> If the signed statement is "Whoever presents this is over 18", then I agree 
> there's no linkability risk.  This is what I mean by a bearer token.  If the 
> signed statement is "Person X is over 18", with the implication that the 
> recipient is supposed to verify that they are talking to person X before 
> inferring that the communicant is over 18, then the issuer and the verifier 
> need to have a consistent idea of who Person X is.  It is not clear to me 
> that it is possible to do this unlinkably.  Obvious approaches like "holder 
> of a private key" or "subject of a DID" provide easy correlators (the public 
> key or the DID).

Sorry I'm not sure I follow you here. If you can bind an issued credential to a 
public key in a way where the public key isn't revealed in the generated proof 
how does that not provide the cryptographic assurances of credential 
presentation using DID based binding without the correlation risk?


Thanks,

[Mattr 
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Tobias Looker

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________________________________
From: Richard Barnes <[email protected]>
Sent: 14 October 2022 08:59
To: Tobias Looker <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [jose] Some JWP comments

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On Thu, Oct 13, 2022 at 3:00 PM Tobias Looker <[email protected]> 
wrote:
> My most significant concern is that it's still not clear to me that the 
> scheme here actually achieves the unlinkability it claims.  If the issued 
> objects are not to be bearer tokens, they need to be sender constrained, 
> which means there needs to be a notion of "sender" that is intelligible to 
> both the issuer and the verifier.  It is not obvious to me that there is any 
> cryptographic scheme that both provides this critical security property and 
> provides unlinkability.  I admit that this might be because I don't 
> understand the nuances of the cryptography being applied here, but in any 
> case, there is a missing layer of description here that would outline the 
> overall cryptographic approach in a way that a generally crypto-savvy person 
> could understand.  Without that, I can't support chartering a working group, 
> since it's not clear that it can actually achieve its stated goals.

There are a couple of things to unpack/highlight w.r.t this, I can answer for 
BBS as an algorithm but multiple others algorithms considered in scope for JWP 
I believe have similar properties.

1. Proofs generated by BBS do not behave like bearer tokens. A "proof" which is 
the cryptographic structure generated by the prover using the signature from 
the issuer/signer represents a "proof of knowledge of signature", which proves 
to a verifying party that whoever generated the proof was in possession of a 
signature from the issuer. So if the signature as issued by the issuer is 
considered secret to the prover then only the prover is able to generate valid 
proofs.
2. If possession of the signature alone is insufficient as a sender/prover 
constraint then BBS allows for one of the messages that is signed by the issuer 
to be a public key supplied by the prover. Then when a proof is generated for 
such a signature, the prover must have possession of both the signature AND 
corresponding private key. The proof generated and sent to the verifier does 
not reveal the public key, but it is transperant to the verifier that the proof 
generated involved the prover knowing both the signature and required private 
key.

You're talking about the signature.  It's totally plausible to me that you can 
generate ZKPs on signatures with the properties you describe.  I'm more 
concerned about the signed payload that comprises the rest of the JWP.

If the signed statement is "Whoever presents this is over 18", then I agree 
there's no linkability risk.  This is what I mean by a bearer token.  If the 
signed statement is "Person X is over 18", with the implication that the 
recipient is supposed to verify that they are talking to person X before 
inferring that the communicant is over 18, then the issuer and the verifier 
need to have a consistent idea of who Person X is.  It is not clear to me that 
it is possible to do this unlinkably.  Obvious approaches like "holder of a 
private key" or "subject of a DID" provide easy correlators (the public key or 
the DID).

Now, maybe the answer is that this WG shouldn't care about this, it's the 
business of the payload not the proof container to ensure that the payload 
isn't linkable.  But if the utility is limited to bearer tokens, then any 
question of supporting VC is off the table, since a VC always has a "Person X".


> Speaking of goals, the proposed scope seems very specific to the Verifiable 
> Credentials use case.  This is very different from JWS and JWE, which are 
> generic cryptographic functions applicable to many use cases.  To some degree 
> this is inherent, in that unlinkability doesn't make sense unless you have 
> the multiple legs of the VC interaction pattern that you don't want linked.  
> But the problem could be phrased more generally, in terms of the issuer, 
> presenter, and verifier roles and their expected capabilities.  Before 
> chartering work here, the group needs to decide whether this work is 
> VC-specific or not, reflect that in the charter, and if generic, provide the 
> conceptual framework.  The details of this framework can be worked out in the 
> WG, but the charter needs to contain at least an outline.

While I believe the application of JWP for VC's is important I dont believe it 
is the only usecase (or set of usecases) for JWP and I dont think the work is 
being positioned overly coupled to the VC use case. JWP's design intent is to 
be a general purpose cryptographic representation format.

+1, I just think we need to capture what that general purpose is.  (It's 
clearly not "general purpose" in the sense that a "general purpose computer" 
is.)  Signing and encryption provide integrity and confidentiality protection 
between a sender and a receiver.  What's the similarly concise definition for 
JWP?

--Richard



Thanks,

[Mattr 
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Tobias Looker

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[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

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This communication, including any attachments, is confidential. If you are not 
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Act 2002.

________________________________
From: jose <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of 
Richard Barnes <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Sent: 13 October 2022 03:26
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: [jose] Some JWP comments

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Hi all,

Unfortunately, I won't be able to make the BoF today due to some conflicts.  So 
here are some comments ahead of the BoF.  tl;dr: There are still some serious 
issues.

My most significant concern is that it's still not clear to me that the scheme 
here actually achieves the unlinkability it claims.  If the issued objects are 
not to be bearer tokens, they need to be sender constrained, which means there 
needs to be a notion of "sender" that is intelligible to both the issuer and 
the verifier.  It is not obvious to me that there is any cryptographic scheme 
that both provides this critical security property and provides unlinkability.  
I admit that this might be because I don't understand the nuances of the 
cryptography being applied here, but in any case, there is a missing layer of 
description here that would outline the overall cryptographic approach in a way 
that a generally crypto-savvy person could understand.  Without that, I can't 
support chartering a working group, since it's not clear that it can actually 
achieve its stated goals.

Speaking of goals, the proposed scope seems very specific to the Verifiable 
Credentials use case.  This is very different from JWS and JWE, which are 
generic cryptographic functions applicable to many use cases.  To some degree 
this is inherent, in that unlinkability doesn't make sense unless you have the 
multiple legs of the VC interaction pattern that you don't want linked.  But 
the problem could be phrased more generally, in terms of the issuer, presenter, 
and verifier roles and their expected capabilities.  Before chartering work 
here, the group needs to decide whether this work is VC-specific or not, 
reflect that in the charter, and if generic, provide the conceptual framework.  
The details of this framework can be worked out in the WG, but the charter 
needs to contain at least an outline.

As I think I said at the last BoF, this work would be more compelling if it 
could be focused solely on unlinkability, instead of both unlinkability and 
selective disclosure.  As SD-JWT demonstrates, the two properties are not 
inherently linked, and unlinkability is complicated enough to merit its own 
mechanisms.  Even if selective disclosure is baked into the signature scheme 
(as with BBS IIUC), you could define this in terms of how the inputs are 
provided in a JWS.

Hope this helps, and good luck with the BoF!

--Richard
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