Oblivious HTTP Application Intermediation M. Thomson
Internet-Draft Mozilla
Intended status: Standards Track C. A. Wood
Expires: 9 February 2023 Cloudflare
8 August 2022
Oblivious HTTP
draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp-03
Abstract
This document describes a system for forwarding encrypted HTTP
messages. This allows a client to make multiple requests to an
origin server without that server being able to link those requests
to the client or to identify the requests as having come from the
same client, while placing only limited trust in the nodes used to
forward the messages.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://ietf-wg-
ohai.github.io/oblivious-http/draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp.html. Status
information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the Oblivious HTTP
Application Intermediation Working Group mailing list
(mailto:ohai@ietf.org), which is archived at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/ohai/. Subscribe at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ohai/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/ietf-wg-ohai/oblivious-http.
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 https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
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 9 February 2023.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 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 (https://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 Revised BSD License text as
described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Applicability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Key Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1. Key Configuration Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2. Key Configuration Media Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. HPKE Encapsulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1. Encapsulation of Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2. Encapsulation of Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.3. Request and Response Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5. HTTP Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.1. Informational Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.2. Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.1. Client Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6.2. Relay Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.2.1. Differential Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.2.2. Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.2.3. Traffic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.3. Server Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.4. Key Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.5. Replay Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.5.1. Use of Date for Anti-Replay . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.5.2. Correcting Clock Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
6.6. Forward Secrecy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6.7. Post-Compromise Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.8. Client Clock Exposure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8. Operational and Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . 27
8.1. Performance Overhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
8.2. Resource Mappings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
8.3. Network Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
9. Repurposing the Encapsulation Format . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
10.1. message/ohttp-keys Media Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
10.2. message/ohttp-req Media Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
10.3. message/ohttp-res Media Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Appendix A. Complete Example of a Request and Response . . . . . 36
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
1. Introduction
A HTTP request reveals information about the client's identity to the
server. Some of that information is in the request content, and
therefore under the control of the client. However, the source IP
address of the underlying connection reveals information that the
client has only limited control over.
Even where an IP address is not directly associated with an
individual, the requests made from it can be correlated over time to
assemble a profile of client behavior. In particular, connection
reuse improves performance, but provides servers with the ability to
correlate requests that share a connection.
Client-configured HTTP proxies can provide a degree of protection
against IP address tracking, and systems like virtual private
networks and the Tor network [Dingledine2004] provide additional
options for clients.
However, even when IP address tracking is mitigated using one of
these techniques, each request needs to be on a completely new TLS
connection to avoid the connection itself being used to correlate
behavior. This imposes considerable performance and efficiency
overheads, due to the additional round trip to the server (at a
minumum), additional data exchanged, and additional CPU cost of
cryptographic computations.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
This document defines two kinds of HTTP resources -- Oblivious Relay
Resources and Oblivious Gateway Resources -- that process
encapsulated binary HTTP messages [BINARY] using Hybrid Public Key
Encryption (HPKE; [HPKE]). They can be composed to protect the
content of encapsulated requests and responses, thereby separating
the identity of a requester from the request.
Although this scheme requires support for two new kinds of oblivious
resources, it represents a performance improvement over options that
perform just one request in each connection. With limited trust
placed in the Oblivious Relay Resource (see Section 6), clients are
assured that requests are not uniquely attributed to them or linked
to other requests.
2. Overview
A client must initially know the following:
* The identity of an Oblivious Gateway Resource. This might include
some information about what Target Resources the Oblivious Gateway
Resource supports.
* The details of an HPKE public key that the Oblivious Gateway
Resource accepts, including an identifier for that key and the
HPKE algorithms that are used with that key.
* The identity of an Oblivious Relay Resource that will accept relay
requests carrying an encapsulated request as its content and
forward the content in these requests to a single Oblivious
Gateway Resource. See Section 8.2 for more information about the
mapping between Oblivious Relay and Gateway Resources.
This information allows the client to make a request of a Target
Resource with that resource having only a limited ability to
correlate that request with the client IP or other requests that the
client might make to that server.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
+---------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
| Client | | Relay | | Gateway | | Target |
| | | Resource | | Resource | | Resource |
+----+----+ +----+-----+ +-------+--+ +----+-----+
| | | |
| Relay | | |
| Request | | |
| [+ Encapsulated | | |
| Request ] | | |
+---------------->| Gateway | |
| | Request | |
| | [+ Encapsulated | |
| | Request ] | |
| +------------------->| Request |
| | +------------->|
| | | |
| | | Response |
| | Gateway |<-------------+
| | Response | |
| | [+ Encapsulated | |
| | Response ] | |
| Relay |<-------------------+ |
| Response | | |
| [+ Encapsulated | | |
| Response ] | | |
|<----------------+ | |
| | | |
Figure 1: Overview of Oblivious HTTP
In order to make a request to a Target Resource, the following steps
occur, as shown in Figure 1:
1. The client constructs an HTTP request for a Target Resource.
2. The client encodes the HTTP request in a binary HTTP message and
then encapsulates that message using HPKE and the process from
Section 4.1.
3. The client sends a POST request to the Oblivious Relay Resource
with the Encapsulated Request as the content of that message.
4. The Oblivious Relay Resource forwards this request to the
Oblivious Gateway resource.
5. The Oblivious Gateway Resource receives this request and removes
the HPKE protection to obtain an HTTP request.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
6. The Oblivious Gateway Resource makes an HTTP request that
includes the target URI, method, fields, and content of the
request it acquires.
7. The Target Resource answers this HTTP request with an HTTP
response.
8. The Oblivious Gateway Resource encapsulates the HTTP response
following the process in Section 4.2 and sends this in response
to the request from the Oblivious Relay Resource.
9. The Oblivious Relay Resource forwards this response to the
client.
10. The client removes the encapsulation to obtain the response to
the original request.
2.1. Applicability
Oblivious HTTP has limited applicability. Many uses of HTTP benefit
from being able to carry state between requests, such as with cookies
([RFC6265]), authentication (Section 11 of [HTTP]), or even
alternative services ([RFC7838]). Oblivious HTTP removes linkage at
the transport layer, which must be used in conjunction with
applications that do not carry state between requests.
Oblivious HTTP is primarily useful where privacy risks associated
with possible stateful treatment of requests are sufficiently large
that the cost of deploying this protocol can be justified. Oblivious
HTTP is simpler and less costly than more robust systems, like Prio
([PRIO]) or Tor ([Dingledine2004]), which can provide stronger
guarantees at higher operational costs.
Oblivious HTTP is more costly than a direct connection to a server.
Some costs, like those involved with connection setup, can be
amortized, but there are several ways in which Oblivious HTTP is more
expensive than a direct request:
* Each request requires at least two regular HTTP requests, which
adds latency.
* Each request is expanded in size with additional HTTP fields,
encryption-related metadata, and AEAD expansion.
* Deriving cryptographic keys and applying them for request and
response protection takes non-negligible computational resources.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
Examples of where preventing the linking of requests might justify
these costs include:
* DNS queries. DNS queries made to a recursive resolver reveal
information about the requester, particularly if linked to other
queries.
* Telemetry submission. Applications that submit reports about
their usage to their developers might use Oblivious HTTP for some
types of moderately sensitive data.
These are examples of requests where there is information in a
request that - if it were connected to the identity of the user -
might allow a server to learn something about that user even if the
identity of the user is pseudonymous. Other examples include the
submission of anonymous surveys, making search queries, or requesting
location-specific content (such as retrieving tiles of a map
display).
2.2. Conventions and Definitions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
Client: This document uses its own definition of client. When
referring to the HTTP definition of client (Section 3.3 of
[HTTP]), the term "HTTP client" is used; see Section 5.
Encapsulated Request: An HTTP request that is encapsulated in an
HPKE-encrypted message; see Section 4.1.
Encapsulated Response: An HTTP response that is encapsulated in an
HPKE-encrypted message; see Section 4.2.
Oblivious Relay Resource: An intermediary that forwards encapsulated
requests and responses between clients and a single Oblivious
Gateway Resource.
Oblivious Gateway Resource: A resource that can receive an
encapsulated request, extract the contents of that request,
forward it to a Target Resource, receive a response, encapsulate
that response, then return that response.
Target Resource: The resource that is the target of an encapsulated
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
request. This resource logically handles only regular HTTP
requests and responses and so might be ignorant of the use of
Oblivious HTTP to reach it.
Relay Request: An HTTP request from Client to Relay that contains an
encapsulated request as the content.
Relay Response: An HTTP response from Relay to Client that contains
an encapsulated response as the content.
Gateway Request: An HTTP request from Relay to Gateway that contains
an encapsulated request as the content.
Gateway Response: An HTTP response from Gateway to Relay that
contains an encapsulated response as the content.
This draft includes pseudocode that uses the functions and
conventions defined in [HPKE].
Encoding an integer to a sequence of bytes in network byte order is
described using the function encode(n, v), where n is the number of
bytes and v is the integer value. ASCII [ASCII] encoding of a string
s is indicated using the function encode_str(s). The function len()
returns the length of a sequence of bytes.
Formats are described using notation from Section 1.3 of [QUIC].
3. Key Configuration
A client needs to acquire information about the key configuration of
the Oblivious Gateway Resource in order to send encapsulated
requests. In order to ensure that clients do not encapsulate
messages that other entities can intercept, the key configuration
MUST be authenticated and have integrity protection.
This document does not define how that acquisition occurs. However,
in order to help facilitate interoperability, it does specify a
format for the keys. This ensures that different client
implementations can be configured in the same way and also enables
advertising key configurations in a consistent format. This format
might be used, for example with HTTPS, as part of a system for
configuring or discovering key configurations. Note however that
such a system needs to consider the potential for key configuration
to be used to compromise client privacy; see Section 7.
A client might have multiple key configurations to select from when
encapsulating a request. Clients are responsible for selecting a
preferred key configuration from those it supports. Clients need to
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
consider both the key encapsulation method (KEM) and the combinations
of key derivation function (KDF) and authenticated encryption with
associated data (AEAD) in this decision.
3.1. Key Configuration Encoding
A single key configuration consists of a key identifier, a public
key, an identifier for the KEM that the public key uses, and a set
HPKE symmetric algorithms. Each symmetric algorithm consists of an
identifier for a KDF and an identifier for an AEAD.
Figure 2 shows a single key configuration.
HPKE Symmetric Algorithms {
HPKE KDF ID (16),
HPKE AEAD ID (16),
}
OHTTP Key Config {
Key Identifier (8),
HPKE KEM ID (16),
HPKE Public Key (Npk * 8),
HPKE Symmetric Algorithms Length (16),
HPKE Symmetric Algorithms (32..262140),
}
Figure 2: A Single Key Configuration
The definitions for the identifiers used in HPKE and the semantics of
the algorithms they identify can be found in [HPKE]. The Npk
parameter is determined by the choice of HPKE KEM, which can also be
found in [HPKE].
3.2. Key Configuration Media Type
The "application/ohttp-keys" format is a media type that identifies a
serialized collection of key configurations. The content of this
media type comprises one or more key configuration encodings (see
Section 3.1) that are concatenated; see Section 10.1 for a definition
of the media type.
Evolution of the key configuration format is supported through the
definition of new formats that are identified by new media types.
4. HPKE Encapsulation
HTTP message encapsulation uses HPKE for request and response
encryption.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
An encapsulated HTTP request contains a binary-encoded HTTP message
[BINARY] and no other fields; see Figure 3.
Request {
Binary HTTP Message (..),
}
Figure 3: Plaintext Request Content
An Encapsulated Request is comprised of a key identifier and a HPKE-
protected request message. HPKE protection includes an encapsulated
KEM shared secret (or enc), plus the AEAD-protected request message.
An Encapsulated Request is shown in Figure 4. Section 4.1 describes
the process for constructing and processing an Encapsulated Request.
Encapsulated Request {
Key Identifier (8),
KEM Identifier (16),
KDF Identifier (16),
AEAD Identifier (16),
Encapsulated KEM Shared Secret (8*Nenc),
AEAD-Protected Request (..),
}
Figure 4: Encapsulated Request
The Nenc parameter corresponding to the HpkeKdfId can be found in
Section 7.1 of [HPKE].
An encrypted HTTP response includes a binary-encoded HTTP message
[BINARY] and no other content; see Figure 5.
Response {
Binary HTTP Message (..),
}
Figure 5: Plaintext Response Content
Responses are bound to requests and so consist only of AEAD-protected
content. Section 4.2 describes the process for constructing and
processing an Encapsulated Response.
Encapsulated Response {
Nonce (Nk),
AEAD-Protected Response (..),
}
Figure 6: Encapsulated Response
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
The Nenc and Nk parameters corresponding to the HpkeKdfId can be
found in [HPKE]. Nenc refers to the size of the encapsulated KEM
shared secret, in bytes; Nk refers to the size of the AEAD key for
the HPKE ciphersuite, in bits.
4.1. Encapsulation of Requests
Clients encapsulate a request request using values from a key
configuration:
* the key identifier from the configuration, keyID, with the
corresponding KEM identified by kemID,
* the public key from the configuration, pkR, and
* a selected combination of KDF, identified by kdfID, and AEAD,
identified by aeadID.
The client then constructs an Encapsulated Request, enc_request, from
a binary encoded HTTP request, request, as follows:
1. Construct a message header, hdr, by concatenating the values of
keyID, kemID, kdfID, and aeadID, as one 8-bit integer and three
16-bit integers, respectively, each in network byte order.
2. Build info by concatenating the ASCII-encoded string "message/
bhttp request", a zero byte, and the header.
3. Create a sending HPKE context by invoking SetupBaseS()
(Section 5.1.1 of [HPKE]) with the public key of the receiver pkR
and info. This yields the context sctxt and an encapsulation key
enc.
4. Encrypt request by invoking the Seal() method on sctxt
(Section 5.2 of [HPKE]) with empty associated data aad, yielding
ciphertext ct.
5. Concatenate the values of hdr, enc, and ct, yielding an Encrypted
Request enc_request.
Note that enc is of fixed-length, so there is no ambiguity in parsing
this structure.
In pseudocode, this procedure is as follows:
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
hdr = concat(encode(1, keyID),
encode(2, kemID),
encode(2, kdfID),
encode(2, aeadID))
info = concat(encode_str("message/bhttp request"),
encode(1, 0),
hdr)
enc, sctxt = SetupBaseS(pkR, info)
ct = sctxt.Seal([], request)
enc_request = concat(hdr, enc, ct)
Servers decrypt an Encapsulated Request by reversing this process.
Given an Encapsulated Request enc_request, a server:
1. Parses enc_request into keyID, kemID, kdfID, aeadID, enc, and ct
(indicated using the function parse() in pseudocode). The server
is then able to find the HPKE private key, skR, corresponding to
keyID.
a. If keyID does not identify a key matching the type of kemID,
the server returns an error.
b. If kdfID and aeadID identify a combination of KDF and AEAD
that the server is unwilling to use with skR, the server returns
an error.
2. Build info by concatenating the ASCII-encoded string "message/
bhttp request", a zero byte, keyID as an 8-bit integer, plus
kemID, kdfID, and aeadID as three 16-bit integers.
3. Create a receiving HPKE context by invoking SetupBaseR()
(Section 5.1.1 of [HPKE]) with skR, enc, and info. This produces
a context rctxt.
4. Decrypt ct by invoking the Open() method on rctxt (Section 5.2 of
[HPKE]), with an empty associated data aad, yielding request or
an error on failure. If decryption fails, the server returns an
error.
In pseudocode, this procedure is as follows:
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
keyID, kemID, kdfID, aeadID, enc, ct = parse(enc_request)
info = concat(encode_str("message/bhttp request"),
encode(1, 0),
encode(1, keyID),
encode(2, kemID),
encode(2, kdfID),
encode(2, aeadID))
rctxt = SetupBaseR(enc, skR, info)
request, error = rctxt.Open([], ct)
4.2. Encapsulation of Responses
Given an HPKE context context, a request message request, and a
response response, servers generate an Encapsulated Response
enc_response as follows:
1. Export a secret secret from context, using the string "message/
bhttp response" as context. The length of this secret is max(Nn,
Nk), where Nn and Nk are the length of AEAD key and nonce
associated with context.
2. Generate a random value of length max(Nn, Nk) bytes, called
response_nonce.
3. Extract a pseudorandom key prk using the Extract function
provided by the KDF algorithm associated with context. The ikm
input to this function is secret; the salt input is the
concatenation of enc (from enc_request) and response_nonce
4. Use the Expand function provided by the same KDF to extract an
AEAD key key, of length Nk - the length of the keys used by the
AEAD associated with context. Generating key uses a label of
"key".
5. Use the same Expand function to extract a nonce nonce of length
Nn - the length of the nonce used by the AEAD. Generating nonce
uses a label of "nonce".
6. Encrypt response, passing the AEAD function Seal the values of
key, nonce, empty aad, and a pt input of request, which yields
ct.
7. Concatenate response_nonce and ct, yielding an Encapsulated
Response enc_response. Note that response_nonce is of fixed-
length, so there is no ambiguity in parsing either response_nonce
or ct.
In pseudocode, this procedure is as follows:
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
secret = context.Export("message/bhttp response", Nk)
response_nonce = random(max(Nn, Nk))
salt = concat(enc, response_nonce)
prk = Extract(salt, secret)
aead_key = Expand(prk, "key", Nk)
aead_nonce = Expand(prk, "nonce", Nn)
ct = Seal(aead_key, aead_nonce, "", response)
enc_response = concat(response_nonce, ct)
Clients decrypt an Encapsulated Response by reversing this process.
That is, they first parse enc_response into response_nonce and ct.
They then follow the same process to derive values for aead_key and
aead_nonce.
The client uses these values to decrypt ct using the Open function
provided by the AEAD. Decrypting might produce an error, as follows:
reponse, error = Open(aead_key, aead_nonce, "", ct)
4.3. Request and Response Media Types
Media types are used to identify Encapsulated Requests and Responses;
see Section 10.2 and Section 10.3 for definitions of these media
types.
Evolution of the format of Encapsulated Requests and Responses is
supported through the definition of new formats that are identified
by new media types.
5. HTTP Usage
A client interacts with the Oblivious Relay Resource by constructing
an Encapsulated Request. This Encapsulated Request is included as
the content of a POST request to the Oblivious Relay Resource. This
request MUST only contain those fields necessary to carry the
Encapsulated Request: a method of POST, a target URI of the Oblivious
Relay Resource, a header field containing the content type (see
(Section 10.2), and the Encapsulated Request as the request content.
In the request to the Oblivious Relay Resource, clients MAY include
additional fields. However, those fields MUST be independent of the
Encapsulated Request and MUST be fields that the Oblivious Relay
Resource will remove before forwarding the Encapsulated Request
towards the target, such as the Connection or Proxy-Authorization
header fields [SEMANTICS].
The client role in this protocol acts as an HTTP client both with
respect to the Oblivious Relay Resource and the Target Resource. For
the request the clients makes to the Target Resource, this diverges
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
from typical HTTP assumptions about the use of a connection (see
Section 3.3 of [HTTP]) in that the request and response are encrypted
rather than sent over a connection. The Oblivious Relay Resource and
the Oblivious Gateway Resource also act as HTTP clients toward the
Oblivious Gateway Resource and Target Resource respectively.
The Oblivious Relay Resource interacts with the Oblivious Gateway
Resource as an HTTP client by constructing a request using the same
restrictions as the client request, except that the target URI is the
Oblivious Gateway Resource. The content of this request is copied
from the client. The Oblivious Relay Resource MUST NOT add
information to the request without the client being aware of the type
of information that might be added; see Section 6.2 for more
information on relay responsibilities.
When a response is received from the Oblivious Gateway Resource, the
Oblivious Relay Resource forwards the response according to the rules
of an HTTP proxy; see Section 7.6 of [HTTP].
An Oblivious Gateway Resource, if it receives any response from the
Target Resource, sends a single 200 response containing the
encapsulated response. Like the request from the client, this
response MUST only contain those fields necessary to carry the
encapsulated response: a 200 status code, a header field indicating
the content type, and the encapsulated response as the response
content. As with requests, additional fields MAY be used to convey
information that does not reveal information about the encapsulated
response.
An Oblivious Gateway Resource acts as a gateway for requests to the
Target Resource (see Section 7.6 of [HTTP]). The one exception is
that any information it might forward in a response MUST be
encapsulated, unless it is responding to errors it detects before
removing encapsulation of the request; see Section 5.2.
5.1. Informational Responses
This encapsulation does not permit progressive processing of
responses. Though the binary HTTP response format does support the
inclusion of informational (1xx) status codes, the AEAD encapsulation
cannot be removed until the entire message is received.
In particular, the Expect header field with 100-continue (see
Section 10.1.1 of [HTTP]) cannot be used. Clients MUST NOT construct
a request that includes a 100-continue expectation; the Oblivious
Gateway Resource MUST generate an error if a 100-continue expectation
is received.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
5.2. Errors
A server that receives an invalid message for any reason MUST
generate an HTTP response with a 4xx status code.
Errors detected by the Oblivious Relay Resource and errors detected
by the Oblivious Gateway Resource before removing protection
(including being unable to remove encapsulation for any reason)
result in the status code being sent without protection in response
to the POST request made to that resource.
Errors detected by the Oblivious Gateway Resource after successfully
removing encapsulation and errors detected by the Target Resource
MUST be sent in an Encapsulated Response.
6. Security Considerations
In this design, a client wishes to make a request of a server that is
authoritative for the Target Resource. The client wishes to make
this request without linking that request with either:
1. The identity at the network and transport layer of the client
(that is, the client IP address and TCP or UDP port number the
client uses to create a connection).
2. Any other request the client might have made in the past or might
make in the future.
In order to ensure this, the client selects a relay (that serves the
Oblivious Relay Resource) that it trusts will protect this
information by forwarding the Encapsulated Request and Response
without passing it to the server (that serves the Oblivious Gateway
Resource).
In this section, a deployment where there are three entities is
considered:
* A client makes requests and receives responses
* A relay operates the Oblivious Relay Resource
* A server operates both the Oblivious Gateway Resource and the
Target Resource
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
To achieve the stated privacy goals, the Oblivious Relay Resource
cannot be operated by the same entity as the Oblivious Gateway
Resource. However, colocation of the Oblivious Gateway Resource and
Target Resource simplifies the interactions between those resources
without affecting client privacy.
As a consequence of this configuration, Oblivious HTTP prevents
linkability described above. Informally, this means:
1. Requests and responses are known only to clients and targets in
possession of the corresponding response encapsulation key and
HPKE keying material. In particular, the Oblivious Relay knows
the origin and destination of an Encapsulated Request and
Response, yet does not know the decrypted contents. Likewise,
targets know only the Oblivious Gateway origin, i.e., the relay,
and the decrypted request. Only the client knows both the
plaintext request and response.
2. Targets cannot link requests from the same client in the absence
of unique per-client keys.
Traffic analysis that might affect these properties are outside the
scope of this document; see Section 6.2.3.
A formal analysis of Oblivious HTTP is in [OHTTP-ANALYSIS].
6.1. Client Responsibilities
Clients MUST ensure that the key configuration they select for
generating Encapsulated Requests is integrity protected and
authenticated so that it can be attributed to the Oblivious Gateway
Resource; see Section 3.
Since clients connect directly to the relay instead of the target,
application configurations wherein clients make policy decisions
about target connections, e.g., to apply certificate pinning, are
incompatible with Oblivious HTTP. In such cases, alternative
technologies such as HTTP CONNECT (Section 9.3.6 of [HTTP]) can be
used. Applications could implement related policies on key
configurations and relay connections, though these might not provide
the same properties as policies enforced directly on target
connections. When this difference is relevant, applications can
instead connect directly to the target at the cost of either privacy
or performance.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
Clients MUST NOT include identifying information in the request that
is encrypted. Identifying information includes cookies [COOKIES],
authentication credentials or tokens, and any information that might
reveal client-specific information such as account credentials.
Clients cannot carry connection-level state between requests as they
only establish direct connections to the relay responsible for the
Oblivious Relay resource. However, clients need to ensure that they
construct requests without any information gained from previous
requests. Otherwise, the server might be able to use that
information to link requests. Cookies [COOKIES] are the most obvious
feature that MUST NOT be used by clients. However, clients need to
include all information learned from requests, which could include
the identity of resources.
Clients MUST generate a new HPKE context for every request, using a
good source of entropy ([RANDOM]) for generating keys. Key reuse not
only risks requests being linked, reuse could expose request and
response contents to the relay.
The request the client sends to the Oblivious Relay Resource only
requires minimal information; see Section 5. The request that
carries the Encapsulated Request and is sent to the Oblivious Relay
Resource MUST NOT include identifying information unless the client
ensures that this information is removed by the relay. A client MAY
include information only for the Oblivious Relay Resource in header
fields identified by the Connection header field if it trusts the
relay to remove these as required by Section 7.6.1 of [HTTP]. The
client needs to trust that the relay does not replicate the source
addressing information in the request it forwards.
Clients rely on the Oblivious Relay Resource to forward Encapsulated
Requests and responses. However, the relay can only refuse to
forward messages, it cannot inspect or modify the contents of
Encapsulated Requests or responses.
6.2. Relay Responsibilities
The relay that serves the Oblivious Relay Resource has a very simple
function to perform. For each request it receives, it makes a
request of the Oblivious Gateway Resource that includes the same
content. When it receives a response, it sends a response to the
client that includes the content of the response from the Oblivious
Gateway Resource.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
When forwarding a request, the relay MUST follow the forwarding rules
in Section 7.6 of [HTTP]. A generic HTTP intermediary implementation
is suitable for the purposes of serving an Oblivious Relay Resource,
but additional care is needed to ensure that client privacy is
maintained.
Firstly, a generic implementation will forward unknown fields. For
Oblivious HTTP, a Oblivious Relay Resource SHOULD NOT forward unknown
fields. Though clients are not expected to include fields that might
contain identifying information, removing unknown fields removes this
privacy risk.
Secondly, generic implementations are often configured to augment
requests with information about the client, such as the Via field or
the Forwarded field [FORWARDED]. A relay MUST NOT add information
when forwarding requests that might be used to identify clients, with
the exception of information that a client is aware of.
Finally, a relay can also generate responses, though it assumed to
not be able to examine the content of a request (other than to
observe the choice of key identifier, KDF, and AEAD), so it is also
assumed that it cannot generate an Encapsulated Response.
6.2.1. Differential Treatment
A relay MAY add information to requests if the client is aware of the
nature of the information that could be added. The client does not
need to be aware of the exact value added for each request, but needs
to know the range of possible values the relay might use.
Importantly, information added by the relay - beyond what is already
revealed through encapsulated requests from clients - can reduce the
size of the anonymity set of clients at a gateway.
Moreover, relays MAY apply differential treatment to clients that
engage in abusive behavior, e.g., by sending too many requests in
comparison to other clients, or as a response to rate limits
signalled from the gateway. Any such differential treatment can
reveal information to the gateway that would not be revealed
otherwise and therefore reduce the size of the anonymity set of
clients using a gateway. For example, if a relay chooses to rate
limit or block an abusive client, this means that any client requests
which are not treated this way are known to be non-abusive by the
gateway. Clients should consider the likelihood of such differential
treatment and the privacy risks when using a relay.
Some patterns of abuse cannot be detected without access to the
request that is made to the target. This means that only the gateway
or target are in a position to identify abuse. A gateway MAY send
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
signals toward the relay to provide feedback about specific requests.
For example, a gateway could respond differently to requests it
cannot decapsulate, as mentioned in Section 5.2. A relay that acts
on this feedback could - either inadvertently or by design - lead to
client deanonymization.
6.2.2. Denial of Service
As there are privacy benefits from having a large rate of requests
forwarded by the same relay (see Section 6.2.3), servers that operate
the Oblivious Gateway Resource might need an arrangement with
Oblivious Relay Resources. This arrangement might be necessary to
prevent having the large volume of requests being classified as an
attack by the server.
If a server accepts a larger volume of requests from a relay, it
needs to trust that the relay does not allow abusive levels of
request volumes from clients. That is, if a server allows requests
from the relay to be exempt from rate limits, the server might want
to ensure that the relay applies a rate limiting policy that is
acceptable to the server.
Servers that enter into an agreement with a relay that enables a
higher request rate might choose to authenticate the relay to enable
the higher rate.
6.2.3. Traffic Analysis
This document assumes that all communication between different
Oblivious Client, Oblivious Relay Resource, and Oblivious Gateway
Resource is protected by HTTPS. This protects information about
which resources are the subject of request and prevents a network
observer from being able to trivially correlate messages on either
side of a relay. However, it does not mitigate traffic analysis by
such network observers.
The time at which Encapsulated Request or response messages are sent
can reveal information to a network observer. Though messages
exchanged between the Oblivious Relay Resource and the Oblivious
Gateway Resource might be sent in a single connection, traffic
analysis could be used to match messages that are forwarded by the
relay.
A relay could, as part of its function, add delays in order to
increase the anonymity set into which each message is attributed.
This could latency to the overall time clients take to receive a
response, which might not be what some clients want.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
A relay that forwards large volumes of exchanges can provide better
privacy by providing larger sets of messages that need to be matched.
Traffic analysis is not restricted to network observers. A malicious
Oblivious Relay Resource could use traffic analysis to learn
information about otherwise encrypted requests and responses relayed
between clients and gateways. An Oblivious Relay Resource terminates
TLS connections from clients, so they see message boundaries. This
privileged position allows for richer feature extraction from
encrypted data, which might improve traffic analysis.
Clients can use padding to reduce the effectiveness of traffic
analysis. Padding is a capability provided by binary HTTP messages;
see Section 3.8 of [BINARY].
6.3. Server Responsibilities
The Oblivious Gateway Resource can be operated by a different entity
than the Target Resource. However, this means that the client needs
to trust the Oblivious Gateway Resource not to modify requests or
responses. This analysis concerns itself with a deployment scenario
where a single server provides both the Oblivious Gateway Resource
and Target Resource.
A server that operates both Oblivious Gateway and Target Resources is
responsible for removing request encryption, generating a response to
the Encapsulated Request, and encrypting the response.
Servers should account for traffic analysis based on response size or
generation time. Techniques such as padding or timing delays can
help protect against such attacks; see Section 6.2.3.
If separate entities provide the Oblivious Gateway Resource and
Target Resource, these entities might need an arrangement similar to
that between server and relay for managing denial of service; see
Section 6.2.2. It is also necessary to provide confidentiality
protection for the unprotected requests and responses, plus
protections for traffic analysis; see Section 6.2.3.
Nonsecure requests - such those with the "http" scheme as opposed to
the "https" scheme - SHOULD NOT be used if the Oblivious Gateway and
Target Resources are operated by different entities as that would
expose both requests and response to modification or inspection by a
network attacker.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 21]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
6.4. Key Management
An Oblivious Gateway Resource needs to have a plan for replacing
keys. This might include regular replacement of keys, which can be
assigned new key identifiers. If an Oblivious Gateway Resource
receives a request that contains a key identifier that it does not
understand or that corresponds to a key that has been replaced, the
server can respond with an HTTP 422 (Unprocessable Content) status
code.
A server can also use a 422 status code if the server has a key that
corresponds to the key identifier, but the Encapsulated Request
cannot be successfully decrypted using the key.
A server MUST ensure that the HPKE keys it uses are not valid for any
other protocol that uses HPKE with the "message/bhttp request" label.
Designers of protocols that reuse this encryption format, especially
new versions of this protocol, can ensure key diversity by choosing a
different label in their use of HPKE. The "message/bhttp response"
label was chosen for symmetry only as it provides key diversity only
within the HPKE context created using the "message/bhttp request"
label; see Section 9.
6.5. Replay Attacks
A server is responsible for either rejecting replayed requests or
ensuring that the effect of replays does not adversely affect clients
or resources.
Encrypted requests can be copied and replayed by the Oblivious Relay
resource. The threat model for Oblivious HTTP allows the possibility
that an Oblivious Relay Resource might replay requests. Furthermore,
if a client sends an Encapsulated Request in TLS early data (see
Section 8 of [TLS] and [RFC8470]), a network-based adversary might be
able to cause the request to be replayed. In both cases, the effect
of a replay attack and the mitigations that might be employed are
similar to TLS early data.
It is the responsibility of the application that uses Oblivious HTTP
to either reject replayed requests or to ensure that replayed
requests have no adverse affects on their operation. This section
describes some approaches that are universally applicable and
suggestions for more targeted techniques.
A client or Oblivious Relay Resource MUST NOT automatically attempt
to retry a failed request unless it receives a positive signal
indicating that the request was not processed or forwarded. The
HTTP/2 REFUSED_STREAM error code (Section 8.1.4 of [RFC7540]), the
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 22]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
HTTP/3 H3_REQUEST_REJECTED error code (Section 8.1 of [QUIC-HTTP]),
or a GOAWAY frame with a low enough identifier (in either protocol
version) are all sufficient signals that no processing occurred.
Connection failures or interruptions are not sufficient signals that
no processing occurred.
The anti-replay mechanisms described in Section 8 of [TLS] are
generally applicable to Oblivious HTTP requests. The encapsulated
keying material (or enc) can be used in place of a nonce to uniquely
identify a request. This value is a high-entropy value that is
freshly generated for every request, so two valid requests will have
different values with overwhelming probability.
The mechanism used in TLS for managing differences in client and
server clocks cannot be used as it depends on being able to observe
previous interactions. Oblivious HTTP explicitly prevents such
linkability.
The considerations in [RFC8470] as they relate to managing the risk
of replay also apply, though there is no option to delay the
processing of a request.
Limiting requests to those with safe methods might not be
satisfactory for some applications, particularly those that involve
the submission of data to a server. The use of idempotent methods
might be of some use in managing replay risk, though it is important
to recognize that different idempotent requests can be combined to be
not idempotent.
Even without replay prevention, the server-chosen response_nonce
field ensures that responses have unique AEAD keys and nonces even
when requests are replayed.
6.5.1. Use of Date for Anti-Replay
Clients SHOULD include a Date header field in Encapsulated Requests,
unless the Oblivious Gateway Resource does not use Date for anti-
replay purposes.
Though HTTP requests often do not include a Date header field, the
value of this field might be used by a server to limit the amount of
requests it needs to track if it needs to prevent replay attacks.
An Oblivious Gateway Resource can maintain state for requests for a
small window of time over which it wishes to accept requests. The
Oblivious Gateway Resource can store all requests it processes within
this window. Storing just the enc field of a request, which should
be unique to each request, is sufficient. The Oblivious Gateway
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 23]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
Resource then rejects requests if the request is the same as one that
was previously answered within that time window, or if the Date
header field from the decrypted request is outside of the current
time window.
Oblivious Gateway Resources SHOULD allow for the time it takes
requests to arrive from the client, with a time window that is large
enough to allow for differences in clocks.
Oblivious Gateway Resources MUST NOT treat the time window as secret
information. An attacker can actively probe with different values
for the Date field to determine the time window over which the server
will accept responses.
6.5.2. Correcting Clock Differences
An Oblivious Gateway Resource can reject requests that contain a Date
value that is outside of its active window with a 400 series status
code. The problem type [PROBLEM] of "https://iana.org/assignments/
http-problem-types#date" is defined to allow the server to signal
that the Date value in the request was unacceptable.
Figure 7 shows an example response in HTTP/1.1 format.
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:28:05 GMT
Content-Type: application/problem+json
Content-Length: 128
{"type":"https://iana.org/assignments/http-problem-types#date",
"title": "date field in request outside of acceptable range"}
Figure 7: Example Rejection of Request Date Field
Disagreements about time are unlikely if both client and Oblivious
Gateway Resource have a good source of time; see [NTP]. However,
clock differences are known to be commonplace; see Section 7.1 of
[CLOCKSKEW].
Including a Date header field in the response allows the client to
correct clock errors by retrying the same request using the value of
the Date field provided by the Oblivious Gateway Resource. The value
of the Date field can be copied if the request is fresh, with an
adjustment based on the Age field otherwise. When retrying a
request, the client MUST create a fresh encryption of the modified
request, using a new HPKE context.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 24]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
+---------+ +-------------------+ +----------+
| Client | | Relay and Gateway | | Target |
| | | Resources | | Resource |
+----+----+ +----+-----------+--+ +----+-----+
| | | |
| | | |
| Request | | |
+============================>+------------->|
| | | |
| | | 400 Response |
| | | + Date |
|<============================+<-------------+
| | | |
| Request | | |
| + Updated Date | | |
+============================>+------------->|
| | | |
Figure 8: Retrying with an Update Date Field
Intermediaries can sometimes rewrite the Date field when forwarding
responses. This might cause problems if the Oblivious Gateway
Resource and intermediary clocks differ by enough to cause the retry
to be rejected. Therefore, clients MUST NOT retry a request with an
adjusted date more than once.
Oblivious Gateway Resources that condition their responses on the
Date header field SHOULD either ensure that intermediaries do not
cache responses (by including a Cache-Control directive of no-store)
or designate the response as conditional on the value of the Date
request header field (by including the token "date" in a Vary header
field).
Clients MUST NOT use the date provided by the Oblivious Gateway
Resource for any other purpose, including future requests to any
resource. Any request that uses information provided by the
Oblivious Gateway Resource might be correlated using that
information.
6.6. Forward Secrecy
This document does not provide forward secrecy for either requests or
responses during the lifetime of the key configuration. A measure of
forward secrecy can be provided by generating a new key configuration
then deleting the old keys after a suitable period.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 25]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
6.7. Post-Compromise Security
This design does not provide post-compromise security for responses.
A client only needs to retain keying material that might be used
compromise the confidentiality and integrity of a response until that
response is consumed, so there is negligible risk associated with a
client compromise.
A server retains a secret key that might be used to remove protection
from messages over much longer periods. A server compromise that
provided access to the Oblivious Gateway Resource secret key could
allow an attacker to recover the plaintext of all requests sent
toward affected keys and all of the responses that were generated.
Even if server keys are compromised, an adversary cannot access
messages exchanged by the client with the Oblivious Relay Resource as
messages are protected by TLS. Use of a compromised key also
requires that the Oblivious Relay Resource cooperate with the
attacker or that the attacker is able to compromise these TLS
connections.
The total number of affected messages affected by server key
compromise can be limited by regular rotation of server keys.
6.8. Client Clock Exposure
Including a Date field in requests reveals some information about the
client clock. This might be used to fingerprint clients [UWT] or to
identify clients that are vulnerable to attacks that depend on
incorrect clocks.
Clients can randomize the value that they provide for Date to obscure
the true value of their clock and reduce the chance of linking of
requests over time. However, this increases the risk that their
request is rejected as outside the acceptable window.
7. Privacy Considerations
One goal of this design is that independent client requests are only
linkable by their content. However, the choice of client
configuration might be used to correlate requests. A client
configuration includes the Oblivious Relay Resource URI, the
Oblivious Gateway key configuration (KeyConfig), and Oblivious
Gateway Resource URI. A configuration is active if clients can
successfully use it for interacting with with a target.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 26]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
Oblivious Relay and Gateway Resources can identify when requests use
the same configuration by matching KeyConfig.key\_id or the Oblivious
Gateway Resource URI. The Oblivious Gateway Resource might use the
source address of requests to correlate requests that use an
Oblivious Relay Resource run by the same operator. If the Oblivious
Gateway Resource is willing to use trial decryption, requests can be
further separated into smaller groupings based on the keys that are
used.
Each active client configuration partitions the client anonymity set.
In practice, it is infeasible to reduce the number of active
configurations to one. Enabling diversity in choice of Oblivious
Relay Resource naturally increases the number of active
configurations. A small number of configurations might need to be
active to allow for key rotation and server maintenance.
Client privacy depends on having each configuration used by many
other clients. It is critical prevent the use of unique client
configurations, which might be used to track of individual clients,
but it is also important to avoid creating small groupings of clients
that might weaken privacy protections.
A specific method for a client to acquire configurations is not
included in this specification. Applications using this design MUST
provide accommodations to mitigate tracking using client
configurations. [CONSISTENCY] provides options for ensuring that
client configurations are consistent between clients.
The content of requests or responses, if used in forming new
requests, can be used to correlate requests. This includes obvious
methods of linking requests, like cookies [COOKIES], but it also
includes any information in either message that might affect how
subsequent requests are formulated. For example, [FIELDING]
describes how interactions that are individually stateless can be
used to build a stateful system when a client acts on the content of
a response.
8. Operational and Deployment Considerations
This section discusses various operational and deployment
considerations.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 27]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
8.1. Performance Overhead
Using Oblivious HTTP adds both cryptographic and latency to requests
relative to a simple HTTP request-response exchange. Deploying relay
services that are on path between clients and servers avoids adding
significant additional delay due to network topology. A study of a
similar system [ODoH] found that deploying proxies close to servers
was most effective in minimizing additional latency.
8.2. Resource Mappings
This protocol assumes a fixed, one-to-one mapping between the
Oblivious Relay Resource and the Oblivious Gateway Resource. This
means that any encrypted request sent to the Oblivious Relay Resource
will always be forwarded to the Oblivious Gateway Resource. This
constraint was imposed to simplify relay configuration and mitigate
against the Oblivious Relay Resource being used as a generic relay
for unknown Oblivious Gateway Resources. The relay will only forward
for Oblivious Gateway Resources that it has explicitly configured and
allowed.
It is possible for a server to be configured with multiple Oblivious
Relay Resources, each for a different Oblivious Gateway Resource as
needed. If the goal is to support a large number of Oblivious
Gateway Resources, clients might be provided with a URI template
[TEMPLATE], from which multiple Oblivious Relay Resources could be
constructed.
8.3. Network Management
Oblivious HTTP might be incompatible with network interception
regimes, such as those that rely on configuring clients with trust
anchors and intercepting TLS connections. While TLS might be
intercepted successfully, interception middleboxes devices might not
receive updates that would allow Oblivious HTTP to be correctly
identified using the media types defined in Section 10.2 and
Section 10.3.
Oblivious HTTP has a simple key management design that is not
trivially altered to enable interception by intermediaries. Clients
that are configured to enable interception might choose to disable
Oblivious HTTP in order to ensure that content is accessible to
middleboxes.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 28]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
9. Repurposing the Encapsulation Format
The encrypted payload of an OHTTP request and response is a binary
HTTP message [BINARY]. Client and target agree on this encrypted
payload type by specifying the media type "message/bhttp" in the HPKE
info string and HPKE export context string for request and response
encryption, respectively.
Future specifications may repurpose the encapsulation mechanism
described in Section 4, provided that the content type of the
encrypted payload is appropriately reflected in the HPKE info and
context strings. For example, if a future specification were to use
the encryption mechanism in this specification for DNS messages,
identified by the "application/dns-message" media type, then the HPKE
info string SHOULD be "application/dns-message request" for request
encryption, and the HPKE export context string should be
"application/dns-message response" for response encryption.
10. IANA Considerations
Please update the "Media Types" registry at
https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types
(https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types) for the media types
"application/ohttp-keys" (Section 10.1), "message/ohttp-req"
(Section 10.2), and "message/ohttp-res" (Section 10.3).
10.1. message/ohttp-keys Media Type
The "application/ohttp-keys" media type identifies a key
configuration used by Oblivious HTTP.
Type name: application
Subtype name: ohttp-keys
Required parameters: N/A
Optional parameters: None
Encoding considerations: only "8bit" or "binary" is permitted
Security considerations: see Section 6
Interoperability considerations: N/A
Published specification: this specification
Applications that use this media type: Oblivious HTTP and
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 29]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
applications that use Oblivious HTTP
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Additional information: Magic number(s): N/A
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: see Aut
hors' Addresses section
Intended usage: COMMON
Restrictions on usage: N/A
Author: see Authors' Addresses section
Change controller: IESG
10.2. message/ohttp-req Media Type
The "message/ohttp-req" identifies an encrypted binary HTTP request.
This is a binary format that is defined in Section 4.1.
Type name: message
Subtype name: ohttp-req
Required parameters: N/A
Optional parameters: None
Encoding considerations: only "8bit" or "binary" is permitted
Security considerations: see Section 6
Interoperability considerations: N/A
Published specification: this specification
Applications that use this media type: Oblivious HTTP and
applications that use Oblivious HTTP
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 30]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
Additional information: Magic number(s): N/A
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: see Aut
hors' Addresses section
Intended usage: COMMON
Restrictions on usage: N/A
Author: see Authors' Addresses section
Change controller: IESG
10.3. message/ohttp-res Media Type
The "message/ohttp-res" identifies an encrypted binary HTTP response.
This is a binary format that is defined in Section 4.2.
Type name: message
Subtype name: ohttp-res
Required parameters: N/A
Optional parameters: None
Encoding considerations: only "8bit" or "binary" is permitted
Security considerations: see Section 6
Interoperability considerations: N/A
Published specification: this specification
Applications that use this media type: Oblivious HTTP and
applications that use Oblivious HTTP
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Additional information: Magic number(s): N/A
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 31]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: see Aut
hors' Addresses section
Intended usage: COMMON
Restrictions on usage: N/A
Author: see Authors' Addresses section
Change controller: IESG
IANA are requested to create a new entry in the "HTTP Problem Type"
registry established by [PROBLEM].
Type URI: https://iana.org/assignments/http-problem-types#date
Title: Date Not Acceptable
Recommended HTTP Status Code: 400
Reference: Section 6.5.2 of this document
11. References
11.1. Normative References
[ASCII] Cerf, V., "ASCII format for network interchange", STD 80,
RFC 20, DOI 10.17487/RFC0020, October 1969,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc20>.
[BINARY] Thomson, M. and C. A. Wood, "Binary Representation of HTTP
Messages", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
httpbis-binary-message-06, 6 July 2022,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-
binary-message-06>.
[HPKE] Barnes, R., Bhargavan, K., Lipp, B., and C. Wood, "Hybrid
Public Key Encryption", RFC 9180, DOI 10.17487/RFC9180,
February 2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9180>.
[HTTP] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "HTTP Semantics", STD 97, RFC 9110,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9110, June 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110>.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 32]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
[PROBLEM] Nottingham, M., Wilde, E., and S. Dalal, "Problem Details
for HTTP APIs", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
ietf-httpapi-rfc7807bis-03, 25 May 2022,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-httpapi-
rfc7807bis-03>.
[QUIC] Iyengar, J., Ed. and M. Thomson, Ed., "QUIC: A UDP-Based
Multiplexed and Secure Transport", RFC 9000,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9000, May 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9000>.
[QUIC-HTTP]
Bishop, M., "HTTP/3", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-quic-http-34, 2 February 2021,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-quic-
http-34>.
[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/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC7540] Belshe, M., Peon, R., and M. Thomson, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2)", RFC 7540,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7540, May 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7540>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
[RFC8470] Thomson, M., Nottingham, M., and W. Tarreau, "Using Early
Data in HTTP", RFC 8470, DOI 10.17487/RFC8470, September
2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8470>.
[TLS] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446>.
11.2. Informative References
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 33]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
[CLOCKSKEW]
Acer, M., Stark, E., Felt, A., Fahl, S., Bhargava, R.,
Dev, B., Braithwaite, M., Sleevi, R., and P. Tabriz,
"Where the Wild Warnings Are: Root Causes of Chrome HTTPS
Certificate Errors", Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGSAC
Conference on Computer and Communications Security,
DOI 10.1145/3133956.3134007, October 2017,
<https://doi.org/10.1145/3133956.3134007>.
[CONSISTENCY]
Davidson, A., Finkel, M., Thomson, M., and C. A. Wood,
"Key Consistency and Discovery", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-wood-key-consistency-02, 4 March
2022, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-wood-
key-consistency-02>.
[COOKIES] Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6265, April 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6265>.
[Dingledine2004]
Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N., and P. Syverson, "Tor: The
Second-Generation Onion Router", August 2004,
<https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-
design.html>.
[FIELDING] Fielding, R. T., "Architectural Styles and the Design of
Network-based Software Architectures", 2000,
<https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/
fielding_dissertation.pdf>.
[FORWARDED]
Petersson, A. and M. Nilsson, "Forwarded HTTP Extension",
RFC 7239, DOI 10.17487/RFC7239, June 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7239>.
[NTP] Mills, D., Martin, J., Ed., Burbank, J., and W. Kasch,
"Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms
Specification", RFC 5905, DOI 10.17487/RFC5905, June 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5905>.
[ODoH] Singanamalla, S., Chunhapanya, S., Vavrusa, M., Verma, T.,
Wu, P., Fayed, M., Heimerl, K., Sullivan, N., and C. A.
Wood, "Oblivious DNS over HTTPS (ODoH): A Practical
Privacy Enhancement to DNS", 7 January 2021,
<https://www.petsymposium.org/2021/files/papers/issue4/
popets-2021-0085.pdf>.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 34]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
[ODOH] Kinnear, E., McManus, P., Pauly, T., Verma, T., and C.A.
Wood, "Oblivious DNS over HTTPS", RFC 9230,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9230, June 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9230>.
[OHTTP-ANALYSIS]
Hoyland, J., "Tamarin Model of Oblivious HTTP", 23 August
2021, <https://github.com/cloudflare/ohttp-analysis>.
[PRIO] Corrigan-Gibbs, H. and D. Boneh, "Prio: Private, Robust,
and Scalable Computation of Aggregate Statistics", 14
March 2017, <https://crypto.stanford.edu/prio/paper.pdf>.
[RANDOM] Eastlake 3rd, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker,
"Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4086, June 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4086>.
[RFC6265] Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6265, April 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6265>.
[RFC7838] Nottingham, M., McManus, P., and J. Reschke, "HTTP
Alternative Services", RFC 7838, DOI 10.17487/RFC7838,
April 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7838>.
[SEMANTICS]
Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "HTTP Semantics", STD 97, RFC 9110,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9110, June 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110>.
[TEMPLATE] Gregorio, J., Fielding, R., Hadley, M., Nottingham, M.,
and D. Orchard, "URI Template", RFC 6570,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6570, March 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6570>.
[UWT] Nottingham, M., "Unsanctioned Web Tracking", 17 July 2015,
<https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/unsanctioned-tracking/>.
[X25519] Langley, A., Hamburg, M., and S. Turner, "Elliptic Curves
for Security", RFC 7748, DOI 10.17487/RFC7748, January
2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7748>.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 35]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
Appendix A. Complete Example of a Request and Response
A single request and response exchange is shown here. Binary values
(key configuration, secret keys, the content of messages, and
intermediate values) are shown in hexadecimal. The request and
response here are minimal; the purpose of this example is to show the
cryptographic operations. In this example, the client is configured
with the Oblivious Relay Resource URI of
https://proxy.example.org/request.example.net/proxy, and the proxy is
configured to map requests to this URI to the Oblivious Gateway URI
https://example.com/oblivious/request. The Target Resource URI,
i.e., the resource the client ultimately wishes to query, is
https://example.com.
To begin the process, the Oblivious Gateway Resource generates a key
pair. In this example the server chooses DHKEM(X25519, HKDF-SHA256)
and generates an X25519 key pair [X25519]. The X25519 secret key is:
3c168975674b2fa8e465970b79c8dcf09f1c741626480bd4c6162fc5b6a98e1a
The Oblivious Gateway Resource constructs a key configuration that
includes the corresponding public key as follows:
01002031e1f05a740102115220e9af918f738674aec95f54db6e04eb705aae8e
79815500080001000100010003
This key configuration is somehow obtained by the client. Then when
a client wishes to send an HTTP request of a GET request to the
target https://example.com, it constructs the following binary HTTP
message:
00034745540568747470730b6578616d706c652e636f6d012f
The client then reads the Oblivious Gateway Resource key
configuration and selects a mutually supported KDF and AEAD. In this
example, the client selects HKDF-SHA256 and AES-128-GCM. The client
then generates an HPKE sending context that uses the server public
key. This context is constructed from the following ephemeral secret
key:
bc51d5e930bda26589890ac7032f70ad12e4ecb37abb1b65b1256c9c48999c73
The corresponding public key is:
4b28f881333e7c164ffc499ad9796f877f4e1051ee6d31bad19dec96c208b472
And an info parameter of:
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 36]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
6d6573736167652f626874747020726571756573740001002000010001
Applying the Seal operation from the HPKE context produces an
encrypted message, allowing the client to construct the following
Encapsulated Request:
010020000100014b28f881333e7c164ffc499ad9796f877f4e1051ee6d31bad1
9dec96c208b4726374e469135906992e1268c594d2a10c695d858c40a026e796
5e7d86b83dd440b2c0185204b4d63525
The client then sends this to the Oblivious Relay Resource in a POST
request, which might look like the following HTTP/1.1 request:
POST /request.example.net/proxy HTTP/1.1
Host: proxy.example.org
Content-Type: message/ohttp-req
Content-Length: 78
<content is the Encapsulated Request above>
The Oblivious Relay Resource receives this request and forwards it to
the Oblivious Gateway Resource, which might look like:
POST /oblivious/request HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-Type: message/ohttp-req
Content-Length: 78
<content is the Encapsulated Request above>
The Oblivous Gateway Resource receives this request, selects the key
it generated previously using the key identifier from the message,
and decrypts the message. As this request is directed to the same
server, the Oblivious Gateway Resource does not need to initiate an
HTTP request to the Target Resource. The request can be served
directly by the Target Resource, which generates a minimal response
(consisting of just a 200 status code) as follows:
0140c8
The response is constructed by extracting a secret from the HPKE
context:
62d87a6ba569ee81014c2641f52bea36
The key derivation for the Encapsulated Response uses both the
encapsulated KEM key from the request and a randomly selected nonce.
This produces a salt of:
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 37]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
4b28f881333e7c164ffc499ad9796f877f4e1051ee6d31bad19dec96c208b472
c789e7151fcba46158ca84b04464910d
The salt and secret are both passed to the Extract function of the
selected KDF (HKDF-SHA256) to produce a pseudorandom key of:
979aaeae066cf211ab407b31ae49767f344e1501e475c84e8aff547cc5a683db
The pseudorandom key is used with the Expand function of the KDF and
an info field of "key" to produce a 16-byte key for the selected AEAD
(AES-128-GCM):
5d0172a080e428b16d298c4ea0db620d
With the same KDF and pseudorandom key, an info field of "nonce" is
used to generate a 12-byte nonce:
f6bf1aeb88d6df87007fa263
The AEAD Seal() function is then used to encrypt the response, which
is added to the randomized nonce value to produce the Encapsulated
Response:
c789e7151fcba46158ca84b04464910d86f9013e404feea014e7be4a441f234f
857fbd
The Oblivious Gateway Resource constructs a response with the same
content:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2021 04:45:07 GMT
Cache-Control: private, no-store
Content-Type: message/ohttp-res
Content-Length: 38
<content is the Encapsulated Response>
The same response might then be generated by the Oblivious Relay
Resource which might change as little as the Date header. The client
is then able to use the HPKE context it created and the nonce from
the Encapsulated Response to construct the AEAD key and nonce and
decrypt the response.
Acknowledgments
This design is based on a design for Oblivious DoH, described in
[ODOH]. David Benjamin, Mark Nottingham, and Eric Rescorla made
technical contributions.
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 38]
Internet-Draft Oblivious HTTP August 2022
Authors' Addresses
Martin Thomson
Mozilla
Email: mt@lowentropy.net
Christopher A. Wood
Cloudflare
Email: caw@heapingbits.net
Thomson & Wood Expires 9 February 2023 [Page 39]