Skip to main content

Message Encryption for Web Push
draft-ietf-webpush-encryption-02

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 8291.
Author Martin Thomson
Last updated 2016-03-20
Replaces draft-thomson-webpush-encryption
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state WG Document
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state Became RFC 8291 (Proposed Standard)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to (None)
draft-ietf-webpush-encryption-02
Network Working Group                                         M. Thomson
Internet-Draft                                                   Mozilla
Intended status: Standards Track                          March 20, 2016
Expires: September 21, 2016

                    Message Encryption for Web Push
                    draft-ietf-webpush-encryption-02

Abstract

   A message encryption scheme is described for the Web Push protocol.
   This scheme provides confidentiality and integrity for messages sent
   from an Application Server to a User Agent.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 21, 2016.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 1]
Internet-Draft             Web Push Encryption                March 2016

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Notational Conventions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Key Generation and Agreement  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Diffie-Hellman Group Information  . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Key Distribution  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.3.  Push Message Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Message Encryption  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Key Derivation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Push Message Content Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Message Decryption  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   5.  Mandatory Group and Public Key Format . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   The Web Push protocol [I-D.ietf-webpush-protocol] is an intermediated
   protocol by necessity.  Messages from an Application Server are
   delivered to a User Agent via a Push Service.

    +-------+           +--------------+       +-------------+
    |  UA   |           | Push Service |       | Application |
    +-------+           +--------------+       +-------------+
        |                      |                      |
        |        Setup         |                      |
        |<====================>|                      |
        |           Provide Subscription              |
        |-------------------------------------------->|
        |                      |                      |
        :                      :                      :
        |                      |     Push Message     |
        |    Push Message      |<---------------------|
        |<---------------------|                      |
        |                      |                      |

   This document describes how messages sent using this protocol can be
   secured against inspection, modification and falsification by a Push
   Service.

   Web Push messages are the payload of an HTTP message [RFC7230].
   These messages are encrypted using an encrypted content encoding
   [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding].  This document describes how

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 2]
Internet-Draft             Web Push Encryption                March 2016

   this content encoding is applied and describes a recommended key
   management scheme.

   For efficiency reasons, multiple users of Web Push often share a
   central agent that aggregates push functionality.  This agent can
   enforce the use of this encryption scheme by applications that use
   push messaging.  An agent that only delivers messages that are
   properly encrypted strongly encourages the end-to-end protection of
   messages.

   A web browser that implements the Web Push API [API] can enforce the
   use of encryption by forwarding only those messages that were
   properly encrypted.

1.1.  Notational Conventions

   The words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", and "MAY" are used in this
   document.  It's not shouting, when they are capitalized, they have
   the special meaning described in [RFC2119].

2.  Key Generation and Agreement

   For each new subscription that the User Agent generates for an
   application, it also generates an asymmetric key pair for use in
   Diffie-Hellman (DH) [DH] or elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH)
   [ECDH].  The public key for this key pair can then be distributed by
   the application to the Application Server along with the URI of the
   subscription.  The private key MUST remain secret.

   This key pair is used with the Diffie-Hellman key exchange as
   described in Section 4.2 of [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding].

   A User Agent MUST generate and provide a public key for the scheme
   described in Section 5.

   The public key MUST be accompanied by a key identifier that can be
   used in the "keyid" parameter to identify which key is in use.  Key
   identifiers need only be unique within the context of a subscription.

2.1.  Diffie-Hellman Group Information

   As described in [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding], use of
   Diffie-Hellman for key agreement requires that the receiver provide
   clear information about its chosen group and the format for the "dh"
   parameter with each potential sender.

   This document only describes a single ECDH group and point format,
   described in Section 5.  A specification that defines alternative

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 3]
Internet-Draft             Web Push Encryption                March 2016

   groups or formats MUST provide a means of indicating precisely which
   group and format is in use for every public key that is provided.

2.2.  Key Distribution

   The application using the subscription distributes the key identifier
   and public key along with other subscription information, such as the
   subscription URI and expiration time.

   The communication medium by which an application distributes the key
   identifier and public key MUST be confidentiality protected for the
   reasons described in [I-D.ietf-webpush-protocol].  Most applications
   that use push messaging have a pre-existing relationship with an
   Application Server.  Any existing communication mechanism that is
   authenticated and provides confidentiality and integrity, such as
   HTTPS [RFC2818], is sufficient.

2.3.  Push Message Authentication

   To ensure that push messages are correctly authenticated, a symmetric
   authentication secret is added to the information generated by a User
   Agent.  The authentication secret is mixed into the key derivation
   process described in [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding].

   The authentication secret ensures that exposure or leakage of the DH
   public key - which, as a public key, is not necessarily treated as a
   secret - does not enable an adversary to generate valid push
   messages.

   A User Agent MUST generate and provide a hard to guess sequence of
   octets that is used for authentication of push messages.  This SHOULD
   be generated by a cryptographically strong random number generator
   [RFC4086] and be at least 16 octets long.

3.  Message Encryption

   An Application Server that has the public key, group and format
   information plus the authentication secret can encrypt a message for
   the User Agent.

3.1.  Key Derivation

   The Application Server generates a new DH or ECDH key pair in the
   same group as the value generated by the User Agent.

   From the newly generated key pair, the Application Server performs a
   DH or ECDH computation with the public key provided by the User Agent
   to find the input keying material for key derivation.  The

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 4]
Internet-Draft             Web Push Encryption                March 2016

   Application Server then generates 16 octets of salt that is unique to
   the message.  A random [RFC4086] salt is acceptable.

   Web push uses the authentication secret defined in Section 4.3 of
   [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding].  This authentication secret
   (see Section 2.3) is generated by the user agent and shared with the
   application server.

3.2.  Push Message Content Encryption

   The Application Server then encrypts the payload.  Header fields are
   populated with base64url encoded [RFC7515] values:

   o  the salt is added to the "salt" parameter of the Encryption header
      field; and

   o  the public key for its DH or ECDH key pair is placed in the "dh"
      parameter of the Crypto-Key header field.

   An application server MUST encrypt a push message with a single
   record.  This allows for a minimal receiver implementation that
   handles a single record.  If the message is 4096 octets or longer,
   the "rs" parameter MUST be set to a value that is longer than the
   encrypted push message length.

   Note that a push service is not required to support more than 4096
   octets of payload body, which equates to 4080 octets of cleartext, so
   the "rs" parameter can be omitted for messages that fit within this
   limit.

   An application server MUST NOT use other content encodings for push
   messages.  In particular, content encodings that compress could
   result in leaking of push message contents.  The Content-Encoding
   header field therefore has exactly one value, which is "aesgcm128".
   Multiple "aesgcm128" values are not permitted.

   An application server MUST include exactly one entry in each of the
   Encryption and Crypto-Key header fields.  This allows the "keyid"
   parameter to be omitted from both header fields.

   An application server MUST NOT include an "aesgcm128" parameter in
   the Encryption header field.

4.  Message Decryption

   A User Agent decrypts messages are decrypted as described in
   [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding].  The authentication secret
   described in Section 3.1 is used in key derivation.

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 5]
Internet-Draft             Web Push Encryption                March 2016

   Note that the value of the "keyid" parameter is used to identify the
   correct share, if there are multiple values for the Crypto-Key header
   field.

   A receiver is not required to support multiple records.  Such a
   receiver MUST check that the record size is large enough to contain
   the entire payload body in a single record.  The "rs" parameter MUST
   NOT be exactly equal to the length of the payload body minus the
   length of the authentication tag (16 octets); that length indicates
   that the message has been truncated.

5.  Mandatory Group and Public Key Format

   User Agents MUST expose an elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman share on the
   P-256 curve [FIPS186].

   Public keys, such as are encoded into the "dh" parameter, MUST be in
   the form of an uncompressed point as described in [X.692] (that is, a
   65 octet sequence that starts with a 0x04 octet).

   The label for this curve is the string "P-256" encoded in ASCII (that
   is, the octet sequence 0x50, 0x2d, 0x32, 0x35, 0x36).

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

7.  Security Considerations

   The security considerations of [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding]
   describe the limitations of the content encoding.  In particular, any
   HTTP header fields are not protected by the content encoding scheme.
   A User Agent MUST consider HTTP header fields to have come from the
   Push Service.  An application on the User Agent that uses information
   from header fields to alter their processing of a push message is
   exposed to a risk of attack by the Push Service.

   The timing and length of communication cannot be hidden from the Push
   Service.  While an outside observer might see individual messages
   intermixed with each other, the Push Service will see what
   Application Server is talking to which User Agent, and the
   subscription that is used.  Additionally, the length of messages
   could be revealed unless the padding provided by the content encoding
   scheme is used to obscure length.

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 6]
Internet-Draft             Web Push Encryption                March 2016

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [DH]       Diffie, W. and M. Hellman, "New Directions in
              Cryptography", IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
              V.IT-22 n.6 , June 1977.

   [ECDH]     SECG, "Elliptic Curve Cryptography", SEC 1 , 2000,
              <http://www.secg.org/>.

   [FIPS186]  National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
              "Digital Signature Standard (DSS)", NIST PUB 186-4 , July
              2013.

   [I-D.ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding]
              Thomson, M., "Encrypted Content-Encoding for HTTP", draft-
              ietf-httpbis-encryption-encoding-01 (work in progress),
              March 2016.

   [I-D.ietf-webpush-protocol]
              Thomson, M., Damaggio, E., and B. Raymor, "Generic Event
              Delivery Using HTTP Push", draft-ietf-webpush-protocol-03
              (work in progress), February 2016.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC4086]  Eastlake 3rd, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker,
              "Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4086, June 2005,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4086>.

   [X.692]    ANSI, "Public Key Cryptography For The Financial Services
              Industry: The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
              (ECDSA)", ANSI X9.62 , 1998.

8.2.  Informative References

   [API]      van Ouwerkerk, M. and M. Thomson, "Web Push API", 2015,
              <https://w3c.github.io/push-api/>.

   [RFC2818]  Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2818, May 2000,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2818>.

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 7]
Internet-Draft             Web Push Encryption                March 2016

   [RFC7230]  Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
              Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
              RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.

   [RFC7515]  Jones, M., Bradley, J., and N. Sakimura, "JSON Web
              Signature (JWS)", RFC 7515, DOI 10.17487/RFC7515, May
              2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7515>.

Author's Address

   Martin Thomson
   Mozilla

   Email: martin.thomson@gmail.com

Thomson                Expires September 21, 2016               [Page 8]