[curves] Ed25519 signatures from Curve25519 keys

Mike Hamburg mike at shiftleft.org
Wed Jun 25 10:30:52 PDT 2014


On 6/25/2014 8:37 AM, David Leon Gil wrote:
>
> Re signature nonces:
>
> In general, I strongly prefer deriving the permanent nonce key via, 
> e.g., PMAC (prefix/postfix MAC)-SHAKE[r=x]* or HMAC-SHA2-512 with a 
> domain separator.**
>
> It's deterministic, it avoids using more entropy than necessary for 
> security, and it makes private keys (in serialized form) the same size 
> as public keys.
>
> (I have been modifying the experimental Goldilocks code along these 
> lines.)
>
Is your goal in doing this to reduce the size of serialized private 
keys?  The private keys are already derived from the 256-bit symmetric 
key.  You might consider using goldilocks_underive_private_key().
>
> *** The recent cryptanalysis of reduced-round Keccak/SHAKE as a stream 
> cipher has left me mildly concerned that non-uniform inputs may be 
> problematic.
>
Is this the 6-round cube attack, or is there a stronger one?

Cheers,
-- Mike

> On Jun 16, 2014 5:33 PM, "Trevor Perrin" <trevp at trevp.net 
> <mailto:trevp at trevp.net>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     I'm wondering about using Curve25519 keys to create and verify Ed25519
>     signatures.  For example, imagine you have existing Curve25519
>     long-term keys being used for a DH protocol, and you'd like to sign
>     with these keys.
>
>     Below is an attempt to provide security analysis, and work out the
>     details.
>
>     I've run parts of this by a few people (Mike Hamburg, Robert Ransom,
>     CodesInChaos).  I try to credit them where appropriate, but that
>     doesn't imply they endorse all of this.
>
>
>     Joint security of signatures and DH
>     ----
>     Schnorr signatures (like Ed25519) have a security proof in the Random
>     Oracle Model based on the (Elliptic Curve ) Discrete Log assumption
>     [1].
>
>     Many DH protocols have security proofs in a model where the attacker
>     has access to a "Decision Diffie-Hellman" oracle.   Often the attacker
>     can choose an arbitrary public key, cause a targeted key to perform a
>     DH operation with the chosen public key, and then "reveal" the hashed
>     output.   By hashing different inputs and seeing if the result equals
>     the revealed value, the attacker gains a DDH oracle involving the
>     targeted key and her chosen key.   These protocols can often be proven
>     secure in the Random Oracle Model based on the "Gap-DH" assumption:
>     i.e. the assumption that the Computational DH problem is hard even
>     when given a DDH oracle.  Protocols that can be proven secure in such
>     a model include ECIES [2], NAXOS [3], Ntor [4], Kudla-Paterson [5],
>     HOMQV [6], and others.
>
>     As in [7] section 4.4, it seems fairly easy to argue for "joint
>     security" when the same key is used for Schnorr signatures and for a
>     protocol with a Gap-DH/ROM security proof, provided the hash function
>     is used carefully so that RO queries for the signature can be
>     distinguished from RO queries for the DH-protocol.
>
>     In particular:
>      - Giving the DH-protocol adversary a signing oracle doesn't help it,
>     as the signing oracle can be simulated in the ROM without knowledge of
>     the secret key [1,7].
>      - Giving the signature adversary access to parties running the
>     DH-protocol (e.g. an eCK experiment [3] where the secret key is held
>     by an honest party) doesn't help if the protocol can be simulated
>     without knowledge of the secret key but with a DDH oracle.  If the
>     signature adversary + simulator could use the DDH oracle to break the
>     DL problem, then the Gap-DH assumption would be violated [7].
>
>     So in principle this seems secure, do people agree?
>
>
>     Public-key conversion
>     ----
>     A Curve25519 public-key is encoded as a 255-bit x-coordinate.  An
>     Ed25519 public-key is encoded as a 255-bit y-coordinate, plus a "sign"
>     bit.
>
>     For a "unified" public-key format, I think it makes sense to stick
>     with Curve25519:
>      - Curve25519 has seen more deployment than Ed25519, so existing
>     public-keys are more likely to use the Curve25519 format.
>      - The sign bit isn't strictly necessary, since it can be assumed to
>     be zero, and the private key can be adjusted to match (see below).
>      - The Curve25519 format is more efficient for DH since it can be used
>     directly with the Montgomery ladder.  For signature verification, the
>     conversion from Curve25519 format to an Ed25519 point can be combined
>     with decompression, so using Curve25519 public keys to verify Ed25519
>     signatures can be almost as fast for verification as Ed25519 public
>     keys (according to Mike Hamburg).
>      - If code simplicity is more of a concern than speed, it's easy to
>     convert the curve25519 x-coordinate into an ed25519 y-coordinate by
>     ed_y = (curve_x - 1) / (curve_x + 1) mod 2^255-19 (page 8 of [8], hat
>     tip Robert Ransom).  The inversion takes perhaps 10-20% (?) of the
>     time for a variable-base scalar mult.  The y-coordinate can then be
>     encoded along with a sign bit of 0, allowing existing Ed25519 code to
>     be used.
>
>
>     Private-key conversion
>     ----
>     If the Ed25519 public-key sign-bit is assumed to be zero, the private
>     key may need to be adjusted (per Jivsov [9]).  In other words, if
>     multiplying the Curve25519 private key by the Ed25519 base point
>     yields an Ed25519 x-coordinate that's "negative" as defined in [8],
>     the private key (a) must be negated modulo the order of the base point
>     (q), i.e. a = q - a.
>
>     Some existing curve25519 implementations set bit 254 of the private
>     key within the scalarmult function, so will interfere with this
>     negation (observation due CodesInChaos).   Robert Ransom proposed
>     another way to implement the negation that avoids having to modify
>     that code:
>      - Before hashing, flip the sign bit of R
>      - Before hashing, encode the sign bit of A as zero
>      - As the last step, negate S, i.e. S = q - S
>
>     Jivsov argues that fixing the sign bit doesn't lose security, even
>     against Pollard rho (anyone care to double-check the argument? - [9]
>     section 8).  A side-channel that leaks only whether this negation was
>     performed (or not) only reveals the sign bit of the original private
>     key, so I think also doesn't reduce security.
>
>
>     Hash inputs
>     ----
>     Ed25519 calculates SHA512(R || A || M), where:
>      - R is an Ed25519-encoded Schnorr commitment  (= nonce *  base point)
>      - A is an Ed25519-encoded public key
>      - M is the message to sign
>
>     The key-derivation in the DH protocol must hash distinct inputs for
>     the ROM security argument to hold.  CodesInChaos suggested beginning
>     the key-derivation hash with 32 bytes of 0xFF, as this is an invalid
>     Ed25519 point.
>
>
>     Signature nonce
>     ----
>     In the original Ed25519 implementation [8], a single master key is
>     used to derive both (a) the Ed25519 private scalar and (b) a secret
>     key for nonce generation.  Without such a master key, either
>      - the nonce-generation key would have to be explicitly generated
>     and stored
>      - the nonce would have to be taken from a (strong!) RNG
>      - the private scalar would have to be used as the
>     nonce-generation key
>
>     All of these seem adequate.  Not sure which is best?
>
>     Anyways, what else have I missed?
>
>
>     Trevor
>
>
>     [1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.11.8213
>     [2] http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/dhies.pdf
>     <http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/%7Erogaway/papers/dhies.pdf>
>     [3] http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/81673/strongake-submitted.pdf
>     [4] http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/techreports/2011/cacr2011-11.pdf
>     [5] http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/~kp/ModularProofs.pdf
>     <http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/%7Ekp/ModularProofs.pdf>
>     [6] http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/638
>     [7] http://eprint.iacr.org/2011/615
>     [8] http://ed25519.cr.yp.to/ed25519-20110926.pdf
>     [9]
>     https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-jivsov-ecc-compact/?include_text=1
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