108 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
108 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
This document describes the chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com authenticated
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encryption cipher supported by OpenSSH.
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Background
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----------
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ChaCha20 is a stream cipher designed by Daniel Bernstein and described
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in [1]. It operates by permuting 128 fixed bits, 128 or 256 bits of key,
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a 64 bit nonce and a 64 bit counter into 64 bytes of output. This output
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is used as a keystream, with any unused bytes simply discarded.
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Poly1305[2], also by Daniel Bernstein, is a one-time Carter-Wegman MAC
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that computes a 128 bit integrity tag given a message and a single-use
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256 bit secret key.
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The chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com combines these two primitives into an
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authenticated encryption mode. The construction used is based on that
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proposed for TLS by Adam Langley in [3], but differs in the layout of
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data passed to the MAC and in the addition of encyption of the packet
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lengths.
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Negotiation
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-----------
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The chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com offers both encryption and
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authentication. As such, no separate MAC is required. If the
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chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com cipher is selected in key exchange,
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the offered MAC algorithms are ignored and no MAC is required to be
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negotiated.
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Detailed Construction
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---------------------
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The chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com cipher requires 512 bits of key
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material as output from the SSH key exchange. This forms two 256 bit
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keys (K_1 and K_2), used by two separate instances of chacha20.
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The first 256 bits consitute K_2 and the second 256 bits become
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K_1.
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The instance keyed by K_1 is a stream cipher that is used only
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to encrypt the 4 byte packet length field. The second instance,
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keyed by K_2, is used in conjunction with poly1305 to build an AEAD
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(Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data) that is used to encrypt
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and authenticate the entire packet.
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Two separate cipher instances are used here so as to keep the packet
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lengths confidential but not create an oracle for the packet payload
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cipher by decrypting and using the packet length prior to checking
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the MAC. By using an independently-keyed cipher instance to encrypt the
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length, an active attacker seeking to exploit the packet input handling
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as a decryption oracle can learn nothing about the payload contents or
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its MAC (assuming key derivation, ChaCha20 and Poly1305 are secure).
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The AEAD is constructed as follows: for each packet, generate a Poly1305
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key by taking the first 256 bits of ChaCha20 stream output generated
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using K_2, an IV consisting of the packet sequence number encoded as an
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uint64 under the SSH wire encoding rules and a ChaCha20 block counter of
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zero. The K_2 ChaCha20 block counter is then set to the little-endian
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encoding of 1 (i.e. {1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}) and this instance is used
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for encryption of the packet payload.
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Packet Handling
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---------------
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When receiving a packet, the length must be decrypted first. When 4
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bytes of ciphertext length have been received, they may be decrypted
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using the K_1 key, a nonce consisting of the packet sequence number
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encoded as a uint64 under the usual SSH wire encoding and a zero block
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counter to obtain the plaintext length.
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Once the entire packet has been received, the MAC MUST be checked
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before decryption. A per-packet Poly1305 key is generated as described
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above and the MAC tag calculated using Poly1305 with this key over the
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ciphertext of the packet length and the payload together. The calculated
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MAC is then compared in constant time with the one appended to the
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packet and the packet decrypted using ChaCha20 as described above (with
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K_2, the packet sequence number as nonce and a starting block counter of
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1).
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To send a packet, first encode the 4 byte length and encrypt it using
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K_1. Encrypt the packet payload (using K_2) and append it to the
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encrypted length. Finally, calculate a MAC tag and append it.
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Rekeying
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--------
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ChaCha20 must never reuse a {key, nonce} for encryption nor may it be
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used to encrypt more than 2^70 bytes under the same {key, nonce}. The
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SSH Transport protocol (RFC4253) recommends a far more conservative
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rekeying every 1GB of data sent or received. If this recommendation
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is followed, then chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com requires no special
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handling in this area.
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References
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----------
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[1] "ChaCha, a variant of Salsa20", Daniel Bernstein
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http://cr.yp.to/chacha/chacha-20080128.pdf
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[2] "The Poly1305-AES message-authentication code", Daniel Bernstein
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http://cr.yp.to/mac/poly1305-20050329.pdf
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[3] "ChaCha20 and Poly1305 based Cipher Suites for TLS", Adam Langley
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http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-agl-tls-chacha20poly1305-03
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$OpenBSD: PROTOCOL.chacha20poly1305,v 1.3 2016/05/03 13:10:24 djm Exp $
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