On Sun, Jul 10, 2022 at 10:48:53AM +0000, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:
> Unless someone else in the group objects, I will change the text in
> Section 3.4 ("Info Structure") to say that the aad and the info
> structures for SealBase() and OpenBase() functions are empty unless
> specified by an application-specific profile of the COSE-HPKE
> specification.

There is a problem with leaving aad empty: It treats AEAD-capable HPKE
as AE algorithm, causing limitations:

- There is no protected bucket.
- Nothing seems to prevent re-interpretting recipients as messages.


What I think should be done is using canonical Enc_structure as aad
input, like for any AEAD in RFC 8152(bis-struct). That approach would
solve both of the above limitations.

Now, it does have external_aad field, which needs to be empty unless
the application specifies otherwise.


Checking my code, this is exactly what it does (modulo the external aad
on recipient always being empty).



-Ilari

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