posts-go/posts/2023-08-23-real-world-crypto.md

Real World Crypto 101

My notes when reading Real-World Cryptography

Hash function

... convert from input to digest

• Pre-image resistance: Given digest, can not find input
• Second pre-image resistance: Given input, digest, can not find another input produce same digest. Small change to input make digest big change.
• Collision resistance: Can not find 2 input produce same digest.

MAC aka Message Authentication Code

... produce from key, message to authentication tag.

• A send B message with MAC (generate from message and A key).
• B double check message with MAC (generate from receive message and B key).
• A and B use same key.

sequenceDiagram
    participant alice
    participant bob

    alice ->> bob: send alice, mac(secret_key_alice, alice)
    bob ->> bob: compare mac(secret_key_alice, alice) with mac(secret_key_bob, alice)

• Prevent forgery: without secret_key, can not generate MAC even if knowing a lot of alice and mac(secret_key, alice),
• Prevent collisions: keep MAC long enough (256-bit),
• Replay attacks: send transaction 2 times with perfectly MAC and u know why -> instead of mac(secret_key, alice), use counter as mac(secret_key, counter, alice).
• Verify must be done in constant time: if not, probably return error the moment the bytes differ -> attacker recreate byte by byte by measuring how long -> timing attacks

Constant time comparison:

for i := 0; i < len(x); i++ {
    // Use XOR instead of compare x[i] == y[i]
    // If x[i] == y[i] -> XOR is 1
    // Otherwise XOR is 0
    v |= x[i] ^ y[i]
}

// v == 1 means all XOR is 1 means x == y

Use for:

• Integrity: because MAC ensure no one can tamper with message without noticing

sequenceDiagram
    participant alice
    participant bob

    alice ->> bob: send username, password
    bob -->> alice: return alice|mac(secret_key, alice)
    alice ->> bob: send alice|mac(secret_key, alice)
    bob -->> alice: return OK
    alice ->> bob: send bob|mac(secret_key, alice)
    bob -->> alice: return ERROR

HMAC is MAC using hash

AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)

Currently (2023) the world using AES-128 which take a key 128 bits == 16 bytes

• Take a variable-length key
• Take plaintext of 128 bits
• Give ciphertext of 128 bits

AES is kind of cipher, handle fixed-size plaintext so we called block cipher. AES is deterministic so we can encrypt and decrypt.

AES-CBC (Cipher Block Chaining)

What if text you want to encrypt is longer than 128 bytes ? We add padding for text to become multi block which has 128 bytes, then encrypt each block.

Adding padding bytes is easy, remove it after decrypt is hard. How do you know which is padding bytes you add if you use random bytes ?

Just use PKCS#7 padding. Example AES-128 use block of 16 bytes but only have 9 bytes, should add 7 bytes padding. Just fill all padding bytes with padding length aka value 07.

XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX 07 07 07 07 07 07 07

So to know how much padding bytes should we remove -> read last bytes (07) to know the length to remove trailing padding bytes.

The problem with naive way to split text, add padding bytes then encrypt each block using AES-128 is repeated text. Because it leaks information if text is made up from many repeated text (See The ECB penguin).

CBC = deterministic block cipher + IV (initialization vector)

AES-CBC encrypt:

• IV XOR first plaintext -> AES encrypt -> first ciphertext.
• Use first ciphertext as IV to second ciphertext and so on.

AES-CBC decrypt:

• AES decrypt first ciphertext -> XOR IV -> first plaintext.
• Use first ciphertext as IV to second block and so on.

Because IV, same plaintext can encrypt to different ciphertext.

WARNING If IV become predictable, AES-CBC become deterministic -> BEAST attack (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS).

AEAD (Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data)

Because AES-CBC requires IV which shows public -> attacker can change IV -> lack of authenticity -> use AES-CBC-HMAC or AEAD.

AEAD provides a way to authenticate associated data.

AES-GCM (Galois/Counter Mode)

... is one of AEAD implementation.

AES-GCM = AES-CTR (Counter) + GMAC message authentication code

AES-CTR encrypt:

• Create nonce 12 bytes (same purpose as IV).
• Concatenate nonce with counter 4 bytes: 1, 2, 3, ...
• Encrypt AES from concatenated none with counter to keystream.
• XOR keystream with plaintext -> ciphertext.

Limit is counter only up to 4 bytes so only handle plaintext of 2^32 - 1 blocks of 16 bytes aka 69 GBs.

AES-CTR no need padding because if keystream is longer than plaintext, it is truncated to plaintext length before XOR.

This is stream cipher, differ from block cipher

• No need padding.
• Ciphertext is same length as plaintext.

GMAC is MAC with GHASH. GHASH resembles CBC mode.

ChaCha20-Poly1305

... is one of AEAD implementation.

ChaCha20-Poly1305 = ChaCha20 stream cipher + Poly1305 MAC

Key exchange

sequenceDiagram
    participant alice
    participant bob

    alice ->> alice: generate key pair: public_key, secret_key
    bob ->> bob: generate key pair: public_key, secret_key
    alice ->> bob: send public_key
    bob ->> alice: send public_key
    alice ->> alice: generate shared_secret(secret_key, bob_public_key)
    bob ->> bob: generate shared_secret(secret_key, alice_public_key)

Prevent MITM (Man In The Middle) passive attack. If attacker can intercept public_key then it's over.

Diffie-Hellman

... is key exchange algorithm.

• Alice and Bob agree on prime number p and generator g.
• Alice generate secret a and public A = g^a mod p.
• Bob generate secret b and public B = g^b mod p.
• Alice and Bob exchange A and B
  • Same secret A^b mod p == B^a mod p == g^(ab) mod p

Diffie-Hellman is based on group theory.

Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH)

Instead of prime number, use elliptic curve.

• Alice and Bob agree on elliptic curve E and generator G.
• Alice generate secret a and public A = [a]G.
• Bob generate secret b and public B = [b]G.
• Alice and Bob exchange A and B
  • Same secret [a]B == [b]A == [ab]G