud. A
recent addition to the API [PrivateStorage] allows clients to
generate Zero-knowledge Access Passes (ZKAPs) that the client can use
to show that it has paid for the storage space that it is using. The
ZKAP protocol is based heavily on the Privacy Pass redemption
mechanism. The client receives ZKAPs when it pays for storage space,
and redeems the passes when it interacts with the PrivateStorage API.
11.4. Basic Attention Tokens
The browser Brave uses Basic Attention Tokens (BATs) to provide the
basis for an anonymity-preserving rewards scheme [Brave]. The BATs
are essentially Privacy Pass redemption tokens that are provided by a
central Brave server when a client performs some action that triggers
a reward event (such as watching an advertisement). When the client
amasses BATs, it can redeem them with the Brave central server for
rewards.
11.5. Token Based Services
Similarly to BATs, a more generic approach for providing anonymous
peers to purchase resources from anonymous servers has been proposed
[OpenPrivacy]. The protocol is based on a variant of Privacy Pass
and is intended to allow clients purchase (or pre-purchase) services
such as message hosting, by using Privacy Pass redemption tokens as a
form of currency. This is also similar to how ZKAPs are used.
12. References
12.1. Normative References
[draft-davidson-pp-protocol]
Davidson, A., "Privacy Pass: The Protocol", n.d.,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-davidson-pp-protocol-
00>.
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[draft-svaldez-pp-http-api]
Valdez, S., "Privacy Pass: HTTP API", n.d.,
<https://github.com/alxdavids/privacy-pass-
ietf/tree/master/drafts/draft-svaldez-pp-http-api>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8446] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.
12.2. Informative References
[Brave] "Brave Rewards", n.d., <https://brave.com/brave-rewards/>.
[OpenPrivacy]
"Token Based Services - Differences from PrivacyPass",
n.d., <https://openprivacy.ca/assets/towards-anonymous-
prepaid-services.pdf>.
[PPEXT] "Privacy Pass Browser Extension", n.d.,
<https://github.com/privacypass/challenge-bypass-
extension>.
[PPSRV] Sullivan, N., "Cloudflare Supports Privacy Pass", n.d.,
<https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-supports-privacy-
pass/>.
[PrivateStorage]
Steininger, L., "The Path from S4 to PrivateStorage",
n.d., <https://medium.com/least-authority/the-path-from-
s4-to-privatestorage-ae9d4a10b2ae>.
[TrustTokenAPI]
Google, ., "Getting started with Trust Tokens", n.d.,
<https://web.dev/trust-tokens/>.
Appendix A. Contributors
* Alex Davidson (alex.davidson92@gmail.com)
* Christopher Wood (caw@heapingbits.net)
Author's Address
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Alex Davidson
Cloudflare Portugal
Largo Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro 29
Lisbon
Portugal
Email: alex.davidson92@gmail.com
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