[noise] Could we use Noise as a PAKE?

Loup Vaillant David loup at loup-vaillant.fr
Sat Jul 13 15:21:31 PDT 2019


Hi,

My question is simple: could we use Noise as a Password Authenticated
Key Exchange?

For instance, we could use the NN pattern and the password as a
prelude. Or a hash of the password. Or a slow, memory intensive, salted
hash of the password (The client would set the salt and send it over
the network just before the first message).

I mean, I've heard of PAKE several times, but it only occurred to me
now that it might be that simple. Is it that simple?

Loup.

PS: If we can use Noise, we could imagine an even simpler protocol:

    - Client & server generate ephemeral key pairs.
    - Client generates salt.
    - Client hashes password with salt (possibly with a slow hash).
    - Client sends ephemeral and salt.
    - Server hashes password with salt (gets the same result).
    - Server sends ephemeral.
    - Client and server exchange the keys
    - Client and server HMAC the shared secret, using the hashed
      password as a key. The resulting hash is the session key.
    - Optional: Client and server send empty messages to each other to
      make sure they have the same session key.

    Leveraging Noise could take even less effort, so…




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