I think Yoav's suggestion to cite BEAST as evidence that predictable IVs
are bad is a good plan.

-Ekr


On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 10:52 AM, Daniel Migault <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Eric,
>
> Thank you  for the review and comments. Do you have any preference on what
> we should cite for the chosen clear text attack?: Our local version
> currently refers to Security Consideration of RFC3602.
>
> The sentence in the terminology section mentioning that IV are usually
> unpredictable has been removed. Thanks for catching that.
>
> Yours,
> Daniel
>
> On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 2:05 PM, Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 11:52 AM, Yoav Nir <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 19 Mar 2017, at 19:30, Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 10:23 AM, Yoav Nir <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 19 Mar 2017, at 16:55, Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Overall:
>>>> I notice that you are using a construction different from that used
>>>> in TLS 1.3, which doesn't directly repeat nonces across associations.
>>>>
>>>> I didn't see an answer to this.
>>>
>>>
>>> Nonces are specified as 64-bit IV (usually counter and we are forcing it
>>> to be a counter) plus 32-bit salt in RFC 4106.  We saw no reason to change
>>> that.
>>>
>>
>> OK. This has a somewhat lower margin of safety than the TLS 1.3
>> construction, but it should be OK.
>>
>>
>> S 2.
>>>>    This document does not consider AES-CBC ([RFC3602])as AES-CBC
>>>>    requires the IV to be unpredictable.  Deriving it directly from the
>>>>    packet counter as described below is insecure.
>>>>
>>>> Can you provide a cite for this?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Even RFC 3602 requires that the IV be randomly generated (and for good
>>>> measure requires that it be unpredictable)
>>>>
>>>
>>> That's just a cite to a requirement, not to it being insecure. Do you
>>> have a citation to the relevant threat?
>>>
>>>
>>> We could cite BEAST. Of course BEAST depends on HTTPS, so it’s not
>>> really applicable - it’s harder to manipulate the first 16 bytes of the IP
>>> header - but these have been the recommendations for using CBC in both RFCs
>>> and NIST documentations for years before BEAST.
>>>
>>
>> Sure. I just think claims like this should have a citation.
>>
>>
>> -Ekr
>>
>>
>>> In any case, note that there are
>>>> straightforward algorithms for deriving a CBC IV from a counter
>>>> (e.g., run AES in counter mode with a different key). That structure
>>>> would actually be suitable for GCM as well (and would address
>>>> my point above).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If each implementation generates a random key and uses this to generate
>>>> the IVs this is fine, but you still have to transmit the IV.  If we derive
>>>> an “IV key” from the keying material, then we don’t have to transmit the
>>>> IV.
>>>>
>>>
>>> You generate the IV from the sequence number, so you don't need to
>>> transmit the IV.
>>> That gives you an unpredictable IV without the per-packet overhead.
>>>
>>>
>>> We did bring this idea up at a WG meeting. This was not well-received
>>>> for three reasons: (1) it’s unnecessarily complicated. (2) The world is
>>>> going to AEAD. AES-CBC is the past, and (3) The perception was that saving
>>>> 8 bytes per packet was important mostly for IoT, and they don’t care about
>>>> CBC.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Sure, that's reasonable. I'm merely observing that there are designs
>>> which work for CBC.
>>>
>>>
>>> S 3.
>>>>    o  IV: Initialization Vector.  Although security requirements vary,
>>>>       the common usage of this term implies that the value is
>>>>       unpredictable.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think that this is true at all. I've frequently heard of a
>>>> zero IV. It's also odd in that your IV is in fact predictable.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> S 5.
>>>> I'm a bit surprised that you are deciding to have duplicate
>>>> code points for every algorithm rather than some sort of IKE
>>>> negotiation payload. I see that the WG is currently defining
>>>> other extensions where you take that approach.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> See slide #7 of https://www.ietf.org/procee
>>>> dings/96/slides/slides-96-ipsecme-0.pdf
>>>>
>>>> The problem is that IKEv2 has strict rules about unexpected attributes
>>>> in the substructures of the SA payload. The sense of the room was to go
>>>> with new identifiers.
>>>>
>>>
>>> OK. Well, I agree it's ultimately a WG decision, but it doesn't seem
>>> very elegant.
>>>
>>>
>>> I was in the rough on this at first, but it was shown that every
>>> alternate negotiation mechanism had unwanted consequences.
>>>
>>> Yoav
>>>
>>>
>>
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