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DSA and RSA Key and Signature Encoding for the KeyNote Trust Management System
draft-angelos-keynote-dsa-rsa-encoding-00

The information below is for an old version of the document that is already published as an RFC.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 2792.
Authors Dr. John Ioannidis , Angelos D. Keromytis , Dr. Matt Blaze
Last updated 2013-03-02 (Latest revision 2000-01-21)
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IESG IESG state Became RFC 2792 (Informational)
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draft-angelos-keynote-dsa-rsa-encoding-00
Network Working Group                                         Matt Blaze
Internet Draft                                            John Ioannidis
Expires in six months                               AT&T Labs - Research
                                                    Angelos D. Keromytis
                                                      U. of Pennsylvania
                                                            January 2000

            DSA and RSA Key and Signature Encoding for the
                    KeyNote Trust Management System
           <draft-angelos-keynote-dsa-rsa-encoding-00.txt>

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Please direct comments to one of the authors (for the authors contact
   information, see the end of this document), and/or to the
   trustmgt@east.isi.edu mailing list.

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   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

   This memo describes RSA and DSA key and signature encoding for
   version 2 of the KeyNote trust-management system.

1.  Introduction

   KeyNote is a simple and flexible trust-management system designed
   to work well for a variety of large- and small- scale
   Internet-based applications.  It provides a single, unified
   language for both local policies and credentials.  KeyNote policies
   and credentials, called `assertions,' contain predicates that
   describe the trusted actions permitted by the holders of specific
   public keys.  KeyNote assertions are essentially small,
   highly-structured programs.  A signed assertion, which can be sent
   over an untrusted network, is also called a `credential assertion.'
   Credential assertions, which also serve the role of certificates,
   have the same syntax as policy assertions but are also signed by
   the principal delegating the trust.  For more details on KeyNote,
   see [BFIK].  This document assumes reader familiarity with the
   KeyNote system.

   Cryptographic keys in KeyNote are used to identify principals.  To
   facilitate interoperation between different implementations and to
   allow for maximal flexibility, keys must be converted to a
   normalized canonical form (depended on the public key algorithm
   used) for the purposes of any internal comparisons between keys.
   For example, an RSA [RSA78] key may be encoded in base64 ASCII in
   one credential, and in hexadecimal ASCII in another.  A KeyNote
   implementation must internally convert the two encodings to a
   normalized form that allows for comparison between them.
   Furthermore, the internal structure of an encoded key must be known
   for an implementation to correctly decode it.

   This document specifies RSA and DSA [DSA94] key and signature
   encodings for use in KeyNote.

2.  Key Normalized Forms

2.1  DSA Key Normalized Form

    DSA keys in KeyNote are identified by four values:
    - the public value
    - the p parameter
    - the q parameter
    - the g parameter

    For an explanation of the various parameters, see [AC2].  These
    four values together make up the DSA key normalized form used in
    KeyNote.  All DSA key comparisons in KeyNote occur between
    normalized forms.

2.2  RSA Key Normalized Form

    RSA keys in KeyNote are identified by two values:
    - the public exponent
    - the modulus

    These two values together make up the RSA key normalized form used
    in KeyNote.  All RSA key comparisons in KeyNote occur between
    normalized forms.

3.  Key Encoding

3.1  DSA Key Encoding

    DSA keys in KeyNote are encoded as an ASN1 SEQUENCE of four ASN1
    INTEGER objects.  The four INTEGER objects are the public value
    and the p, q, and g parameters of the DSA key, in that order.

    For use in KeyNote credentials, the ASN1 SEQUENCE is then
    ASCII-encoded (e.g., as a string of hex digits or base64
    characters).

    DSA keys encoded in this way in KeyNote must be identified by the
    "dsa-XXX:" algorithm name, where XXX is an ASCII encoding ("hex"
    or "base64").  Other ASCII encoding schemes may be defined in the
    future.

3.2  RSA Key Encoding

    RSA keys in KeyNote are encoded as an ASN1 SEQUENCE of two ASN1
    INTEGER objects.  The two INTEGER objects are the public exponent
    and the modulus of the DSA key, in that order.

    For use in KeyNote credentials, the ASN1 SEQUENCE is then
    ASCII-encoded (e.g., as a string of hex digits or base64
    characters).

    RSA keys encoded in this way in KeyNote must be identified by the
    "rsa-XXX:" algorithm name, where XXX is an ASCII encoding ("hex"
    or "base64").  Other ASCII encoding schemes may be defined in the
    future.

4.  Signature Computation and Encoding

4.1  DSA Signature Computation and Encoding

    DSA signatures in KeyNote are computed over the assertion body
    (starting from the begining of the first keyword, up to and
    including the newline character immediately before the
    "Signature:" keyword) and the signature algorithm name (including
    the trailing colon character, e.g., "sig-dsa-sha1-base64:")

    DSA signatures are then encoded as an ASN1 SEQUENCE of two ASN1
    INTEGER objects.  The two INTEGER objects are the r and s
    values of a DSA signature [AC2].

    For use in KeyNote credentials, the ASN1 SEQUENCE is then
    ASCII-encoded (as a string of hex digits or base64 characters).

    DSA signatures encoded in this way in KeyNote must be identified
    by the "sig-dsa-XXX-YYY:" algorithm name, where XXX is a hash
    function name ("sha1", for the SHA1 [SHA1] hash function is
    currently the only hash function that may be used with DSA) and
    YYY is an ASCII encoding ("hex" or "base64").

4.2  RSA Signature Computation and Encoding

    RSA signatures in KeyNote are computed over the assertion body
    (starting from the begining of the first keyword, up to and
    including the newline character immediately before the
    "Signature:" keyword) and the signature algorithm name (including
    the trailing colon character, e.g., "sig-rsa-sha1-base64:")

    RSA signatures are then encoded as an ASN1 OCTET STRING object,
    containing the signature value.

    For use in KeyNote credentials, the ASN1 OCTET STRING is then
    ASCII-encoded (as a string of hex digits or base64 characters).

    RSA signatures encoded in this way in KeyNote must be identified
    by the "sig-rsa-XXX-YYY:" algorithm name, where XXX is a hash
    function name ("md5" or "sha1", for the MD5 [MD5] and SHA1 [SHA1]
    hash algorithms respectively, may be used with RSA) and YYY is an
    ASCII encoding ("hex" or "base64").

5.  Security Considerations

    This document discusses the format of RSA and DSA keys and
    signatures as used in KeyNote.  The security of KeyNote credentials
    utilizing such keys and credentials is directly dependent on the
    strength of the related public key algorithms.  On the security
    of KeyNote itself, see [BFIK].

6.  IANA Considerations

    Per [BFIK], IANA should provide a registry of reserved algorithm
    identifiers.  The following identifiers are reserved by this
    document as public key encodings:

    - "rsa-hex"
    - "rsa-base64"
    - "dsa-hex"
    - "dsa-base64"

    The following identifiers are reserved by this document as
    signature encodings:

    - "sig-rsa-md5-hex"
    - "sig-rsa-md5-base64"
    - "sig-rsa-sha1-hex"
    - "sig-rsa-sha1-base64"
    - "sig-dsa-sha1-hex"
    - "sig-dsa-sha1-base64"

References

   [AC2]   Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptography 2nd Edition, John Wiley
           & Sons, New York, NY, 1996.

   [BFIK]  M. Blaze, J. Feigenbaum, J. Ioannidis, A D. Keromytis, "The
           KeyNote Trust-Management System Version 2", RFC 2704,
           September 1999.

   [DSA94] NIST, FIPS PUB 186, "Digital Signature Standard", May 1994.

   [MD5]   Rivest, R., "The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC 1321,
           MIT and RSA Data Security, Inc., April 1992.

   [RSA78] R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir, L. M. Adleman, "A Method for
           Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems",
           Communications of the ACM, v21n2. pp 120-126,  February
           1978.

   [SHA1]  NIST, FIPS PUB 180-1, "Secure Hash Standard", April 1995.
           http://csrc.nist.gov/fips/fip180-1.txt (ascii)
           http://csrc.nist.gov/fips/fip180-1.ps  (postscript)

Contacts

   Comments about this document should be discussed on the
   keynote-users@nsa.research.att.com mailing list.

   Questions about this document can also be directed to the authors as
   a group at the keynote@research.att.com alias, or to the individual
   authors at:

    Matt Blaze             John Ioannidis
    mab@research.att.com   ji@research.att.com

    AT&T Labs - Research
    180 Park Avenue
    Florham Park, New Jersey 07932-0000

    Angelos D. Keromytis
    angelos@dsl.cis.upenn.edu

    Distributed Systems Lab
    CIS Department, University of Pennsylvania
    200 S. 33rd Street
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  19104-6389

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