Sophie:

You will see in https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-moran-suit-mti-02.txt tis 
proposing a hash-based signature algorithm in the SUIT WG.

Russ


> On Oct 31, 2022, at 3:30 PM, Sophie Schmieg 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I'd like to note that with firmware in particular, we will soon have to 
> switch to hash based signature schemes in order to gain post-quantum 
> readiness (firmware usually uses fixed signing keys, so this transition needs 
> to happen soon and it needs to use hash based solutions to avoid parameter 
> drift), where the signature is 1KB in the "best" case (this corresponds to 
> stateful hash based signatures, RFC 8554 and RFC 8391, I put "best" in 
> quotation marks because statefulness comes with its own challenges), and 8KB 
> in the easier to use case (the stateless scheme Sphincs+ [1], currently being 
> standardized by NIST), so the devices will need to be able to tolerate a 
> substantial amount of overhead already, so that the 16 byte per chunk tags 
> are less likely to be an issue in any case.
> 
> You mention that the signature is checked over the plaintext, and not over 
> the ciphertext. This should immediately rule out CBC mode, as we would still 
> suffer from CBC padding oracle problems, bypassing the encryption in that 
> case. With CTR mode, this scheme is, if looked at in isolation, secure, 
> although it would adversely affect the rest of the COSE ecosystem, for saving 
> what is a fairly minuscule overhead of 16 bytes per chunk (with chunks being 
> able to be several KB in size) for a use case that is as far as I can tell a 
> DRM scheme (which usually do not rely on standardized approaches, as 
> obfuscation is a major part of DRM).
> 
> [1] https://sphincs.org/ <https://sphincs.org/>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 7:45 AM David Brown <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 10:21:30AM -0400, Russ Housley wrote:
> 
> > > For this purpose ciphers without integrity protection are used to
> > >   encrypt the firmware image.  Integrity protection for the firmware
> > >   image must, however, be provided and the the suit-parameter-image-
> > >   digest, defined in Section 8.4.8.6 of [I-D.ietf-suit-manifest], MUST
> > >   be used.
> > > 
> > > I'm not convinced by that. Why couldn't you just store
> > > the tag for each chunk wherever the signature is stored?
> > > 
> > > Overall, I'd say defining non-AEAD modes doesn't seem
> > > like a good trade-off.
> 
> > AES-CCM and AES-GCM require the authentication check to be performed
> > before any plaintext is returned.  So, one would have to have a
> > separate tag for each storage block, which adds a lot of overhead
> > and complexity, especially since there is already a digital
> > signature over the whole thing.
> 
> In the case described, there simply isn't storage space for a tag per
> block.  This use case performs a full signature check on the image
> before making use of it, as Russ mentions.
> 
> In the firmware update case, the system needs to be able to verify the
> signature of the image, even after the image has been decrypted, there
> has to be a signature that covers the entire plaintext.  Additional
> space for tags would reduce the space available for the firmware
> itself.  The decryption happens during an image upgrade state.  Any
> attack that results in modified plaintext would prevent the firmware
> from running, as the signature check would fail.
> 
> The goal here is to make these algorithms available for a use-case
> where they are already being used, and significant resource
> constraints make other solutions unavailable.  We would like to be
> able to register these algorithms in such a way that it is clear that
> they should not be adopted for any new use, while at the same time
> capturing this existing use case.
> 
> David
> 

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