COSE Working Group | J. Schaad |
Internet-Draft | August Cellars |
Intended status: Standards Track | November 22, 2016 |
Expires: May 26, 2017 |
CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE)
draft-ietf-cose-msg-latest
Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) is data format designed for small code size and small message size. There is a need for the ability to have basic security services defined for this data format. This document defines the CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) specification. This specification describes how to create and process signature, message authentication codes and encryption using CBOR for serialization. This specification additionally specifies how to represent cryptographic keys using CBOR.
The source for this draft is being maintained in GitHub. Suggested changes should be submitted as pull requests at <https://github.com/cose-wg/cose-spec>. Instructions are on that page as well. Editorial changes can be managed in GitHub, but any substantial issues need to be discussed on the COSE mailing list.
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There has been an increased focus on small, constrained devices that make up the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the standards that has come out of this process is the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) [RFC7049]. CBOR extended the data model of the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) [RFC7159] by allowing for binary data, among other changes. CBOR is being adopted by several of the IETF working groups dealing with the IoT world as their encoding of data structures. CBOR was designed specifically to be both small in terms of messages transport and implementation size, as well having a schema free decoder. A need exists to provide message security services for IoT, and using CBOR as the message encoding format makes sense.
The JOSE working group produced a set of documents [RFC7515][RFC7516][RFC7517][RFC7518] using JSON that specified how to process encryption, signatures and Message Authentication Code (MAC) operations, and how to encode keys using JSON. This document defines the CBOR Object Encryption and Signing (COSE) standard which does the same thing for the CBOR encoding format. While there is a strong attempt to keep the flavor of the original JOSE documents, two considerations are taken into account:
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
When the words appear in lower case, their natural language meaning is used.
There is currently no standard CBOR grammar available for use by specifications. The CBOR structures are therefore described in prose.
The document was developed by first working on the grammar and then developing the prose to go with it. An artifact of this is that the prose was written using the primitive type strings defined by CBOR Data Definition Language (CDDL) [I-D.greevenbosch-appsawg-cbor-cddl]. In this specification, the following primitive types are used:
Two syntaxes from CDDL appear in this document as shorthand. These are:
As well as the prose description, a version of a CBOR grammar is presented in CDDL. Since CDDL has not been published as an RFC, this grammar may not work with the final version of CDDL. The CDDL grammar is informational, the prose description is normative.
The collected CDDL can be extracted from the XML version of this document via the following XPath expression below. (Depending on the XPath evaluator one is using, it may be necessary to deal with > as an entity.)
//artwork[@type='CDDL']/text()
CDDL expects the initial non-terminal symbol to be the first symbol in the file. For this reason the first fragment of CDDL is presented here.
start = COSE_Messages / COSE_Key / COSE_KeySet / Internal_Types ; This is defined to make the tool quieter: Internal_Types = Sig_structure / Enc_structure / MAC_structure / COSE_KDF_Context
The non-terminal Internal_Types is defined for dealing with the automated validation tools used during the writing of this document. It references those non-terminals that are used for security computations, but are not emitted for transport.
In JSON, maps are called objects and only have one kind of map key: a string. In COSE, we use strings, negative integers and unsigned integers as map keys. The integers are used for compactness of encoding and easy comparison. The inclusion of strings allows for an additional range of short encoded values to be used as well. Since the word "key" is mainly used in its other meaning, as a cryptographic key, we use the term "label" for this usage as a map key.
The presence of a label in a COSE map which is not a string or an integer is an error. Applications can either fail processing or process messages with incorrect labels, however they MUST NOT create messages with incorrect labels.
A CDDL grammar fragment is defined that defines the non-terminals 'label', as in the previous paragraph and 'values', which permits any value to be used.
label = int / tstr values = any
In this document, we use the following terminology:
Byte is a synonym for octet.
Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized web transfer protocol for use in constrained systems. It is defined in [RFC7252].
Authenticated Encryption (AE) [RFC5116] algorithms are those encryption algorithms which provide an authentication check of the contents algorithm with the encryption service.
Authenticated Encryption with Authenticated Data (AEAD) [RFC5116] algorithms provide the same content authentication service as AE algorithms, but additionally provide for authentication of non-encrypted data as well.
The COSE object structure is designed so that there can be a large amount of common code when parsing and processing the different types of security messages. All of the message structures are built on the CBOR array type. The first three elements of the array always contain the same information:
Elements after this point are dependent on the specific message type.
COSE messages are also built using the concept of layers to separate different types of cryptographic concepts. As an example of how this works, consider the COSE_Encrypt message (Section 5.1). This message type is broken into two layers: the content layer and the recipient layer. In the content layer, the plain text is encrypted and information about the encrypted message are placed. In the recipient layer, the content encryption key (CEK) is encrypted and information about how it is encrypted for each recipient is placed. A single layer version of the encryption message COSE_Encrypt0 (Section 5.2) is provided for cases where the CEK is pre-shared.
Identification of which type of message has been presented is done by the following methods:
CBOR Tag | cose-type | Data Item | Semantics |
---|---|---|---|
98 | cose-sign | COSE_Sign | COSE Signed Data Object |
18 | cose-sign1 | COSE_Sign1 | COSE Single Signer Data Object |
96 | cose-encrypt | COSE_Encrypt | COSE Encrypted Data Object |
16 | cose-encrypt0 | COSE_Encrypt0 | COSE Single Recipient Encrypted Data Object |
97 | cose-mac | COSE_Mac | COSE Mac-ed Data Object |
17 | cose-mac0 | COSE_Mac0 | COSE Mac w/o Recipients Object |
The following CDDL fragment identifies all of the top messages defined in this document. Separate non-terminals are defined for the tagged and the untagged versions of the messages.
COSE_Messages = COSE_Untagged_Message / COSE_Tagged_Message COSE_Untagged_Message = COSE_Sign / COSE_Sign1 / COSE_Encrypt / COSE_Encrypt0 / COSE_Mac / COSE_Mac0 COSE_Tagged_Message = COSE_Sign_Tagged / COSE_Sign1_Tagged / COSE_Encrypt_Tagged / COSE_Encrypt0_Tagged / COSE_Mac_Tagged / COSE_Mac0_Tagged
The structure of COSE has been designed to have two buckets of information that are not considered to be part of the payload itself, but are used for holding information about content, algorithms, keys, or evaluation hints for the processing of the layer. These two buckets are available for use in all of the structures except for keys. While these buckets are present, they may not all be usable in all instances. For example, while the protected bucket is defined as part of the recipient structure, some of the algorithms used for recipient structures do not provide for authenticated data. If this is the case, the protected bucket is left empty.
Both buckets are implemented as CBOR maps. The map key is a 'label' (Section 1.4). The value portion is dependent on the definition for the label. Both maps use the same set of label/value pairs. The integer and string values for labels have been divided into several sections with a standard range, a private range, and a range that is dependent on the algorithm selected. The defined labels can be found in the "COSE Header Parameters" IANA registry (Section 16.2).
Two buckets are provided for each layer:
Only parameters that deal with the current layer are to be placed at that layer. As an example of this, the parameter 'content type' describes the content of the message being carried in the message. As such, this parameter is placed only in the content layer and is not placed in the recipient or signature layers. In principle, one should be able to process any given layer without reference to any other layer. With the exception of the COSE_Sign structure, the only data that needs to cross layers is the cryptographic key.
The buckets are present in all of the security objects defined in this document. The fields in order are the 'protected' bucket (as a CBOR 'bstr' type) and then the 'unprotected' bucket (as a CBOR 'map' type). The presence of both buckets is required. The parameters that go into the buckets come from the IANA "COSE Header Parameters" registry (Section 16.2). Some common parameters are defined in the next section, but a number of parameters are defined throughout this document.
Labels in each of the maps MUST be unique. When processing messages, if a label appears multiple times, the message MUST be rejected as malformed. Applications SHOULD verify that the same label does not occur in both the protected and unprotected headers. If the message is not rejected as malformed, attributes MUST be obtained from the protected bucket before they are obtained from the unprotected bucket.
The following CDDL fragment represents the two header buckets. A group Headers is defined in CDDL that represents the two buckets in which attributes are placed. This group is used to provide these two fields consistently in all locations. A type is also defined which represents the map of common headers.
Headers = ( protected : empty_or_serialized_map, unprotected : header_map ) header_map = { Generic_Headers, * label => values } empty_or_serialized_map = bstr .cbor header_map / bstr .size 0
This section defines a set of common header parameters. A summary of these parameters can be found in Table 2. This table should be consulted to determine the value of label, and the type of the value.
The set of header parameters defined in this section are:
The header parameter values indicated by 'crit' can be processed by either the security library code or by an application using a security library; the only requirement is that the parameter is processed. If the 'crit' value list includes a value for which the parameter is not in the protected bucket, this is a fatal error in processing the message.
name | label | value type | value registry | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
alg | 1 | int / tstr | COSE Algorithms registry | Cryptographic algorithm to use |
crit | 2 | [+ label] | COSE Header Labels registry | Critical headers to be understood |
content type | 3 | tstr / uint | CoAP Content-Formats or Media Types registry | Content type of the payload |
kid | 4 | bstr | Key identifier | |
IV | 5 | bstr | Full Initialization Vector | |
Partial IV | 6 | bstr | Partial Initialization Vector | |
counter signature | 7 | COSE_Signature / [+ COSE_Signature ] | CBOR encoded signature structure |
The CDDL fragment that represents the set of headers defined in this section is given below. Each of the headers is tagged as optional because they do not need to be in every map; headers required in specific maps are discussed above.
Generic_Headers = ( ? 1 => int / tstr, ; algorithm identifier ? 2 => [+label], ; criticality ? 3 => tstr / int, ; content type ? 4 => bstr, ; key identifier ? 5 => bstr, ; IV ? 6 => bstr, ; Partial IV ? 7 => COSE_Signature / [+COSE_Signature] ; Counter signature )
COSE supports two different signature structures. COSE_Sign allows for one or more signatures to be applied to the same content. COSE_Sign1 is restricted to a single signer. The structures cannot be converted between each other; as the signature computation includes a parameter identifying which structure is being used, the converted structure will fail signature validation.
The COSE_Sign structure allows for one or more signatures to be applied to a message payload. Parameters relating to the content and parameters relating to the signature are carried along with the signature itself. These parameters may be authenticated by the signature, or just present. An example of a parameter about the content is the content type. Examples of parameters about the signature would be the algorithm and key used to create the signature and counter signatures.
When more than one signature is present, the successful validation of one signature associated with a given signer is usually treated as a successful signature by that signer. However, there are some application environments where other rules are needed. An application that employs a rule other than one valid signature for each signer must specify those rules. Also, where simple matching of the signer identifier is not sufficient to determine whether the signatures were generated by the same signer, the application specification must describe how to determine which signatures were generated by the same signer. Support for different communities of recipients is the primary reason that signers choose to include more than one signature. For example, the COSE_Sign structure might include signatures generated with the Edwards Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) [I-D.irtf-cfrg-eddsa] signature algorithm and with the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) [DSS] signature algorithm. This allows recipients to verify the signature associated with one algorithm or the other. (The original source of this text is [RFC5652].) More detailed information on multiple signature evaluation can be found in [RFC5752].
The signature structure can be encoded either as tagged or untagged depending on the context it will be used in. A tagged COSE_Sign structure is identified by the CBOR tag TBD1. The CDDL fragment that represents this is:
COSE_Sign_Tagged = #6.98(COSE_Sign)
A COSE Signed Message is defined in two parts. The CBOR object that carries the body and information about the body is called the COSE_Sign structure. The CBOR object that carries the signature and information about the signature is called the COSE_Signature structure. Examples of COSE Signed Messages can be found in Appendix C.1.
The COSE_Sign structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment that represents the above text for COSE_Sign follows.
COSE_Sign = [ Headers, payload : bstr / nil, signatures : [+ COSE_Signature] ]
The COSE_Signature structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment that represents the above text for COSE_Signature follows.
COSE_Signature = [ Headers, signature : bstr ]
The COSE_Sign1 signature structure is used when only one signature is going to be placed on a message. The parameters dealing with the content and the signature are placed in the same pair of buckets rather than having the separation of COSE_Sign.
The structure can be encoded either tagged or untagged depending on the context it will be used in. A tagged COSE_Sign1 structure is identified by the CBOR tag TBD7. The CDDL fragment that represents this is:
COSE_Sign1_Tagged = #6.18(COSE_Sign1)
The CBOR object that carries the body, the signature, and the information about the body and signature is called the COSE_Sign1 structure. Examples of COSE_Sign1 messages can be found in Appendix C.2.
The COSE_Sign1 structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment that represents the above text for COSE_Sign1 follows.
COSE_Sign1 = [ Headers, payload : bstr / nil, signature : bstr ]
One of the features offered in the COSE document is the ability for applications to provide additional data to be authenticated, but that is not carried as part of the COSE object. The primary reason for supporting this can be seen by looking at the CoAP message structure [RFC7252], where the facility exists for options to be carried before the payload. Examples of data that can be placed in this location would be the CoAP code or CoAP options. If the data is in the header section, then it is available for proxies to help in performing its operations. For example, the Accept Option can be used by a proxy to determine if an appropriate value is in the Proxy's cache. But the sender can prevent a proxy from changing the set of values that it will accept by including that value in the resulting authentication tag. However, it may also be desired to protect these values so that if they are modified in transit, it can be detected.
This document describes the process for using a byte array of externally supplied authenticated data; however, the method of constructing the byte array is a function of the application. Applications that use this feature need to define how the externally supplied authenticated data is to be constructed. Such a construction needs to take into account the following issues:
In order to create a signature, a well-defined byte stream is needed. The Sig_struture is used to create the canonical form. This signing and verification process takes in the body information (COSE_Sign or COSE_Sign1), the signer information (COSE_Signature), and the application data (external source). A Sig_structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the Sig_struture in order are:
The CDDL fragment that describes the above text is.
Sig_structure = [ context : "Signature" / "Signature1" / "CounterSignature", body_protected : empty_or_serialized_map, ? sign_protected : empty_or_serialized_map, external_aad : bstr, payload : bstr ]
How to compute a signature:
The steps for verifying a signature are:
In addition to performing the signature verification, the application may also perform the appropriate checks to ensure that the key is correctly paired with the signing identity and that the signing identity is authorized before performing actions.
Counter signatures provide a method of associating different signature generated by different signers with some piece of content. This is normally used to provide a signature on a signature allowing for a proof that a signature existed at a given time (i.e., a Timestamp). In this document, we allow for counter signatures to exist in a greater number of environments. As an example, it is possible to place a counter signature in the unprotected attributes of a COSE_Encrypt object. This would allow for an intermediary to either verify that the encrypted byte stream has not been modified, without being able to decrypt it, or for the intermediary to assert that an encrypted byte stream either existed at a given time or passed through it in terms of routing (i.e., a proxy signature).
An example of a counter signature on a signature can be found in Appendix C.1.3. An example of a counter signature in an encryption object can be found in Appendix C.3.3.
The creation and validation of counter signatures over the different items relies on the fact that the structure of the objects have the same structure. The elements are a set of protected attributes, a set of unprotected attributes, and a body, in that order. This means that the Sig_structure can be used in a uniform manner to get the byte stream for processing a signature. If the counter signature is going to be computed over a COSE_Encrypt structure, the body_protected and payload items can be mapped into the Sig_structure in the same manner as from the COSE_Sign structure.
It should be noted that only a signature algorithm with appendix (see Section 8) can be used for counter signatures. This is because the body should be able to be processed without having to evaluate the counter signature, and this is not possible for signature schemes with message recovery.
COSE supports two different encryption structures. COSE_Encrypt0 is used when a recipient structure is not needed because the key to be used is known implicitly. COSE_Encrypt is used the rest of the time. This includes cases where there are multiple recipients or a recipient algorithm other than direct is used.
The enveloped structure allows for one or more recipients of a message. There are provisions for parameters about the content and parameters about the recipient information to be carried in the message. The protected parameters associated with the content are authenticated by the content encryption algorithm. The protected parameters associated with the recipient are authenticated by the recipient algorithm (when the algorithm supports it). Examples of parameters about the content are the type of the content and the content encryption algorithm. Examples of parameters about the recipient are the recipient's key identifier and the recipient's encryption algorithm.
The same techniques and structures are used for encrypting both the plain text and the keys. This is different from the approach used by both CMS [RFC5652] and JSON Web Encryption (JWE) [RFC7516] where different structures are used for the content layer and for the recipient layer. Two structures are defined: COSE_Encrypt to hold the encrypted content and COSE_recipient to hold the encrypted keys for recipients. Examples of encrypted messages can be found in Appendix C.3.
The COSE_Encrypt structure can be encoded either tagged or untagged depending on the context it will be used in. A tagged COSE_Encrypt structure is identified by the CBOR tag TBD2. The CDDL fragment that represents this is:
COSE_Encrypt_Tagged = #6.96(COSE_Encrypt)
The COSE_Encrypt structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment that corresponds to the above text is:
COSE_Encrypt = [ Headers, ciphertext : bstr / nil, recipients : [+COSE_recipient] ]
The COSE_recipient structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment that corresponds to the above text for COSE_recipient is:
COSE_recipient = [ Headers, ciphertext : bstr / nil, ? recipients : [+COSE_recipient] ]
An encrypted message consists of an encrypted content and an encrypted CEK for one or more recipients. The CEK is encrypted for each recipient, using a key specific to that recipient. The details of this encryption depend on which class the recipient algorithm falls into. Specific details on each of the classes can be found in Section 12. A short summary of the five content key distribution methods is:
The COSE_Encrypt0 encrypted structure does not have the ability to specify recipients of the message. The structure assumes that the recipient of the object will already know the identity of the key to be used in order to decrypt the message. If a key needs to be identified to the recipient, the enveloped structure ought to be used.
Examples of encrypted messages can be found in Appendix C.3.
The COSE_Encrypt0 structure can be encoded either tagged or untagged depending on the context it will be used in. A tagged COSE_Encrypt0 structure is identified by the CBOR tag TBD3. The CDDL fragment that represents this is:
COSE_Encrypt0_Tagged = #6.16(COSE_Encrypt0)
The COSE_Encrypt0 structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment for COSE_Encrypt0 that corresponds to the above text is:
COSE_Encrypt0 = [ Headers, ciphertext : bstr / nil, ]
The encryption algorithm for AEAD algorithms is fairly simple. The first step is to create a consistent byte stream for the authenticated data structure. For this purpose, we use an Enc_structure. The Enc_structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the Enc_structure in order are:
The CDDL fragment that describes the above text is:
Enc_structure = [ context : "Encrypt" / "Encrypt0" / "Enc_Recipient" / "Mac_Recipient" / "Rec_Recipient", protected : empty_or_serialized_map, external_aad : bstr ]
How to encrypt a message:
How to decrypt a message:
How to encrypt a message:
How to decrypt a message:
COSE supports two different MAC structures. COSE_MAC0 is used when a recipient structure is not needed because the key to be used is implicitly known. COSE_MAC is used for all other cases. These include a requirement for multiple recipients, the key being unknown, and a recipient algorithm of other than direct.
In this section, we describe the structure and methods to be used when doing MAC authentication in COSE. This document allows for the use of all of the same classes of recipient algorithms as are allowed for encryption.
When using MAC operations, there are two modes in which they can be used. The first is just a check that the content has not been changed since the MAC was computed. Any class of recipient algorithm can be used for this purpose. The second mode is to both check that the content has not been changed since the MAC was computed, and to use the recipient algorithm to verify who sent it. The classes of recipient algorithms that support this are those that use a pre-shared secret or do static-static key agreement (without the key wrap step). In both of these cases, the entity that created and sent the message MAC can be validated. (This knowledge of sender assumes that there are only two parties involved and you did not send the message to yourself.) The origination property can be obtained with both of the MAC message structures.
The multiple recipient MACed message uses two structures, the COSE_Mac structure defined in this section for carrying the body and the COSE_recipient structure (Section 5.1) to hold the key used for the MAC computation. Examples of MACed messages can be found in Appendix C.5.
The MAC structure can be encoded either tagged or untagged depending on the context it will be used in. A tagged COSE_Mac structure is identified by the CBOR tag TBD4. The CDDL fragment that represents this is:
COSE_Mac_Tagged = #6.97(COSE_Mac)
The COSE_Mac structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment that represents the above text for COSE_Mac follows.
COSE_Mac = [ Headers, payload : bstr / nil, tag : bstr, recipients :[+COSE_recipient] ]
In this section, we describe the structure and methods to be used when doing MAC authentication for those cases where the recipient is implicitly known.
The MACed message uses the COSE_Mac0 structure defined in this section for carrying the body. Examples of MACed messages with an implicit key can be found in Appendix C.6.
The MAC structure can be encoded either tagged or untagged depending on the context it will be used in. A tagged COSE_Mac0 structure is identified by the CBOR tag TBD6. The CDDL fragment that represents this is:
COSE_Mac0_Tagged = #6.17(COSE_Mac0)
The COSE_Mac0 structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the array in order are:
The CDDL fragment that corresponds to the above text is:
COSE_Mac0 = [ Headers, payload : bstr / nil, tag : bstr, ]
In order to get a consistent encoding of the data to be authenticated, the MAC_structure is used to have a canonical form. The MAC_structure is a CBOR array. The fields of the MAC_structure in order are:
The CDDL fragment that corresponds to the above text is:
MAC_structure = [ context : "MAC" / "MAC0", protected : empty_or_serialized_map, external_aad : bstr, payload : bstr ]
The steps to compute a MAC are:
The steps to verify a MAC are:
A COSE Key structure is built on a CBOR map object. The set of common parameters that can appear in a COSE Key can be found in the IANA "COSE Key Common Parameters" registry (Section 16.5). Additional parameters defined for specific key types can be found in the IANA "COSE Key Type Parameters" registry (Section 16.6).
A COSE Key Set uses a CBOR array object as its underlying type. The values of the array elements are COSE Keys. A Key Set MUST have at least one element in the array. Examples of Key Sets can be found in Appendix C.7.
Each element in a key set MUST be processed independently. If one element in a key set is either malformed or uses a key that is not understood by an application, that key is ignored and the other keys are processed normally.
The element "kty" is a required element in a COSE_Key map.
The CDDL grammar describing COSE_Key and COSE_KeySet is:
COSE_Key = { 1 => tstr / int, ; kty ? 2 => bstr, ; kid ? 3 => tstr / int, ; alg ? 4 => [+ (tstr / int) ], ; key_ops ? 5 => bstr, ; Base IV * label => values } COSE_KeySet = [+COSE_Key]
This document defines a set of common parameters for a COSE Key object. Table 3 provides a summary of the parameters defined in this section. There are also parameters that are defined for specific key types. Key type specific parameters can be found in Section 13.
name | label | CBOR type | registry | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
kty | 1 | tstr / int | COSE Key Common Parameters | Identification of the key type |
alg | 3 | tstr / int | COSE Algorithm Values | Key usage restriction to this algorithm |
kid | 2 | bstr | Key Identification value - match to kid in message | |
key_ops | 4 | [+ (tstr/int)] | Restrict set of permissible operations | |
Base IV | 5 | bstr | Base IV to be xor-ed with Partial IVs |
name | value | description |
---|---|---|
sign | 1 | The key is used to create signatures. Requires private key fields. |
verify | 2 | The key is used for verification of signatures. |
encrypt | 3 | The key is used for key transport encryption. |
decrypt | 4 | The key is used for key transport decryption. Requires private key fields. |
wrap key | 5 | The key is used for key wrapping. |
unwrap key | 6 | The key is used for key unwrapping. Requires private key fields. |
derive key | 7 | The key is used for deriving keys. Requires private key fields. |
derive bits | 8 | The key is used for deriving bits not to be used as a key. Requires private key fields. |
MAC create | 9 | The key is used for creating MACs. |
MAC verify | 10 | The key is used for validating MACs. |
There are two signature algorithm schemes. The first is signature with appendix. In this scheme, the message content is processed and a signature is produced, the signature is called the appendix. This is the scheme used by algorithms such as ECDSA and RSASSA-PSS. (In fact the SSA in RSASSA-PSS stands for Signature Scheme with Appendix.)
The signature functions for this scheme are:
signature = Sign(message content, key) valid = Verification(message content, key, signature)
The second scheme is signature with message recovery. (An example of such an algorithm is [PVSig].) In this scheme, the message content is processed, but part of it is included in the signature. Moving bytes of the message content into the signature allows for smaller signatures, the signature size is still potentially large, but the message content has shrunk. This has implications for systems implementing these algorithms and for applications that use them. The first is that the message content is not fully available until after a signature has been validated. Until that point the part of the message contained inside of the signature is unrecoverable. The second is that the security analysis of the strength of the signature is very much based on the structure of the message content. Messages that are highly predictable require additional randomness to be supplied as part of the signature process. In the worst case, it becomes the same as doing a signature with appendix. Finally, in the event that multiple signatures are applied to a message, all of the signature algorithms are going to be required to consume the same number of bytes of message content. This means that mixing of the different schemes in a single message is not supported, and if a recovery signature scheme is used, then the same amount of content needs to be consumed by all of the signatures.
The signature functions for this scheme are:
signature, message sent = Sign(message content, key) valid, message content = Verification(message sent, key, signature)
Signature algorithms are used with the COSE_Signature and COSE_Sign1 structures. At this time, only signatures with appendixes are defined for use with COSE, however considerable interest has been expressed in using a signature with message recovery algorithm due to the effective size reduction that is possible. Implementations will need to keep this in mind for later possible integration.
ECDSA [DSS] defines a signature algorithm using ECC. Implementations SHOULD use a deterministic version of ECDSA such as the one defined in [RFC6979]. The use of a deterministic signature algorithms allows for systems to avoid relying on random number generators in order to avoid generating the same value of 'k' (the per-message random value). Biased generation of the value be attacked and collisions will lead to leaked keys. It additionally allows for doing deterministic tests for the signature algorithm. The use of deterministic ECDSA does not lessen the need to to have good random number generation when creating the private key.
The ECDSA signature algorithm is parameterized with a hash function (h). In the event that the length of the hash function output is greater than the group of the key, the left-most bytes of the hash output are used.
The algorithms defined in this document can be found in Table 5.
name | value | hash | description |
---|---|---|---|
ES256 | -7 | SHA-256 | ECDSA w/ SHA-256 |
ES384 | -35 | SHA-384 | ECDSA w/ SHA-384 |
ES512 | -36 | SHA-512 | ECDSA w/ SHA-512 |
This document defines ECDSA to work only with the curves P-256, P-384 and P-521. This document requires that the curves be encoded using the 'EC2' (2 coordinate Elliptic Curve) key type. Implementations need to check that the key type and curve are correct when creating and verifying a signature. Other documents can define it to work with other curves and points in the future.
In order to promote interoperability, it is suggested that SHA-256 be used only with curve P-256, SHA-384 be used only with curve P-384 and SHA-512 be used with curve P-521. This is aligned with the recommendation in Section 4 of [RFC5480].
The signature algorithm results in a pair of integers (R, S). These integers will the same length as length of the key used for the signature process. The signature is encoded by converting the integers into byte strings of the same length as the key size. The length is rounded up to the nearest byte and is left padded with zero bits to get to the correct length. The two integers are then concatenated together to form a byte string that is the resulting signature.
Using the function defined in [I-D.moriarty-pkcs1] the signature is:
Signature = I2OSP(R, n) | I2OSP(S, n)
where n = ceiling(key_length / 8)
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
The security strength of the signature is no greater than the minimum of the security strength associated with the bit length of the key and the security strength of the hash function.
Note: Use of this technique is a good idea even when good random number generation exists. Doing so both reduces the possibility of having the same value of 'k' in two signature operations and allows for reproducible signature values, which helps testing.
There are two substitution attacks that can theoretically be mounted against the ECDSA signature algorithm.
[I-D.irtf-cfrg-eddsa] describes the elliptic curve signature scheme Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA). In that document, the signature algorithm is instantiated using parameters for edwards25519 and edwards448 curves. The document additionally describes two variants of the EdDSA algorithm: Pure EdDSA, where no hash function is applied to the content before signing and, HashEdDSA where a hash function is applied to the content before signing and the result of that hash function is signed. For the EdDSA, the content to be signed (either the message or the pre-hash value) is processed twice inside of the signature algorithm. For use with COSE, only the pure EdDSA version is used. This is because it is not expected that extremely large contents are going to be needed and, based on the arrangement of the message structure, the entire message is going to need to be held in memory in order to create or verify a signature. This means that there does not appear to be a need to be able to do block updates of the hash, followed by eliminating the message from memory. Applications can provide the same features by defining the content of the message as a hash value and transporting the COSE object (with the hash value) and the content as separate items.
The algorithms defined in this document can be found in Table 6. A single signature algorithm is defined, which can be used for multiple curves.
name | value | description |
---|---|---|
EdDSA | -8 | EdDSA |
[I-D.irtf-cfrg-eddsa] describes the method of encoding the signature value.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm the following checks are made:
How public values are computed is not the same when looking at EdDSA and ECDH, for this reason they should not be used with the other algorithm.
If batch signature verification is performed, a well-seeded cryptographic random number generator is REQUIRED. Signing and non-batch signature verification are deterministic operations and do not need random numbers of any kind.
Message Authentication Codes (MACs) provide data authentication and integrity protection. They provide either no or very limited data origination. A MAC, for example, be used to prove the identity of the sender to a third party.
MACs use the same scheme as signature with appendix algorithms. The message content is processed and an authentication code is produced. The authentication code is frequently called a tag.
The MAC functions are:
tag = MAC_Create(message content, key) valid = MAC_Verify(message content, key, tag)
MAC algorithms can be based on either a block cipher algorithm (i.e., AES-MAC) or a hash algorithm (i.e., HMAC). This document defines a MAC algorithm using each of these constructions.
MAC algorithms are used in the COSE_Mac and COSE_Mac0 structures.
The Hash-based Message Authentication Code algorithm (HMAC) [RFC2104][RFC4231] was designed to deal with length extension attacks. The algorithm was also designed to allow for new hash algorithms to be directly plugged in without changes to the hash function. The HMAC design process has been shown as solid since, while the security of hash algorithms such as MD5 has decreased over time, the security of HMAC combined with MD5 has not yet been shown to be compromised [RFC6151].
The HMAC algorithm is parameterized by an inner and outer padding, a hash function (h), and an authentication tag value length. For this specification, the inner and outer padding are fixed to the values set in [RFC2104]. The length of the authentication tag corresponds to the difficulty of producing a forgery. For use in constrained environments, we define a set of HMAC algorithms that are truncated. There are currently no known issues with truncation, however the security strength of the message tag is correspondingly reduced in strength. When truncating, the left-most tag length bits are kept and transmitted.
The algorithms defined in this document can be found in Table 7.
name | value | Hash | Tag Length | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
HMAC 256/64 | 4 | SHA-256 | 64 | HMAC w/ SHA-256 truncated to 64 bits |
HMAC 256/256 | 5 | SHA-256 | 256 | HMAC w/ SHA-256 |
HMAC 384/384 | 6 | SHA-384 | 384 | HMAC w/ SHA-384 |
HMAC 512/512 | 7 | SHA-512 | 512 | HMAC w/ SHA-512 |
Some recipient algorithms carry the key while others derive a key from secret data. For those algorithms that carry the key (such as AES-KeyWrap), the size of the HMAC key SHOULD be the same size as the underlying hash function. For those algorithms that derive the key (such as ECDH), the derived key MUST be the same size as the underlying hash function.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
Implementations creating and validating MAC values MUST validate that the key type, key length, and algorithm are correct and appropriate for the entities involved.
HMAC has proved to be resistant to attack even when used with weakened hash algorithms. The current best known attack appears is to brute force the key. This means that key size is going to be directly related to the security of an HMAC operation.
AES-CBC-MAC is defined in [MAC]. (Note this is not the same algorithm as AES-CMAC [RFC4493]).
AES-CBC-MAC is parameterized by the key length, the authentication tag length and the IV used. For all of these algorithms, the IV is fixed to all zeros. We provide an array of algorithms for various key lengths and tag lengths. The algorithms defined in this document are found in Table 8.
name | value | key length | tag length | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
AES-MAC 128/64 | 14 | 128 | 64 | AES-MAC 128 bit key, 64-bit tag |
AES-MAC 256/64 | 15 | 256 | 64 | AES-MAC 256 bit key, 64-bit tag |
AES-MAC 128/128 | 25 | 128 | 128 | AES-MAC 128 bit key, 128-bit tag |
AES-MAC 256/128 | 26 | 256 | 128 | AES-MAC 256 bit key, 128-bit tag |
Keys may be obtained either from a key structure or from a recipient structure. Implementations creating and validating MAC values MUST validate that the key type, key length and algorithm are correct and appropriate for the entities involved.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
A number of attacks exist against CBC-MAC that need to be considered. -
Content Encryption Algorithms provide data confidentiality for potentially large blocks of data using a symmetric key. They provide integrity on the data that was encrypted, however they provide either no or very limited data origination. (One cannot, for example, be used to prove the identity of the sender to a third party.) The ability to provide data origination is linked to how the CEK is obtained.
COSE restricts the set of legal content encryption algorithms to those that support authentication both of the content and additional data. The encryption process will generate some type of authentication value, but that value may be either explicit or implicit in terms of the algorithm definition. For simplicity sake, the authentication code will normally be defined as being appended to the cipher text stream. The encryption functions are:
ciphertext = Encrypt(message content, key, additional data) valid, message content = Decrypt(cipher text, key, additional data)
Most AEAD algorithms are logically defined as returning the message content only if the decryption is valid. Many but not all implementations will follow this convention. The message content MUST NOT be used if the decryption does not validate.
These algorithms are used in COSE_Encrypt and COSE_Encrypt0.
The GCM mode is a generic authenticated encryption block cipher mode defined in [AES-GCM]. The GCM mode is combined with the AES block encryption algorithm to define an AEAD cipher.
The GCM mode is parameterized by the size of the authentication tag and the size of the nonce. This document fixes the size of the nonce at 96 bits. The size of the authentication tag is limited to a small set of values. For this document however, the size of the authentication tag is fixed at 128 bits.
The set of algorithms defined in this document are in Table 9.
name | value | description |
---|---|---|
A128GCM | 1 | AES-GCM mode w/ 128-bit key, 128-bit tag |
A192GCM | 2 | AES-GCM mode w/ 192-bit key, 128-bit tag |
A256GCM | 3 | AES-GCM mode w/ 256-bit key, 128-bit tag |
Keys may be obtained either from a key structure or from a recipient structure. Implementations encrypting and decrypting MUST validate that the key type, key length and algorithm are correct and appropriate for the entities involved.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
When using AES-GCM, the following restrictions MUST be enforced:
Consideration was given to supporting smaller tag values; the constrained community would desire tag sizes in the 64-bit range. Doing so drastically changes both the maximum messages size (generally not an issue) and the number of times that a key can be used. Given that CCM is the usual mode for constrained environments, restricted modes are not supported.
Counter with CBC-MAC (CCM) is a generic authentication encryption block cipher mode defined in [RFC3610]. The CCM mode is combined with the AES block encryption algorithm to define a commonly used content encryption algorithm used in constrained devices.
The CCM mode has two parameter choices. The first choice is M, the size of the authentication field. The choice of the value for M involves a trade-off between message growth (from the tag) and the probably that an attacker can undetectably modify a message. The second choice is L, the size of the length field. This value requires a trade-off between the maximum message size and the size of the Nonce.
It is unfortunate that the specification for CCM specified L and M as a count of bytes rather than a count of bits. This leads to possible misunderstandings where AES-CCM-8 is frequently used to refer to a version of CCM mode where the size of the authentication is 64 bits and not 8 bits. These values have traditionally been specified as bit counts rather than byte counts. This document will follow the convention of using bit counts so that it is easier to compare the different algorithms presented in this document.
We define a matrix of algorithms in this document over the values of L and M. Constrained devices are usually operating in situations where they use short messages and want to avoid doing recipient specific cryptographic operations. This favors smaller values of both L and M. Less constrained devices will want to be able to use larger messages and are more willing to generate new keys for every operation. This favors larger values of L and M.
The following values are used for L:
The following values are used for M:
name | value | L | M | k | description |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
AES-CCM-16-64-128 | 10 | 16 | 64 | 128 | AES-CCM mode 128-bit key, 64-bit tag, 13-byte nonce |
AES-CCM-16-64-256 | 11 | 16 | 64 | 256 | AES-CCM mode 256-bit key, 64-bit tag, 13-byte nonce |
AES-CCM-64-64-128 | 12 | 64 | 64 | 128 | AES-CCM mode 128-bit key, 64-bit tag, 7-byte nonce |
AES-CCM-64-64-256 | 13 | 64 | 64 | 256 | AES-CCM mode 256-bit key, 64-bit tag, 7-byte nonce |
AES-CCM-16-128-128 | 30 | 16 | 128 | 128 | AES-CCM mode 128-bit key, 128-bit tag, 13-byte nonce |
AES-CCM-16-128-256 | 31 | 16 | 128 | 256 | AES-CCM mode 256-bit key, 128-bit tag, 13-byte nonce |
AES-CCM-64-128-128 | 32 | 64 | 128 | 128 | AES-CCM mode 128-bit key, 128-bit tag, 7-byte nonce |
AES-CCM-64-128-256 | 33 | 64 | 128 | 256 | AES-CCM mode 256-bit key, 128-bit tag, 7-byte nonce |
Keys may be obtained either from a key structure or from a recipient structure. Implementations encrypting and decrypting MUST validate that the key type, key length and algorithm are correct and appropriate for the entities involved.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
When using AES-CCM, the following restrictions MUST be enforced:
[RFC3610] additionally calls out one other consideration of note. It is possible to do a pre-computation attack against the algorithm in cases where portions of the plaintext are highly predictable. This reduces the security of the key size by half. Ways to deal with this attack include adding a random portion to the nonce value and/or increasing the key size used. Using a portion of the nonce for a random value will decrease the number of messages that a single key can be used for. Increasing the key size may require more resources in the constrained device. See sections 5 and 10 of [RFC3610] for more information.
ChaCha20 and Poly1305 combined together is an AEAD mode that is defined in [RFC7539]. This is an algorithm defined to be a cipher that is not AES and thus would not suffer from any future weaknesses found in AES. These cryptographic functions are designed to be fast in software-only implementations.
The ChaCha20/Poly1305 AEAD construction defined in [RFC7539] has no parameterization. It takes a 256-bit key and a 96-bit nonce, as well as the plain text and additional data as inputs and produces the cipher text as an option. We define one algorithm identifier for this algorithm in Table 11.
name | value | description |
---|---|---|
ChaCha20/Poly1305 | 24 | ChaCha20/Poly1305 w/ 256-bit key, 128-bit tag |
Keys may be obtained either from a key structure or from a recipient structure. Implementations encrypting and decrypting MUST validate that the key type, key length and algorithm are correct and appropriate for the entities involved.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
The pair of key, nonce MUST be unique for every invocation of the algorithm. Nonce counters are considered to be an acceptable way of ensuring that they are unique.
Key Derivation Functions (KDFs) are used to take some secret value and generate a different one. The secret value comes in three flavors:
General KDF functions work well with the first type of secret, can do reasonably well with the second type of secret, and generally do poorly with the last type of secret. None of the KDF functions in this section are designed to deal with the type of secrets that are used for passwords. Functions like PBES2 [I-D.moriarty-pkcs5-v2dot1] need to be used for that type of secret.
The same KDF function can be setup to deal with the first two types of secrets in a different way. The KDF function defined in Section 11.1 is such a function. This is reflected in the set of algorithms defined for HKDF.
When using KDF functions, one component that is included is context information. Context information is used to allow for different keying information to be derived from the same secret. The use of context based keying material is considered to be a good security practice.
This document defines a single context structure and a single KDF function. These elements are used for all of the recipient algorithms defined in this document that require a KDF process. These algorithms are defined in Section 12.1.2, Section 12.4.1, and Section 12.5.1.
The HKDF key derivation algorithm is defined in [RFC5869].
The HKDF algorithm takes these inputs:
HKDF is defined to use HMAC as the underlying PRF. However, it is possible to use other functions in the same construct to provide a different KDF function that is more appropriate in the constrained world. Specifically, one can use AES-CBC-MAC as the PRF for the expand step, but not for the extract step. When using a good random shared secret of the correct length, the extract step can be skipped. For the AES algorithm versions, the extract step is always skipped.
The extract step cannot be skipped if the secret is not uniformly random, for example, if it is the result of an ECDH key agreement step. (This implies that the AES HKDF version cannot be used with ECDH.) If the extract step is skipped, the 'salt' value is not used as part of the HKDF functionality.
The algorithms defined in this document are found in Table 12.
name | PRF | description |
---|---|---|
HKDF SHA-256 | HMAC with SHA-256 | HKDF using HMAC SHA-256 as the PRF |
HKDF SHA-512 | HMAC with SHA-512 | HKDF using HMAC SHA-512 as the PRF |
HKDF AES-MAC-128 | AES-CBC-MAC-128 | HKDF using AES-MAC as the PRF w/ 128-bit key |
HKDF AES-MAC-256 | AES-CBC-MAC-256 | HKDF using AES-MAC as the PRF w/ 256-bit key |
name | label | type | algorithm | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
salt | -20 | bstr | direct+HKDF-SHA-256, direct+HKDF-SHA-512, direct+HKDF-AES-128, direct+HKDF-AES-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Random salt |
The context information structure is used to ensure that the derived keying material is "bound" to the context of the transaction. The context information structure used here is based on that defined in [SP800-56A]. By using CBOR for the encoding of the context information structure, we automatically get the same type and length separation of fields that is obtained by the use of ASN.1. This means that there is no need to encode the lengths for the base elements as it is done by the encoding used in JOSE (Section 4.6.2 of [RFC7518]).
The context information structure refers to PartyU and PartyV as the two parties that are doing the key derivation. Unless the application protocol defines differently, we assign PartyU to the entity that is creating the message and PartyV to the entity that is receiving the message. By doing this association, different keys will be derived for each direction as the context information is different in each direction.
The context structure is built from information that is known to both entities. This information can be obtained from a variety of sources:
name | label | type | algorithm | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
PartyU identity | -21 | bstr | direct+HKDF-SHA-256, direct+HKDF-SHA-512, direct+HKDF-AES-128, direct+HKDF-AES-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Party U identity Information |
PartyU nonce | -22 | bstr / int | direct+HKDF-SHA-256, direct+HKDF-SHA-512, direct+HKDF-AES-128, direct+HKDF-AES-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Party U provided nonce |
PartyU other | -23 | bstr | direct+HKDF-SHA-256, direct+HKDF-SHA-512, direct+HKDF-AES-128, direct+HKDF-AES-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Party U other provided information |
PartyV identity | -24 | bstr | direct+HKDF-SHA-256, direct+HKDF-SHA-512, direct+HKDF-AES-128, direct+HKDF-AES-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Party V identity Information |
PartyV nonce | -25 | bstr / int | direct+HKDF-SHA-256, direct+HKDF-SHA-512, direct+HKDF-AES-128, direct+HKDF-AES-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Party V provided nonce |
PartyV other | -26 | bstr | direct+HKDF-SHA-256, direct+HKDF-SHA-512, direct+HKDF-AES-128, direct+HKDF-AES-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Party V other provided information |
We define a CBOR object to hold the context information. This object is referred to as COSE_KDF_Context. The object is based on a CBOR array type. The fields in the array are:
The following CDDL fragment corresponds to the text above.
PartyInfo = ( identity : bstr / nil, nonce : bstr / int / nil, other : bstr / nil, ) COSE_KDF_Context = [ AlgorithmID : int / tstr, PartyUInfo : [ PartyInfo ], PartyVInfo : [ PartyInfo ], SuppPubInfo : [ keyDataLength : uint, protected : empty_or_serialized_map, ? other : bstr ], ? SuppPrivInfo : bstr ]
Content key distribution methods (recipient algorithms) can be defined into a number of different classes. COSE has the ability to support many classes of recipient algorithms. In this section, a number of classes are listed and then a set of algorithms are specified for each of the classes. The names of the recipient algorithm classes used here are the same as are defined in [RFC7516]. Other specifications use different terms for the recipient algorithm classes or do not support some of the recipient algorithm classes.
The direct encryption class algorithms share a secret between the sender and the recipient that is used either directly or after manipulation as the CEK. When direct encryption mode is used, it MUST be the only mode used on the message.
The COSE_Encrypt structure for the recipient is organized as follows:
This recipient algorithm is the simplest; the identified key is directly used as the key for the next layer down in the message. There are no algorithm parameters defined for this algorithm. The algorithm identifier value is assigned in Table 15.
When this algorithm is used, the protected field MUST be zero length. The key type MUST be 'Symmetric'.
name | value | description |
---|---|---|
direct | -6 | Direct use of CEK |
This recipient algorithm has several potential problems that need to be considered:
These recipient algorithms take a common shared secret between the two parties and applies the HKDF function (Section 11.1), using the context structure defined in Section 11.2 to transform the shared secret into the CEK. The 'protected' field can be of non-zero length. Either the 'salt' parameter of HKDF or the partyU 'nonce' parameter of the context structure MUST be present. The salt/nonce parameter can be generated either randomly or deterministically. The requirement is that it be a unique value for the shared secret in question.
If the salt/nonce value is generated randomly, then it is suggested that the length of the random value be the same length as the hash function underlying HKDF. While there is no way to guarantee that it will be unique, there is a high probability that it will be unique. If the salt/nonce value is generated deterministically, it can be guaranteed to be unique and thus there is no length requirement.
A new IV must be used for each message if the same key is used. The IV can be modified in a predictable manner, a random manner or an unpredictable manner (i.e., encrypting a counter).
The IV used for a key can also be generated from the same HKDF functionality as the key is generated. If HKDF is used for generating the IV, the algorithm identifier is set to "IV-GENERATION".
When these algorithms are used, the key type MUST be 'symmetric'.
The set of algorithms defined in this document can be found in Table 16.
name | value | KDF | description |
---|---|---|---|
direct+HKDF-SHA-256 | -10 | HKDF SHA-256 | Shared secret w/ HKDF and SHA-256 |
direct+HKDF-SHA-512 | -11 | HKDF SHA-512 | Shared secret w/ HKDF and SHA-512 |
direct+HKDF-AES-128 | -12 | HKDF AES-MAC-128 | Shared secret w/ AES-MAC 128-bit key |
direct+HKDF-AES-256 | -13 | HKDF AES-MAC-256 | Shared secret w/ AES-MAC 256-bit key |
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
The shared secret needs to have some method to be regularly updated over time. The shared secret forms the basis of trust. Although not used directly, it should still be subject to scheduled rotation.
While these methods do not provide for perfect forward secrecy, as the same shared secret is used for all of the keys generated, if the key for any single message is discovered only the message (or series of messages) using that derived key are compromised. A new key derivation step will generate a new key which requires the same amount of work to get the key.
In key wrapping mode, the CEK is randomly generated and that key is then encrypted by a shared secret between the sender and the recipient. All of the currently defined key wrapping algorithms for COSE are AE algorithms. Key wrapping mode is considered to be superior to direct encryption if the system has any capability for doing random key generation. This is because the shared key is used to wrap random data rather than data that has some degree of organization and may in fact be repeating the same content. The use of Key Wrapping loses the weak data origination that is provided by the direct encryption algorithms.
The COSE_Encrypt structure for the recipient is organized as follows:
The AES Key Wrapping algorithm is defined in [RFC3394]. This algorithm uses an AES key to wrap a value that is a multiple of 64 bits. As such, it can be used to wrap a key for any of the content encryption algorithms defined in this document. The algorithm requires a single fixed parameter, the initial value. This is fixed to the value specified in Section 2.2.3.1 of [RFC3394]. There are no public parameters that vary on a per invocation basis. The protected header field MUST be empty.
Keys may be obtained either from a key structure or from a recipient structure. Implementations encrypting and decrypting MUST validate that the key type, key length and algorithm are correct and appropriate for the entities involved.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
name | value | key size | description |
---|---|---|---|
A128KW | -3 | 128 | AES Key Wrap w/ 128-bit key |
A192KW | -4 | 192 | AES Key Wrap w/ 192-bit key |
A256KW | -5 | 256 | AES Key Wrap w/ 256-bit key |
The shared secret needs to have some method to be regularly updated over time. The shared secret is the basis of trust.
Key transport mode is also called key encryption mode in some standards. Key transport mode differs from key wrap mode in that it uses an asymmetric encryption algorithm rather than a symmetric encryption algorithm to protect the key. This document does not define any key transport mode algorithms.
When using a key transport algorithm, the COSE_Encrypt structure for the recipient is organized as follows:
The 'direct key agreement' class of recipient algorithms uses a key agreement method to create a shared secret. A KDF is then applied to the shared secret to derive a key to be used in protecting the data. This key is normally used as a CEK or MAC key, but could be used for other purposes if more than two layers are in use (see Appendix B).
The most commonly used key agreement algorithm is Diffie-Hellman, but other variants exist. Since COSE is designed for a store and forward environment rather than an on-line environment, many of the DH variants cannot be used as the receiver of the message cannot provide any dynamic key material. One side-effect of this is that perfect forward secrecy (see [RFC4949]) is not achievable. A static key will always be used for the receiver of the COSE object.
Two variants of DH that are supported are:
When direct key agreement mode is used, there MUST be only one recipient in the message. This method creates the key directly and that makes it difficult to mix with additional recipients. If multiple recipients are needed, then the version with key wrap needs to be used.
The COSE_Encrypt structure for the recipient is organized as follows:
The mathematics for Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman can be found in [RFC6090]. In this document, the algorithm is extended to be used with the two curves defined in [RFC7748].
ECDH is parameterized by the following:
The set of direct ECDH algorithms defined in this document are found in Table 18.
name | value | KDF | Ephemeral- Static | Key Wrap | description |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ECDH-ES + HKDF-256 | -25 | HKDF - SHA-256 | yes | none | ECDH ES w/ HKDF - generate key directly |
ECDH-ES + HKDF-512 | -26 | HKDF - SHA-512 | yes | none | ECDH ES w/ HKDF - generate key directly |
ECDH-SS + HKDF-256 | -27 | HKDF - SHA-256 | no | none | ECDH SS w/ HKDF - generate key directly |
ECDH-SS + HKDF-512 | -28 | HKDF - SHA-512 | no | none | ECDH SS w/ HKDF - generate key directly |
name | label | type | algorithm | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
ephemeral key | -1 | COSE_Key | ECDH-ES+HKDF-256, ECDH-ES+HKDF-512, ECDH-ES+A128KW, ECDH-ES+A192KW, ECDH-ES+A256KW | Ephemeral Public key for the sender |
static key | -2 | COSE_Key | ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Static Public key for the sender |
static key id | -3 | bstr | ECDH-SS+HKDF-256, ECDH-SS+HKDF-512, ECDH-SS+A128KW, ECDH-SS+A192KW, ECDH-SS+A256KW | Static Public key identifier for the sender |
This document defines these algorithms to be used with the curves P-256, P-384, P-521, X25519, and X448. Implementations MUST verify that the key type and curve are correct. Different curves are restricted to different key types. Implementations MUST verify that the curve and algorithm are appropriate for the entities involved.
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
Some method of checking that points provided from external entities are valid. For the 'EC2' key format, this can be done by checking that the x and y values form a point on the curve. For the 'OKP' format, there is no simple way to do point validation.
Consideration was given to requiring that the public keys of both entities be provided as part of the key derivation process. (As recommended in section 6.1 of [RFC7748].) This was not done as COSE is used in a store and forward format rather than in on line key exchange. In order for this to be a problem, either the receiver public key has to be chosen maliciously or the sender has to be malicious. In either case, all security evaporates anyway.
A proof of possession of the private key associated with the public key is recommended when a key is moved from untrusted to trusted. (Either by the end user or by the entity that is responsible for making trust statements on keys.)
Key Agreement with Key Wrapping uses a randomly generated CEK. The CEK is then encrypted using a Key Wrapping algorithm and a key derived from the shared secret computed by the key agreement algorithm. The function for this would be:
encryptedKey = KeyWrap(KDF(DH-Shared, context), CEK)
The COSE_Encrypt structure for the recipient is organized as follows:
These algorithms are defined in Table 20.
ECDH with Key Agreement is parameterized by the same parameters as for ECDH Section 12.4.1 with the following modifications:
name | value | KDF | Ephemeral- Static | Key Wrap | description |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ECDH-ES + A128KW | -29 | HKDF - SHA-256 | yes | A128KW | ECDH ES w/ Concat KDF and AES Key wrap w/ 128 bit key |
ECDH-ES + A192KW | -30 | HKDF - SHA-256 | yes | A192KW | ECDH ES w/ Concat KDF and AES Key wrap w/ 192 bit key |
ECDH-ES + A256KW | -31 | HKDF - SHA-256 | yes | A256KW | ECDH ES w/ Concat KDF and AES Key wrap w/ 256 bit key |
ECDH-SS + A128KW | -32 | HKDF - SHA-256 | no | A128KW | ECDH SS w/ Concat KDF and AES Key wrap w/ 128 bit key |
ECDH-SS + A192KW | -33 | HKDF - SHA-256 | no | A192KW | ECDH SS w/ Concat KDF and AES Key wrap w/ 192 bit key |
ECDH-SS + A256KW | -34 | HKDF - SHA-256 | no | A256KW | ECDH SS w/ Concat KDF and AES Key wrap w/ 256 bit key |
When using a COSE key for this algorithm, the following checks are made:
The COSE_Key object defines a way to hold a single key object. It is still required that the members of individual key types be defined. This section of the document is where we define an initial set of members for specific key types.
For each of the key types, we define both public and private members. The public members are what is transmitted to others for their usage. Private members allow for the archival of keys by individuals. However, there are some circumstances in which private keys may be distributed to entities in a protocol. Examples include: entities that have poor random number generation, centralized key creation for multi-cast type operations, and protocols in which a shared secret is used as a bearer token for authorization purposes.
Key types are identified by the 'kty' member of the COSE_Key object. In this document, we define four values for the member:
name | value | description |
---|---|---|
OKP | 1 | Octet Key Pair |
EC2 | 2 | Elliptic Curve Keys w/ X,Y Coordinate pair |
Symmetric | 4 | Symmetric Keys |
Reserved | 0 | This value is reserved |
Two different key structures could be defined for Elliptic Curve keys. One version uses both an x and a y coordinate, potentially with point compression ('EC2'). This is the traditional EC point representation that is used in [RFC5480]. The other version uses only the x coordinate as the y coordinate is either to be recomputed or not needed for the key agreement operation ('OKP').
Applications MUST check that the curve and the key type are consistent and reject a key if they are not.
name | key type | value | description |
---|---|---|---|
P-256 | EC2 | 1 | NIST P-256 also known as secp256r1 |
P-384 | EC2 | 2 | NIST P-384 also known as secp384r1 |
P-521 | EC2 | 3 | NIST P-521 also known as secp521r1 |
X25519 | OKP | 4 | X25519 for use w/ ECDH only |
X448 | OKP | 5 | X448 for use w/ ECDH only |
Ed25519 | OKP | 6 | Ed25519 for use w/ EdDSA only |
Ed448 | OKP | 7 | Ed448 for use w/ EdDSA only |
The traditional way of sending EC curves has been to send either both the x and y coordinates, or the x coordinate and a sign bit for the y coordinate. The latter encoding has not been recommended in the IETF due to potential IPR issues. However, for operations in constrained environments, the ability to shrink a message by not sending the y coordinate is potentially useful.
For EC keys with both coordinates, the 'kty' member is set to 2 (EC2). The key parameters defined in this section are summarized in Table 23. The members that are defined for this key type are:
For public keys, it is REQUIRED that 'crv', 'x' and 'y' be present in the structure. For private keys, it is REQUIRED that 'crv' and 'd' be present in the structure. For private keys, it is RECOMMENDED that 'x' and 'y' also be present, but they can be recomputed from the required elements and omitting them saves on space.
name | key type | label | type | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
crv | 2 | -1 | int / tstr | EC Curve identifier - Taken from the COSE Curves registry |
x | 2 | -2 | bstr | X Coordinate |
y | 2 | -3 | bstr / bool | Y Coordinate |
d | 2 | -4 | bstr | Private key |
A new key type is defined for Octet Key Pairs (OKP). Do not assume that keys using this type are elliptic curves. This key type could be used for other curve types (for example, mathematics based on hyper-elliptic surfaces).
The key parameters defined in this section are summarized in Table 24. The members that are defined for this key type are:
For public keys, it is REQUIRED that 'crv' and 'x' be present in the structure. For private keys, it is REQUIRED that 'crv' and 'd' be present in the structure. For private keys, it is RECOMMENDED that 'x' also be present, but it can be recomputed from the required elements and omitting it saves on space.
name | key type | label | type | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
crv | 1 | -1 | int / tstr | EC Curve identifier - Taken from the COSE Key Common Parameters registry |
x | 1 | -2 | bstr | X Coordinate |
d | 1 | -4 | bstr | Private key |
Occasionally it is required that a symmetric key be transported between entities. This key structure allows for that to happen.
For symmetric keys, the 'kty' member is set to 3 (Symmetric). The member that is defined for this key type is:
This key structure does not have a form that contains only public members. As it is expected that this key structure is going to be transmitted, care must be taking that it is never transmitted accidentally or insecurely. For symmetric keys, it is REQUIRED that 'k' be present in the structure.
name | key type | label | type | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
k | 4 | -1 | bstr | Key Value |
There has been an attempt to limit the number of places where the document needs to impose restrictions on how the CBOR Encoder needs to work. We have managed to narrow it down to the following restrictions:
This document is designed to provide a set of security services, but not to provide implementation requirements for specific usage. The interoperability requirements are provided for how each of the individual services are used and how the algorithms are to be used for interoperability. The requirements about which algorithms and which services are needed are deferred to each application.
An example of a profile can be found in [I-D.selander-ace-object-security] where two profiles are being developed. One is for carrying content by itself, and the other is for carrying content in combination with CoAP headers.
It is intended that a profile of this document be created that defines the interoperability requirements for that specific application. This section provides a set of guidelines and topics that need to be considered when profiling this document.
It is requested that IANA assign the following tags from the "CBOR Tags" registry. It is requested that the tags for COSE_Sign1, COSE_Encrypt0, and COSE_Mac0 be assigned in the 1 to 23 value range (one byte long when encoded). It is requested that the tags for COSE_Sign, COSE_Encrypt and COSE_MAC be assigned in the 24 to 255 value range (two bytes long when encoded).
The tags to be assigned are in Table 1.
It is requested that IANA create a new registry entitled "COSE Header Parameters". The registry should be created as Expert Review Required. Guidelines for the experts is provided Section 16.11. It should be noted that in additional to the expert review, some portions of the registry require a specification, potentially on standards track, be supplied as well.
The columns of the registry are:
The initial contents of the registry can be found in Table 2 and Table 27. The specification column for all rows in that table should be this document.
Additionally, the label of 0 is to be marked as 'Reserved'.
It is requested that IANA create a new registry entitled "COSE Header Algorithm Parameters". The registry is to be created as Expert Review Required. Expert review guidelines are provided in Section 16.11.
The columns of the registry are:
The initial contents of the registry can be found in Table 13, Table 14, and Table 19. The specification column for all rows in that table should be this document.
It is requested that IANA create a new registry entitled "COSE Algorithms Registry". The registry is to be created as Expert Review Required. Guidelines for the experts is provided Section 16.11. It should be noted that in additional to the expert review, some portions of the registry require a specification, potentially on standards track, be supplied as well.
The initial contents of the registry can be found in Table 10, Table 9, Table 11, Table 5, Table 7, Table 8, Table 15, Table 16, Table 17, Table 6, Table 20 and Table 18. The specification column for all rows in the table should be this document. The recommneded column for all rows in the table are set to 'yes'.
Additionally, the label of 0 is to be marked as 'Reserved'.
NOTE: The assignment of algorithm identifiers in this document was done so that positive numbers were used for the first layer objects (COSE_Sign, COSE_Sign1, COSE_Encrypt, COSE_Encrypt0, COSE_Mac, and COSE_Mac0). Negative numbers were used for second layer objects (COSE_Signature and COSE_recipient). Expert reviewers should consider this practice, but are not expected to be restricted by this precedent.
It is requested that IANA create a new registry entitled "COSE Key Common Parameters" registry. The registry is to be created as Expert Review Required. Guidelines for the experts is provided Section 16.11. It should be noted that in additional to the expert review, some portions of the registry require a specification, potentially on standards track, be supplied as well.
The columns of the registry are:
This registry will be initially populated by the values in Table 3. The specification column for all of these entries will be this document.
It is requested that IANA create a new registry "COSE Key Type Parameters". The registry is to be created as Expert Review Required. Expert review guidelines are provided in Section 16.11.
The columns of the table are:
This registry will be initially populated by the values in Table 23, Table 24, and Table 25. The specification column for all of these entries will be this document.
It is requested that IANA create a new registry "COSE Key Type Registry". The registry is to be created as Expert Review Required. Expert review guidelines are provided in Section 16.11.
The columns of this table are:
This registry will be initially populated by the values in Table 21. The specification column for all of these entries will be this document.
It is requested that IANA create a new registry "COSE Elliptic Curve Parameters". The registry is to be created as Expert Review Required. Guidelines for the experts is provided Section 16.11. It should be noted that in additional to the expert review, some portions of the registry require a specification, potentially on standards track, be supplied as well.
The columns of the table are:
This registry will be initially populated by the values in Table 22. The specification column for all of these entries will be this document. The recommended column for all of the inital entries will be 'yes'.
This section registers the "application/cose" media type in the "Media Types" registry. These media types are used to indicate that the content is a COSE message.
This section registers the "application/cose-key" and "application/cose-key-set" media types in the "Media Types" registry. These media types are used to indicate, respectively, that content is a COSE_Key or COSE_KeySet object.
The template for registering "application/cose-key" is:
The template for registering "application/cose-key-set" is:
IANA is requested to add the following entries to the "CoAP Content-Format" registry. ID assignment in the 24-255 range is requested.
Media Type | Encoding | ID | Reference |
---|---|---|---|
application/cose; cose-type="cose-sign" | TBD10 | [This Document] | |
application/cose; cose-type="cose-sign1" | TBD11 | [This Document] | |
application/cose; cose-type="cose-encrypt" | TBD12 | [This Document] | |
application/cose; cose-type="cose-encrypt0" | TBD13 | [This Document] | |
application/cose; cose-type="cose-mac" | TBD14 | [This Document] | |
application/cose; cose-type="cose-mac0" | TBD15 | [This Document] | |
application/cose-key | TBD16 | [This Document] | |
application/cose-key-set | TBD17 | [This Document |
All of the IANA registries established in this document are defined as expert review. This section gives some general guidelines for what the experts should be looking for, but they are being designated as experts for a reason so they should be given substantial latitude.
Expert reviewers should take into consideration the following points:
This section records the status of known implementations of the protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of this Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in [RFC7942]. The description of implementations in this section is intended to assist the IETF in its decision processes in progressing drafts to RFCs. Please note that the listing of any individual implementation here does not imply endorsement by the IETF. Furthermore, no effort has been spent to verify the information presented here that was supplied by IETF contributors. This is not intended as, and must not be construed to be, a catalog of available implementations or their features. Readers are advised to note that other implementations may exist.
According to [RFC7942], "this will allow reviewers and working groups to assign due consideration to documents that have the benefit of running code, which may serve as evidence of valuable experimentation and feedback that have made the implemented protocols more mature. It is up to the individual working groups to use this information as they see fit".
There are three different implementations that have been created by the author of the document both to create the examples that are included in the document and to validate the structures and methodology used in the design of COSE.
There are a number of security considerations that need to be taken into account by implementers of this specification. The security considerations that are specific to an individual algorithm are placed next to the description of the algorithm. While some considerations have been highlighted here, additional considerations may be found in the documents listed in the references.
Implementations need to protect the private key material for any individuals. There are some cases in this document that need to be highlighted on this issue.
The use of ECDH and direct plus KDF (with no key wrap) will not directly lead to the private key being leaked; the one way function of the KDF will prevent that. There is however, a different issue that needs to be addressed. Having two recipients requires that the CEK be shared between two recipients. The second recipient therefore has a CEK that was derived from material that can be used for the weak proof of origin. The second recipient could create a message using the same CEK and send it to the first recipient, the first recipient would, for either static-static ECDH or direct plus KDF, make an assumption that the CEK could be used for proof of origin even though it is from the wrong entity. If the key wrap step is added, then no proof of origin is implied and this is not an issue.
Although it has been mentioned before, the use of a single key for multiple algorithms has been demonstrated in some cases to leak information about a key, provide for attackers to forge integrity tags, or gain information about encrypted content. Binding a key to a single algorithm prevents these problems. Key creators and key consumers are strongly encouraged not only to create new keys for each different algorithm, but to include that selection of algorithm in any distribution of key material and strictly enforce the matching of algorithms in the key structure to algorithms in the message structure. In addition to checking that algorithms are correct, the key form needs to be checked as well. Do not use an 'EC2' key where an 'OKP' key is expected.
Before using a key for transmission, or before acting on information received, a trust decision on a key needs to be made. Is the data or action something that the entity associated with the key has a right to see or a right to request? A number of factors are associated with this trust decision. Some of the ones that are highlighted here are:
There are a large number of algorithms presented in this document that use nonce values. For all of the nonces defined in this document, there is some type of restriction on the nonce being a unique value either for a key or for some other conditions. In all of these cases, there is no known requirement on the nonce being both unique and unpredictable, under these circumstances it reasonable to use a counter for creation of the nonce. In cases where one wants the pattern of the nonce to be unpredictable as well as unique, one can use a key created for that purpose and encrypt the counter to produce the nonce value.
One area that has been starting to get exposure is doing traffic analysis of encrypted messages based on the length of the message. This specification does not provide for a uniform method of providing padding as part of the message structure. An observer can distinguish between two different strings (for example, 'YES' and 'NO') based on length for all of the content encryption algorithms that are defined in this document. This means that it is up to applications to document how content padding is to be done in order to prevent or discourage such analysis. (For example, the strings could be defined as 'YES' and 'NO '.)
There has been a portion of the working group who have expressed a strong desire to relax the rule that the algorithm identifier be required to appear in each level of a COSE object. There are two basic reasons that have been advanced to support this position. First, the resulting message will be smaller if the algorithm identifier is omitted from the most common messages in a CoAP environment. Second, there is a potential bug that will arise if full checking is not done correctly between the different places that an algorithm identifier could be placed (the message itself, an application statement, the key structure that the sender possesses and the key structure the recipient possesses).
This appendix lays out how such a change can be made and the details that an application needs to specify in order to use this option. Two different sets of details are specified: Those needed to omit an algorithm identifier and those needed to use a variant on the counter signature attribute that contains no attributes about itself.
In this section are laid out three sets of recommendations. The first set of recommendations apply to having an implicit algorithm identified for a single layer of a COSE object. The second set of recommendations apply to having multiple implicit algorithms identified for multiple layers of a COSE object. The third set of recommendations apply to having implicit algorithms for multiple COSE object constructs.
RFC 2119 language is deliberately not used here. This specification can provide recommendations, but it cannot enforce them.
This set of recommendations applies to the case where an application is distributing a fixed algorithm along with the key information for use in a single COSE object. This normally applies to the smallest of the COSE objects, specifically COSE_Sign1, COSE_Mac0, and COSE_Encrypt0, but could apply to the other structures as well.
The following items should be taken into account:
The second case is having multiple implicit algorithm identifiers specified for a multiple layer COSE object. An example of how this would work is the encryption context that an application specifies contains a content encryption algorithm, a key wrap algorithm, a key identifier, and a shared secret. The sender omits sending the algorithm identifier for both the content layer and the recipient layer leaving only the key identifier. The receiver then uses the key identifier to get the implicit algorithm identifiers.
The following additional items need to be taken into consideration:
The third case is having multiple implicit algorithm identifiers, but targeted at potentially unrelated layers or different COSE objects. There are a number of different scenarios where this might be applicable. Some of these scenarios are:
For these cases, the following additional items need to be considered:
There is a group of people who want to have a counter signature parameter that is directly tied to the value being signed and thus the authenticated and unauthenticated buckets can be removed from the message being sent. The focus on this is an even smaller size, as all of the information on the process of creating the counter signature is implicit rather than being explicitly carried in the message. This includes not only the algorithm identifier as presented above, but also items such as the key identification is always external to the signature structure. This means that the entities that are doing the validation of the counter signature are required to infer which key is to be used from context rather than being explicit. One way of doing this would be to presume that all data coming from a specific port (or to a specific URL) is to be validated by a specific key. (Note that this does not require that the key identifier be part of the value signed as it does not serve a cryptographic purpose. If the key validates the counter signature, then it should be presumed that the entity associated with that key produced the signature.)
When computing the signature for the bare counter signature header, the same Sig_structure defined in Section 4.4 is used. The sign_protected field is omitted, as there is no protected header field in in this counter signature header. The value of "CounterSignature0" is placed in the context field of the Sig_stucture.
name | label | value type | value | description |
---|---|---|---|---|
CounterSignature0 | 9 | bstr | Counter signature with implied signer and headers |
All of the currently defined recipient algorithms classes only use two layers of the COSE_Encrypt structure. The first layer is the message content and the second layer is the content key encryption. However, if one uses a recipient algorithm such as RSA-KEM (see Appendix A of RSA-KEM [RFC5990]), then it makes sense to have three layers of the COSE_Encrypt structure.
These layers would be:
This is an example of what a triple layer message would look like. The message has the following layers:
In effect, this example is a decomposed version of using the ECDH-ES+A128KW algorithm.
Size of binary file is 183 bytes
96( [ / protected / h'a10101' / { \ alg \ 1:1 \ AES-GCM 128 \ } / , / unprotected / { / iv / 5:h'02d1f7e6f26c43d4868d87ce' }, / ciphertext / h'64f84d913ba60a76070a9a48f26e97e863e2852948658f0 811139868826e89218a75715b', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'', / unprotected / { / alg / 1:-3 / A128KW / }, / ciphertext / h'dbd43c4e9d719c27c6275c67d628d493f090593db82 18f11', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'a1013818' / { \ alg \ 1:-25 \ ECDH-ES + HKDF-256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / ephemeral / -1:{ / kty / 1:2, / crv / -1:1, / x / -2:h'b2add44368ea6d641f9ca9af308b4079aeb519f11 e9b8a55a600b21233e86e68', / y / -3:false }, / kid / 4:'meriadoc.brandybuck@buckland.example' }, / ciphertext / h'' ] ] ] ] ] )
This appendix includes a set of examples that show the different features and message types that have been defined in this document. To make the examples easier to read, they are presented using the extended CBOR diagnostic notation (defined in [I-D.greevenbosch-appsawg-cbor-cddl]) rather than as a binary dump.
A GitHub project has been created at https://github.com/cose-wg/Examples that contains not only the examples presented in this document, but a more complete set of testing examples as well. Each example is found in a JSON file that contains the inputs used to create the example, some of the intermediate values that can be used in debugging the example and the output of the example presented in both a hex and a CBOR diagnostic notation format. Some of the examples at the site are designed failure testing cases; these are clearly marked as such in the JSON file. If errors in the examples in this document are found, the examples on github will be updated and a note to that effect will be placed in the JSON file.
As noted, the examples are presented using the CBOR's diagnostic notation. A Ruby based tool exists that can convert between the diagnostic notation and binary. This tool can be installed with the command line:
gem install cbor-diag
The diagnostic notation can be converted into binary files using the following command line:
diag2cbor.rb < inputfile > outputfile
The examples can be extracted from the XML version of this document via an XPath expression as all of the artwork is tagged with the attribute type='CBORdiag'. (Depending on the XPath evaluator one is using, it may be necessary to deal with > as an entity.)
//artwork[@type='CDDL']/text()
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 103 bytes
98( [ / protected / h'', / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / signatures / [ [ / protected / h'a10126' / { \ alg \ 1:-7 \ ECDSA 256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'11' }, / signature / h'e2aeafd40d69d19dfe6e52077c5d7ff4e408282cbefb 5d06cbf414af2e19d982ac45ac98b8544c908b4507de1e90b717c3d34816fe926a2b 98f53afd2fa0f30a' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 277 bytes
98( [ / protected / h'', / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / signatures / [ [ / protected / h'a10126' / { \ alg \ 1:-7 \ ECDSA 256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'11' }, / signature / h'e2aeafd40d69d19dfe6e52077c5d7ff4e408282cbefb 5d06cbf414af2e19d982ac45ac98b8544c908b4507de1e90b717c3d34816fe926a2b 98f53afd2fa0f30a' ], [ / protected / h'a1013823' / { \ alg \ 1:-36 } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'bilbo.baggins@hobbiton.example' }, / signature / h'00a2d28a7c2bdb1587877420f65adf7d0b9a06635dd1 de64bb62974c863f0b160dd2163734034e6ac003b01e8705524c5c4ca479a952f024 7ee8cb0b4fb7397ba08d009e0c8bf482270cc5771aa143966e5a469a09f613488030 c5b07ec6d722e3835adb5b2d8c44e95ffb13877dd2582866883535de3bb03d01753f 83ab87bb4f7a0297' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 180 bytes
98( [ / protected / h'', / unprotected / { / countersign / 7:[ / protected / h'a10126' / { \ alg \ 1:-7 \ ECDSA 256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'11' }, / signature / h'5ac05e289d5d0e1b0a7f048a5d2b643813ded50bc9e4 9220f4f7278f85f19d4a77d655c9d3b51e805a74b099e1e085aacd97fc29d72f887e 8802bb6650cceb2c' ] }, / payload / 'This is the content.', / signatures / [ [ / protected / h'a10126' / { \ alg \ 1:-7 \ ECDSA 256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'11' }, / signature / h'e2aeafd40d69d19dfe6e52077c5d7ff4e408282cbefb 5d06cbf414af2e19d982ac45ac98b8544c908b4507de1e90b717c3d34816fe926a2b 98f53afd2fa0f30a' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 125 bytes
98( [ / protected / h'a2687265736572766564f40281687265736572766564' / { "reserved":false, \ crit \ 2:[ "reserved" ] } / , / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / signatures / [ [ / protected / h'a10126' / { \ alg \ 1:-7 \ ECDSA 256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'11' }, / signature / h'3fc54702aa56e1b2cb20284294c9106a63f91bac658d 69351210a031d8fc7c5ff3e4be39445b1a3e83e1510d1aca2f2e8a7c081c7645042b 18aba9d1fad1bd9c' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 98 bytes
18( [ / protected / h'a10126' / { \ alg \ 1:-7 \ ECDSA 256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'11' }, / payload / 'This is the content.', / signature / h'eae868ecc176883766c5dc5ba5b8dca25dab3c2e56a551ce 5705b793914348e19f43d6c6ba654472da301b645b293c9ba939295b97c4bdb84778 2bff384c5794' ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 151 bytes
96( [ / protected / h'a10101' / { \ alg \ 1:1 \ AES-GCM 128 \ } / , / unprotected / { / iv / 5:h'c9cf4df2fe6c632bf7886413' }, / ciphertext / h'7adbe2709ca818fb415f1e5df66f4e1a51053ba6d65a1a0 c52a357da7a644b8070a151b0', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'a1013818' / { \ alg \ 1:-25 \ ECDH-ES + HKDF-256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / ephemeral / -1:{ / kty / 1:2, / crv / -1:1, / x / -2:h'98f50a4ff6c05861c8860d13a638ea56c3f5ad7590bbf bf054e1c7b4d91d6280', / y / -3:true }, / kid / 4:'meriadoc.brandybuck@buckland.example' }, / ciphertext / h'' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 91 bytes
96( [ / protected / h'a1010a' / { \ alg \ 1:10 \ AES-CCM-16-64-128 \ } / , / unprotected / { / iv / 5:h'89f52f65a1c580933b5261a76c' }, / ciphertext / h'753548a19b1307084ca7b2056924ed95f2e3b17006dfe93 1b687b847', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'a10129' / { \ alg \ 1:-10 } / , / unprotected / { / salt / -20:'aabbccddeeffgghh', / kid / 4:'our-secret' }, / ciphertext / h'' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 326 bytes
96( [ / protected / h'a10101' / { \ alg \ 1:1 \ AES-GCM 128 \ } / , / unprotected / { / iv / 5:h'c9cf4df2fe6c632bf7886413', / countersign / 7:[ / protected / h'a1013823' / { \ alg \ 1:-36 } / , / unprotected / { / kid / 4:'bilbo.baggins@hobbiton.example' }, / signature / h'00929663c8789bb28177ae28467e66377da12302d7f9 594d2999afa5dfa531294f8896f2b6cdf1740014f4c7f1a358e3a6cf57f4ed6fb02f cf8f7aa989f5dfd07f0700a3a7d8f3c604ba70fa9411bd10c2591b483e1d2c31de00 3183e434d8fba18f17a4c7e3dfa003ac1cf3d30d44d2533c4989d3ac38c38b71481c c3430c9d65e7ddff' ] }, / ciphertext / h'7adbe2709ca818fb415f1e5df66f4e1a51053ba6d65a1a0 c52a357da7a644b8070a151b0', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'a1013818' / { \ alg \ 1:-25 \ ECDH-ES + HKDF-256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / ephemeral / -1:{ / kty / 1:2, / crv / -1:1, / x / -2:h'98f50a4ff6c05861c8860d13a638ea56c3f5ad7590bbf bf054e1c7b4d91d6280', / y / -3:true }, / kid / 4:'meriadoc.brandybuck@buckland.example' }, / ciphertext / h'' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 173 bytes
96( [ / protected / h'a10101' / { \ alg \ 1:1 \ AES-GCM 128 \ } / , / unprotected / { / iv / 5:h'02d1f7e6f26c43d4868d87ce' }, / ciphertext / h'64f84d913ba60a76070a9a48f26e97e863e28529d8f5335 e5f0165eee976b4a5f6c6f09d', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'a101381f' / { \ alg \ 1:-32 \ ECHD-SS+A128KW \ } / , / unprotected / { / static kid / -3:'peregrin.took@tuckborough.example', / kid / 4:'meriadoc.brandybuck@buckland.example', / U nonce / -22:h'0101' }, / ciphertext / h'41e0d76f579dbd0d936a662d54d8582037de2e366fd e1c62' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 52 bytes
16( [ / protected / h'a1010a' / { \ alg \ 1:10 \ AES-CCM-16-64-128 \ } / , / unprotected / { / iv / 5:h'89f52f65a1c580933b5261a78c' }, / ciphertext / h'5974e1b99a3a4cc09a659aa2e9e7fff161d38ce7edd5617 388e77baf' ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 41 bytes
16( [ / protected / h'a1010a' / { \ alg \ 1:10 \ AES-CCM-16-64-128 \ } / , / unprotected / { / partial iv / 6:h'61a7' }, / ciphertext / h'252a8911d465c125b6764739700f0141ed09192da5c69e5 33abf852b' ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 57 bytes
97( [ / protected / h'a1010f' / { \ alg \ 1:15 \ AES-CBC-MAC-256//64 \ } / , / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / tag / h'9e1226ba1f81b848', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'', / unprotected / { / alg / 1:-6 / direct /, / kid / 4:'our-secret' }, / ciphertext / h'' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 214 bytes
97( [ / protected / h'a10105' / { \ alg \ 1:5 \ HMAC 256//256 \ } / , / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / tag / h'81a03448acd3d305376eaa11fb3fe416a955be2cbe7ec96f012c99 4bc3f16a41', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'a101381a' / { \ alg \ 1:-27 \ ECDH-SS + HKDF-256 \ } / , / unprotected / { / static kid / -3:'peregrin.took@tuckborough.example', / kid / 4:'meriadoc.brandybuck@buckland.example', / U nonce / -22:h'4d8553e7e74f3c6a3a9dd3ef286a8195cbf8a23d 19558ccfec7d34b824f42d92bd06bd2c7f0271f0214e141fb779ae2856abf585a583 68b017e7f2a9e5ce4db5' }, / ciphertext / h'' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 109 bytes
97( [ / protected / h'a1010e' / { \ alg \ 1:14 \ AES-CBC-MAC-128//64 \ } / , / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / tag / h'36f5afaf0bab5d43', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'', / unprotected / { / alg / 1:-5 / A256KW /, / kid / 4:'018c0ae5-4d9b-471b-bfd6-eef314bc7037' }, / ciphertext / h'711ab0dc2fc4585dce27effa6781c8093eba906f227 b6eb0' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 309 bytes
97( [ / protected / h'a10105' / { \ alg \ 1:5 \ HMAC 256//256 \ } / , / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / tag / h'bf48235e809b5c42e995f2b7d5fa13620e7ed834e337f6aa43df16 1e49e9323e', / recipients / [ [ / protected / h'a101381c' / { \ alg \ 1:-29 \ ECHD-ES+A128KW \ } / , / unprotected / { / ephemeral / -1:{ / kty / 1:2, / crv / -1:3, / x / -2:h'0043b12669acac3fd27898ffba0bcd2e6c366d53bc4db 71f909a759304acfb5e18cdc7ba0b13ff8c7636271a6924b1ac63c02688075b55ef2 d613574e7dc242f79c3', / y / -3:true }, / kid / 4:'bilbo.baggins@hobbiton.example' }, / ciphertext / h'339bc4f79984cdc6b3e6ce5f315a4c7d2b0ac466fce a69e8c07dfbca5bb1f661bc5f8e0df9e3eff5' ], [ / protected / h'', / unprotected / { / alg / 1:-5 / A256KW /, / kid / 4:'018c0ae5-4d9b-471b-bfd6-eef314bc7037' }, / ciphertext / h'0b2c7cfce04e98276342d6476a7723c090dfdd15f9a 518e7736549e998370695e6d6a83b4ae507bb' ] ] ] )
This example uses the following:
Size of binary file is 37 bytes
17( [ / protected / h'a1010f' / { \ alg \ 1:15 \ AES-CBC-MAC-256//64 \ } / , / unprotected / {}, / payload / 'This is the content.', / tag / h'726043745027214f' ] )
Note that this example uses the same inputs as Appendix C.5.1.
This is an example of a COSE Key set. This example includes the public keys for all of the previous examples.
In order the keys are:
Size of binary file is 481 bytes
[ { -1:1, -2:h'65eda5a12577c2bae829437fe338701a10aaa375e1bb5b5de108de439c0 8551d', -3:h'1e52ed75701163f7f9e40ddf9f341b3dc9ba860af7e0ca7ca7e9eecd008 4d19c', 1:2, 2:'meriadoc.brandybuck@buckland.example' }, { -1:1, -2:h'bac5b11cad8f99f9c72b05cf4b9e26d244dc189f745228255a219a86d6a 09eff', -3:h'20138bf82dc1b6d562be0fa54ab7804a3a64b6d72ccfed6b6fb6ed28bbf c117e', 1:2, 2:'11' }, { -1:3, -2:h'0072992cb3ac08ecf3e5c63dedec0d51a8c1f79ef2f82f94f3c737bf5de 7986671eac625fe8257bbd0394644caaa3aaf8f27a4585fbbcad0f2457620085e5c8 f42ad', -3:h'01dca6947bce88bc5790485ac97427342bc35f887d86d65a089377e247e 60baa55e4e8501e2ada5724ac51d6909008033ebc10ac999b9d7f5cc2519f3fe1ea1 d9475', 1:2, 2:'bilbo.baggins@hobbiton.example' }, { -1:1, -2:h'98f50a4ff6c05861c8860d13a638ea56c3f5ad7590bbfbf054e1c7b4d91 d6280', -3:h'f01400b089867804b8e9fc96c3932161f1934f4223069170d924b7e03bf 822bb', 1:2, 2:'peregrin.took@tuckborough.example' } ]
This is an example of a COSE Key set. This example includes the private keys for all of the previous examples.
In order the keys are:
Size of binary file is 816 bytes
[ { 1:2, 2:'meriadoc.brandybuck@buckland.example', -1:1, -2:h'65eda5a12577c2bae829437fe338701a10aaa375e1bb5b5de108de439c0 8551d', -3:h'1e52ed75701163f7f9e40ddf9f341b3dc9ba860af7e0ca7ca7e9eecd008 4d19c', -4:h'aff907c99f9ad3aae6c4cdf21122bce2bd68b5283e6907154ad911840fa 208cf' }, { 1:2, 2:'11', -1:1, -2:h'bac5b11cad8f99f9c72b05cf4b9e26d244dc189f745228255a219a86d6a 09eff', -3:h'20138bf82dc1b6d562be0fa54ab7804a3a64b6d72ccfed6b6fb6ed28bbf c117e', -4:h'57c92077664146e876760c9520d054aa93c3afb04e306705db609030850 7b4d3' }, { 1:2, 2:'bilbo.baggins@hobbiton.example', -1:3, -2:h'0072992cb3ac08ecf3e5c63dedec0d51a8c1f79ef2f82f94f3c737bf5de 7986671eac625fe8257bbd0394644caaa3aaf8f27a4585fbbcad0f2457620085e5c8 f42ad', -3:h'01dca6947bce88bc5790485ac97427342bc35f887d86d65a089377e247e 60baa55e4e8501e2ada5724ac51d6909008033ebc10ac999b9d7f5cc2519f3fe1ea1 d9475', -4:h'00085138ddabf5ca975f5860f91a08e91d6d5f9a76ad4018766a476680b 55cd339e8ab6c72b5facdb2a2a50ac25bd086647dd3e2e6e99e84ca2c3609fdf177f eb26d' }, { 1:4, 2:'our-secret', -1:h'849b57219dae48de646d07dbb533566e976686457c1491be3a76dcea6c4 27188' }, { 1:2, -1:1, 2:'peregrin.took@tuckborough.example', -2:h'98f50a4ff6c05861c8860d13a638ea56c3f5ad7590bbfbf054e1c7b4d91 d6280', -3:h'f01400b089867804b8e9fc96c3932161f1934f4223069170d924b7e03bf 822bb', -4:h'02d1f7e6f26c43d4868d87ceb2353161740aacf1f7163647984b522a848 df1c3' }, { 1:4, 2:'our-secret2', -1:h'849b5786457c1491be3a76dcea6c4271' }, { 1:4, 2:'018c0ae5-4d9b-471b-bfd6-eef314bc7037', -1:h'849b57219dae48de646d07dbb533566e976686457c1491be3a76dcea6c4 27188' } ]
This document is a product of the COSE working group of the IETF.
The following individuals are to blame for getting me started on this project in the first place: Richard Barnes, Matt Miller, and Martin Thomson.
The initial version of the draft was based to some degree on the outputs of the JOSE and S/MIME working groups.
The following individuals provided input into the final form of the document: Carsten Bormann, John Bradley, Brain Campbell, Michael B. Jones, Ilari Liusvaara, Francesca Palombini, Goran Selander, and Ludwig Seitz.