title: The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) Protocol abbrev: MLS docname: draft-ietf-mls-protocol-latest category: info
ipr: trust200902 area: Security keyword: Internet-Draft
stand_alone: yes pi: [toc, sortrefs, symrefs]
author:
- ins: R. Barnes name: Richard Barnes organization: Cisco email: rlb@ipv.sx
- ins: B. Beurdouche name: Benjamin Beurdouche organization: Inria & Mozilla email: ietf@beurdouche.com
- ins: R. Robert name: Raphael Robert organization: email: ietf@raphaelrobert.com
- ins: J. Millican name: Jon Millican organization: Facebook email: jmillican@fb.com
- ins: E. Omara name: Emad Omara organization: Google email: emadomara@google.com
- ins: K. Cohn-Gordon name: Katriel Cohn-Gordon organization: University of Oxford email: me@katriel.co.uk
informative: art: target: https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/666.pdf title: "On Ends-to-Ends Encryption: Asynchronous Group Messaging with Strong Security Guarantees" author: - name: Katriel Cohn-Gordon - name: Cas Cremers - name: Luke Garratt - name: Jon Millican - name: Kevin Milner date: 2018-01-18 doubleratchet: DOI.10.1109/EuroSP.2017.27
signal: target: https://www.signal.org/docs/specifications/doubleratchet/ title: "The Double Ratchet Algorithm" date: 2016-11-20 author: - name: Trevor Perrin(ed) - name: Moxie Marlinspike
SECG: title: "Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Standards for Efficient Cryptography Group, ver. 2" target: https://secg.org/sec1-v2.pdf date: 2009
SHS: DOI.10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4
--- abstract
Messaging applications are increasingly making use of end-to-end security mechanisms to ensure that messages are only accessible to the communicating endpoints, and not to any servers involved in delivering messages. Establishing keys to provide such protections is challenging for group chat settings, in which more than two clients need to agree on a key but may not be online at the same time. In this document, we specify a key establishment protocol that provides efficient asynchronous group key establishment with forward secrecy and post-compromise security for groups in size ranging from two to thousands.
--- middle
DISCLAIMER: This is a work-in-progress draft of MLS and has not yet seen significant security analysis. It should not be used as a basis for building production systems.
RFC EDITOR: PLEASE REMOVE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH The source for this draft is maintained in GitHub. Suggested changes should be submitted as pull requests at https://github.com/mlswg/mls-protocol. Instructions are on that page as well. Editorial changes can be managed in GitHub, but any substantive change should be discussed on the MLS mailing list.
A group of users who want to send each other encrypted messages needs a way to derive shared symmetric encryption keys. For two parties, this problem has been studied thoroughly, with the Double Ratchet emerging as a common solution {{doubleratchet}} {{signal}}. Channels implementing the Double Ratchet enjoy fine-grained forward secrecy as well as post-compromise security, but are nonetheless efficient enough for heavy use over low-bandwidth networks.
For a group of size greater than two, a common strategy is to unilaterally broadcast symmetric "sender" keys over existing shared symmetric channels, and then for each member to send messages to the group encrypted with their own sender key. Unfortunately, while this improves efficiency over pairwise broadcast of individual messages and provides forward secrecy (with the addition of a hash ratchet), it is difficult to achieve post-compromise security with sender keys. An adversary who learns a sender key can often indefinitely and passively eavesdrop on that member's messages. Generating and distributing a new sender key provides a form of post-compromise security with regard to that sender. However, it requires computation and communications resources that scale linearly with the size of the group.
In this document, we describe a protocol based on tree structures that enable asynchronous group keying with forward secrecy and post-compromise security. Based on earlier work on "asynchronous ratcheting trees" {{art}}, the protocol presented here uses an asynchronous key-encapsulation mechanism for tree structures. This mechanism allows the members of the group to derive and update shared keys with costs that scale as the log of the group size.
RFC EDITOR PLEASE DELETE THIS SECTION.
draft-12
-
Use the GroupContext to derive the joiner_secret (*)
-
Make PreSharedKeys non optional in GroupSecrets (*)
-
Update name for this particular key (*)
-
Truncate tree size on removal (*)
-
Use HPKE draft-08 (*)
-
Clarify requirements around identity in MLS groups (*)
-
Signal the intended wire format for MLS messages (*)
-
Inject GroupContext as HPKE info instead of AAD (*)
-
Clarify extension handling and make extension updatable (*)
-
Improve extensibility of Proposals (*)
-
Constrain proposal in External Commit (*)
-
Remove the notion of a 'leaf index' (*)
-
Add group_context_extensions proposal ID (*)
-
Add RequiredCapabilities extension (*)
-
Use cascaded KDF instead of concatenation to consolidate PSKs (*)
-
Use key package hash to index clients in message structs (*)
-
Don't require PublicGroupState for external init (*)
-
Make ratchet tree section clearer.
-
Handle non-member sender cases in MLSPlaintextTBS
-
Clarify encoding of signatures with NIST curves
-
Remove OPEN ISSUEs and TODOs
-
Normalize the description of the zero vector
draft-11
-
Include subtree keys in parent hash (*)
-
Pin HPKE to draft-07 (*)
-
Move joiner secret to the end of the first key schedule epoch (*)
-
Add an AppAck proposal
-
Make initializations of transcript hashes consistent
draft-10
-
Allow new members to join via an external Commit (*)
-
Enable proposals to be sent inline in a Commit (*)
-
Re-enable constant-time Add (*)
-
Change expiration extension to lifetime extension (*)
-
Make the tree in the Welcome optional (*)
-
PSK injection, re-init, sub-group branching (*)
-
Require the initial init_secret to be a random value (*)
-
Remove explicit sender data nonce (*)
-
Do not encrypt to joiners in UpdatePath generation (*)
-
Move MLSPlaintext signature under the confirmation tag (*)
-
Explicitly authenticate group membership with MLSPLaintext (*)
-
Clarify X509Credential structure (*)
-
Remove unneeded interim transcript hash from GroupInfo (*)
-
IANA considerations
-
Derive an authentication secret
-
Use Extract/Expand from HPKE KDF
-
Clarify that application messages MUST be encrypted
draft-09
-
Remove blanking of nodes on Add (*)
-
Change epoch numbers to uint64 (*)
-
Add PSK inputs (*)
-
Add key schedule exporter (*)
-
Sign the updated direct path on Commit, using "parent hashes" and one signature per leaf (*)
-
Use structured types for external senders (*)
-
Redesign Welcome to include confirmation and use derived keys (*)
-
Remove ignored proposals (*)
-
Always include an Update with a Commit (*)
-
Add per-message entropy to guard against nonce reuse (*)
-
Use the same hash ratchet construct for both application and handshake keys (*)
-
Add more ciphersuites
-
Use HKDF to derive key pairs (*)
-
Mandate expiration of ClientInitKeys (*)
-
Add extensions to GroupContext and flesh out the extensibility story (*)
-
Rename ClientInitKey to KeyPackage
draft-08
-
Change ClientInitKeys so that they only refer to one ciphersuite (*)
-
Decompose group operations into Proposals and Commits (*)
-
Enable Add and Remove proposals from outside the group (*)
-
Replace Init messages with multi-recipient Welcome message (*)
-
Add extensions to ClientInitKeys for expiration and downgrade resistance (*)
-
Allow multiple Proposals and a single Commit in one MLSPlaintext (*)
draft-07
-
Initial version of the Tree based Application Key Schedule (*)
-
Initial definition of the Init message for group creation (*)
-
Fix issue with the transcript used for newcomers (*)
-
Clarifications on message framing and HPKE contexts (*)
draft-06
-
Reorder blanking and update in the Remove operation (*)
-
Rename the GroupState structure to GroupContext (*)
-
Rename UserInitKey to ClientInitKey
-
Resolve the circular dependency that draft-05 introduced in the confirmation MAC calculation (*)
-
Cover the entire MLSPlaintext in the transcript hash (*)
draft-05
-
Common framing for handshake and application messages (*)
-
Handshake message encryption (*)
-
Convert from literal state to a commitment via the "tree hash" (*)
-
Add credentials to the tree and remove the "roster" concept (*)
-
Remove the secret field from tree node values
draft-04
-
Updating the language to be similar to the Architecture document
-
ECIES is now renamed in favor of HPKE (*)
-
Using a KDF instead of a Hash in TreeKEM (*)
draft-03
-
Added ciphersuites and signature schemes (*)
-
Re-ordered fields in UserInitKey to make parsing easier (*)
-
Fixed inconsistencies between Welcome and GroupState (*)
-
Added encryption of the Welcome message (*)
draft-02
-
Removed ART (*)
-
Allowed partial trees to avoid double-joins (*)
-
Added explicit key confirmation (*)
draft-01
-
Initial description of the Message Protection mechanism. (*)
-
Initial specification proposal for the Application Key Schedule using the per-participant chaining of the Application Secret design. (*)
-
Initial specification proposal for an encryption mechanism to protect Application Messages using an AEAD scheme. (*)
-
Initial specification proposal for an authentication mechanism of Application Messages using signatures. (*)
-
Initial specification proposal for a padding mechanism to improving protection of Application Messages against traffic analysis. (*)
-
Inversion of the Group Init Add and Application Secret derivations in the Handshake Key Schedule to be ease chaining in case we switch design. (*)
-
Removal of the UserAdd construct and split of GroupAdd into Add and Welcome messages (*)
-
Initial proposal for authenticating handshake messages by signing over group state and including group state in the key schedule (*)
-
Added an appendix with example code for tree math
-
Changed the ECIES mechanism used by TreeKEM so that it uses nonces generated from the shared secret
draft-00
- Initial adoption of draft-barnes-mls-protocol-01 as a WG item.
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 BCP 14 {{!RFC2119}} {{!RFC8174}} when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
Client: : An agent that uses this protocol to establish shared cryptographic state with other clients. A client is defined by the cryptographic keys it holds.
Group: : A group represents a logical collection of clents that share a common secret value at any given time. Its state is represented as a linear sequence of epochs in which each epoch depends on its predecessor.
Epoch: : A state of a group in which a specific set of authenticated clients hold shared cryptographic state.
Member: : A client that is included in the shared state of a group, hence has access to the group's secrets.
Key Package: : A signed object describing a client's identity and capabilities, and including a hybrid public-key encryption (HPKE {{!I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke}}) public key that can be used to encrypt to that client, and which other clients can use to introduce the client to a new group.
Signature Key: : A signing key pair used to authenticate the sender of a message.
Handshake Message: : An MLSPlaintext or MLSCiphertext message carrying an MLS Proposal or Commit object, as opposed to application data.
Application Message: : An MLSCiphertext message carrying application data.
Terminology specific to tree computations is described in {{ratchet-tree-terminology}}.
We use the TLS presentation language {{!RFC8446}} to describe the structure of protocol messages.
MLS is designed to operate in the context described in {{?I-D.ietf-mls-architecture}}. In particular, we assume that the following services are provided:
-
A Delivery Service that routes MLS messages among the participants in the protocol. The following types of delivery are typically required:
- Pre-publication of KeyPackage objects for clients
- Broadcast delivery of Proposal and Commit messages to members of a group
- Unicast delivery of Welcome messages to new members of a group
-
An Authentication Service that enables group members to authenticate the credentials presented by other group members.
The core functionality of MLS is continuous group authenticated key exchange (AKE). As with other authenticated key exchange protocols (such as TLS), the participants in the protocol agree on a common secret value, and each participant can verify the identity of the other participants. MLS provides group AKE in the sense that there can be more than two participants in the protocol, and continuous group AKE in the sense that the set of participants in the protocol can change over time.
The core organizing principles of MLS are groups and epochs. A group represents a logical collection of clients that share a common secret value at any given time. The history of a group is divided into a linear sequence of epochs. In each epoch, a set of authenticated members agree on an epoch secret that is known only to the members of the group in that epoch. The set of members involved in the group can change from one epoch to the next, and MLS ensures that only the members in the current epoch have access to the epoch secret. From the epoch secret, members derive further shared secrets for message encryption, group membership authentication, etc.
The creator of an MLS group creates the group's first epoch unilaterally, with no protocol interactions. Thereafter, the members of the group advance their shared cryptographic state from one epoch to another by exchanging MLS messages:
- A KeyPackage object describes a client's capabilities and provides keys that can be used to add the client to a group.
- A Proposal message proposes a change to be made in the next epoch, such as adding or removing a member
- A Commit message initiates a new epoch by instructing members of the group to implement a collection of proposals
- A Welcome message provides a new member to the group with the information to initialize their state for the epoch in which they were added or in which they want to add themselves to the group
KeyPackage and Welcome messages are used to initiate a group or introduce new members, so they are exchanged between group members and clients not yet in the group.
Proposal and Commit messages are sent from one member of a group to the others. MLS provides a common framing layer for sending messages within a group: An MLSPlaintext message provides sender authentication for unencrypted Proposal and Commit messages. An MLSCiphertext message provides encryption and authentication for both Proposal/Commit messages as well as any application data.
The cryptographic state at the core of MLS is divided into three areas of responsibility:
epoch_secret
_ | _
|\ Ratchet / ... \ Secret /|
| \ Tree : | : Tree / |
| \ : | : / |
| \ : V : / |
| --> commit_secret --> epoch_secret --> encryption_secret --> |
| / : | : \ |
| / : ... > Key Schedule \ |
| / : | : \ |
|/ \_ | _/ \|
V
epoch_secret
{: title="Overview of MLS group evolution"}
- A ratchet tree that represents the membership of the group, providing group members a way to authenticate each other and efficiently encrypt messages to subsets of the group. Each epoch has a distinct ratchet tree. It seeds the key schedule.
- A key schedule that describes the chain of key derivations used to progress from epoch to epoch (mainly using the init_secret and epoch_secret); and to derive a variety of other secrets (see {{epoch-derived-secrets}}) used during the current epoch. One of these (the encryption_secret) is the root of secret_tree.
- A secret tree derived from the key schedule that represents shared secrets used by the members of the group to provide confidentiality and forward secrecy for MLS messages. Each epoch has a distinct secret tree.
Each member of the group maintains a view of these facets of the group's state. MLS messages are used to initialize these views and keep them in sync as the group transitions between epochs.
Each new epoch is initiated with a Commit message. The Commit instructs existing members of the group to update their views of ratchet tree by applying a set of Proposals, and uses the updated ratchet tree to distribute fresh entropy to the group. This fresh entropy is provided only to members in the new epoch, not to members who have been removed, so it maintains the confidentiality of the epoch secret (in other words, it provides post-compromise security with respect to those members).
For each Commit that adds member(s) to the group, there is a corresponding Welcome message. The Welcome message provides new members with the information they need to initialize their views of the key schedule and ratchet tree, so that these views are equivalent to the views held by other members of the group in this epoch.
In addition to defining how one epoch secret leads to the next, the key schedule also defines a collection of secrets that are derived from the epoch secret. For example:
-
An encryption secret that is used to initialize the secret tree for the epoch.
-
A confirmation key that is used to confirm that all members agree on the shared state of the group.
-
A resumption secret that members can use to prove their membership in the group, e.g., in the case of branching a subgroup.
Finally, an init secret is derived that is used to initialize the next epoch.
There are three major operations in the lifecycle of a group:
- Adding a member, initiated by a current member;
- Updating the leaf secret of a member;
- Removing a member.
Each of these operations is "proposed" by sending a message of the corresponding type (Add / Update / Remove). The state of the group is not changed, however, until a Commit message is sent to provide the group with fresh entropy. In this section, we show each proposal being committed immediately, but in more advanced deployment cases an application might gather several proposals before committing them all at once. In the illustrations below, we show the Proposal and Commit messages directly, while in reality they would be sent encapsulated in MLSPlaintext or MLSCiphertext objects.
Before the initialization of a group, clients publish KeyPackages to a directory provided by the Service Provider.
Group
A B C Directory Channel
| | | | |
| KeyPackageA | | | |
|------------------------------------------------->| |
| | | | |
| | KeyPackageB | | |
| |-------------------------------->| |
| | | | |
| | | KeyPackageC | |
| | |--------------->| |
| | | | |
{: title="Clients A, B, and C publish KeyPackages to the directory"}
When a client A wants to establish a group with B and C, it first initializes a group state containing only itself and downloads KeyPackages for B and C. For each member, A generates an Add and Commit message adding that member, and broadcasts them to the group. It also generates a Welcome message and sends this directly to the new member (there's no need to send it to the group). Only after A has received its Commit message back from the server does it update its state to reflect the new member's addition.
Upon receiving the Welcome message, the new member will be able to read and send new messages to the group. However, messages sent before they were added to the group will not be accessible.
Group
A B C Directory Channel
| | | | |
| KeyPackageB, KeyPackageC | |
|<-------------------------------------------| |
| | | | |
| | | | Add(A->AB) |
| | | | Commit(Add) |
|--------------------------------------------------------------->|
| | | | |
| Welcome(B) | | | |
|------------->| | | |
| | | | |
| | | | Add(A->AB) |
| | | | Commit(Add) |
|<---------------------------------------------------------------|
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | Add(AB->ABC) |
| | | | Commit(Add) |
|--------------------------------------------------------------->|
| | | | |
| | Welcome(C) | | |
|---------------------------->| | |
| | | | |
| | | | Add(AB->ABC) |
| | | | Commit(Add) |
|<---------------------------------------------------------------|
| |<------------------------------------------------|
| | | | |
{: title="Client A creates a group with clients B and C"}
Subsequent additions of group members proceed in the same way. Any member of the group can download a KeyPackage for a new client and broadcast Add and Commit messages that the current group will use to update their state, and a Welcome message that the new client can use to initialize its state and join the group.
To enforce the forward secrecy and post-compromise security of messages, each member periodically updates the keys that represent them to the group. A member does this by sending a Commit (possibly with no proposals), or by sending an Update message that is committed by another member. Once the other members of the group have processed these messages, the group's secrets will be unknown to an attacker that had compromised the sender's prior leaf secret.
Update messages should be sent at regular intervals of time as long as the group is active, and members that don't update should eventually be removed from the group. It's left to the application to determine an appropriate amount of time between Updates.
Group
A B ... Z Directory Channel
| | | | |
| | Update(B) | | |
| |------------------------------------------->|
| Commit(Upd) | | | |
|---------------------------------------------------------->|
| | | | |
| | | | Update(B) |
| | | | Commit(Upd) |
|<----------------------------------------------------------|
| |<-------------------------------------------|
| | |<----------------------------|
| | | | |
{: title="Client B proposes to update its key, and client A commits the proposal. As a result, the keys for both B and A updated, so the group has post-compromise security with respect to both of them."}
Members are removed from the group in a similar way. Any member of the group can send a Remove proposal followed by a Commit message. The Commit message provides new entropy to all members of the group except the removed member. This new entropy is added to the epoch secret for the new epoch, so that it is not known to the removed member. Note that this does not necessarily imply that any member is actually allowed to evict other members; groups can enforce access control policies on top of these basic mechanism.
Group
A B ... Z Directory Channel
| | | | |
| | | Remove(B) | |
| | | Commit(Rem) | |
| | |---------------------------->|
| | | | |
| | | | Remove(B) |
| | | | Commit(Rem) |
|<----------------------------------------------------------|
| | |<----------------------------|
| | | | |
{: title="Client Z removes client B from the group"}
A group comprises a single linear sequence of epochs and groups are generally independent of one-another. However, it can sometimes be useful to link epochs cryptographically, either within a group or across groups. MLS derives a resumption pre-shared key (PSK) from each epoch to allow entropy extracted from one epoch to be injected into a future epoch. This link guarantees that members entering the new epoch agree on a key if and only if were members of the group during the epoch from which the resumption key was extracted.
MLS supports two ways to tie a new group to an existing group. Re-initialization closes one group and creates a new group comprising the same members with different parameters. Branching starts a new group with a subset of the original group's participants (with no effect on the original group). In both cases, the new group is linked to the old group via a resumption PSK.
epoch_A_[n-1]
|
|
|<-- ReInit
|
V
epoch_A_[n] epoch_B_[0]
. |
. PSK(usage=reinit) |
.....................>|
|
V
epoch_B_[1]
{: title="Reinitializing a group" }
epoch_A_[n-1]
|
|
|<-- ReInit
|
V
epoch_A_[n] epoch_B_[0]
| |
| PSK(usage=branch) |
|....................>|
| |
V V
epoch_A_[n+1] epoch_B_[1]
{: title="Branching a group" }
Applications may also choose to use resumption PSKs to link epochs in other
ways. For example, the following figure shows a case where a resumption PSK
from epoch n is injected into epoch n+k. This demonstrates that the members
of the group at epoch n+k were also members at epoch n, irrespective of any
changes to these members' keys due to Updates or Commits.
epoch_A_[n-1]
|
|
|<-- ReInit
|
V
epoch_A_[n]
|
| PSK(usage=application)
|.....................
| .
| .
... ...
| .
| .
V .
epoch_A_[n+k-1] .
| .
| .
|<....................
|
V
epoch_A_[n+k]
{: title="Reinjecting entropy from an earlier epoch" }
The protocol uses "ratchet trees" for deriving shared secrets among a group of clients. A ratchet tree is an arrangement of secrets and key pairs among the members of a group in a way that allows for secrets to be efficiently updated to reflect changes in the group.
Ratchet trees allow a group to efficiently remove any member by encrypting new entropy to a subset of the group. A ratchet tree assigns shared keys to subgroups of the overall group, so that, for example, encrypting to all but one member of the group requires only log(N) encryptions, instead of the N-1 encryptions that would be needed to encrypt to each participant individually (where N is the number of members in the group).
This remove operation allows MLS to efficiently achieve post-compromise security. In an Update proposal or a full Commit message, an old (possibly compromised) representation of a member is efficiently removed from the group and replaced with a freshly generated instance.
Trees consist of nodes. A node is a leaf if it has no children, and a parent otherwise; note that all parents in our trees have precisely two children, a left child and a right child. A node is the root of a tree if it has no parents, and intermediate if it has both children and parents. The descendants of a node are that node's children, and the descendants of its children, and we say a tree contains a node if that node is a descendant of the root of the tree, or if the node itself is the root of the tree. Nodes are siblings if they share the same parent.
A subtree of a tree is the tree given by any node (the head of the subtree) and its descendants. The size of a tree or subtree is the number of leaf nodes it contains. For a given parent node, its left subtree is the subtree with its left child as head (respectively right subtree).
All trees used in this protocol are left-balanced binary trees. A binary tree is full (and balanced) if its size is a power of two and for any parent node in the tree, its left and right subtrees have the same size.
A binary tree is left-balanced if for every
parent, either the parent is balanced, or the left subtree of that
parent is the largest full subtree that could be constructed from
the leaves present in the parent's own subtree.
Given a list of n items, there is a unique left-balanced
binary tree structure with these elements as leaves.
(Note that left-balanced binary trees are the same structure that is used for the Merkle trees in the Certificate Transparency protocol {{?I-D.ietf-trans-rfc6962-bis}}.)
The direct path of a root is the empty list, and of any other node is the concatenation of that node's parent along with the parent's direct path. The copath of a node is the node's sibling concatenated with the list of siblings of all the nodes in its direct path, excluding the root.
For example, in the below tree:
- The direct path of C is (W, V, X)
- The copath of C is (D, U, Z)
X = root
______|______
/ \
V Z
__|__ __|
/ \ / \
U W Y |
/ \ / \ / \ |
A B C D E F G
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
A tree with n leaves has 2*n - 1 nodes. For example, the above tree has 7
leaves (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) and 13 nodes.
Each leaf is given an index (or leaf index), starting at 0 from the left to
n-1 at the right.
There are multiple ways that an implementation might represent a ratchet tree in memory. For example, left-balanced binary trees can be represented as an array of nodes, with node relationships computed based on nodes' indices in the array. Or a more traditional representation of linked node objects may be used. {{array-based-trees}} and {{link-based-trees}} provide some details on how to implement the tree operations required for MLS in these representations. MLS places no requirements on implementations' internal representations of ratchet trees. An implementation MAY use any tree representation and associated algorithms, as long as they produce correct protocol messages.
We generally assume that each participant maintains a complete and up-to-date view of the public state of the group's ratchet tree, including the public keys for all nodes and the credentials associated with the leaf nodes.
No participant in an MLS group knows the private key associated with every node in the tree. Instead, each member is assigned to a leaf of the tree, which determines the subset of private keys it knows. The credential stored at that leaf is one provided by the member.
In particular, MLS maintains the members' views of the tree in such a way as to maintain the tree invariant:
The private key for a node in the tree is known to a member of
the group only if the node's subtree contains that member's leaf.
In other words, if a node is not blank, then it holds a public key. The corresponding private key is known only to members occupying leaves below that node.
The reverse implication is not true: A member may not know the private keys of all the intermediate nodes they're below. Such a member has an unmerged leaf. Encrypting to an intermediate node requires encrypting to the node's public key, as well as the public keys of all the unmerged leaves below it. A leaf is unmerged when it is first added, because the process of adding the leaf does not give it access to all of the nodes above it in the tree. Leaves are "merged" as they receive the private keys for nodes, as described in {{ratchet-tree-evolution}}.
For example, consider a four-member group (A, B, C, D) where the node above the
right two members is blank. (This is what it would look like if A created a
group with B, C, and D.) Then the public state of the tree and the views of the
private keys of the tree held by each participant would be as follows, where _
represents a blank node, ? represents an unknown private key, and pk(X)
represents the public key corresponding to the private key X:
Public Tree
============================
pk(ABCD)
/ \
pk(AB) _
/ \ / \
pk(A) pk(B) pk(C) pk(D)
Private @ A Private @ B Private @ C Private @ D
============= ============= ============= =============
ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD
/ \ / \ / \ / \
AB _ AB _ ? _ ? _
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
A ? ? ? ? B ? ? ? ? C ? ? ? ? D
Note how the tree invariant applies: Each member knows only their own leaf, and the private key AB is known only to A and B.
A particular instance of a ratchet tree is defined by the same parameters that define an instance of HPKE, namely:
- A Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM), including a
DeriveKeyPairfunction that creates a key pair for the KEM from a symmetric secret - A Key Derivation Function (KDF), including
ExtractandExpandfunctions - An AEAD encryption scheme
Each node in a ratchet tree contains up to five values:
- A private key (only within the member's direct path, see below)
- A public key
- An ordered list of leaf indices for "unmerged" leaves (see {{views}})
- A credential (only for leaf nodes)
- A hash of certain information about the node's parent, as of the last time the node was changed (see {{parent-hash}}).
The conditions under which each of these values must or must not be present are laid out in {{views}}.
A node in the tree may also be blank, indicating that no value is present at that node. The resolution of a node is an ordered list of non-blank nodes that collectively cover all non-blank descendants of the node. The resolution of a non-blank node with no unmerged leaves is just the node itself. More generally, the resolution of a node is effectively a depth-first, left-first enumeration of the nearest non-blank nodes below the node:
- The resolution of a non-blank node comprises the node itself, followed by its list of unmerged leaves, if any
- The resolution of a blank leaf node is the empty list
- The resolution of a blank intermediate node is the result of concatenating the resolution of its left child with the resolution of its right child, in that order
For example, consider the following tree, where the "_" character represents a blank node and unmerged leaves are indicated in square brackets:
_
__|__
/ \
_ Z[C]
/ \ / \
A _ C D
0 1 2 3
In this tree, we can see all of the above rules in play:
- The resolution of node Z is the list [Z, C]
- The resolution of leaf 1 is the empty list []
- The resolution of root node is the list [A, Z, C]
Every node, regardless of whether the node is blank or populated, has a corresponding hash that summarizes the contents of the subtree below that node. The rules for computing these hashes are described in {{tree-hashes}}.
Each MLS session uses a single ciphersuite that specifies the following primitives to be used in group key computations:
- HPKE parameters:
- A Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM)
- A Key Derivation Function (KDF)
- An AEAD encryption algorithm
- A hash algorithm
- A MAC algorithm
- A signature algorithm
MLS uses HPKE for public-key encryption {{I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke}}. The
DeriveKeyPair function associated to the KEM for the ciphersuite maps octet
strings to HPKE key pairs. As in HPKE, MLS assumes that an AEAD algorithm
produces a single ciphertext output from AEAD encryption (aligning with
{{?RFC5116}}), as opposed to a separate ciphertext and tag.
Ciphersuites are represented with the CipherSuite type. HPKE public keys are opaque values in a format defined by the underlying protocol (see the Cryptographic Dependencies section of the HPKE specification for more information).
opaque HPKEPublicKey<1..2^16-1>;
The signature algorithm specified in the ciphersuite is the mandatory algorithm to be used for signatures in MLSPlaintext and the tree signatures. It MUST be the same as the signature algorithm specified in the credential field of the KeyPackage objects in the leaves of the tree (including those used to add new members).
To disambiguate different signatures used in MLS, each signed value is prefixed by a label as shown below:
SignWithLabel(SignatureKey, Label, Content) =
Signature.Sign(SignatureKey, SignContent)
VerifyWithLabel(VerificationKey, Label, Content) =
Signature.Verify(VerificationKey, SignContent)
Where SignContent is specified as:
struct {
opaque label<9..255> = "MLS 1.0 " + Label;
opaque content<0..2^32-1> = Content;
} SignContent;
Here, the functions Signature.Sign and Signature.Verify are defined
by the signature algorithm.
The ciphersuites are defined in section {{mls-ciphersuites}}.
Some MLS messages refer to other MLS objects by hash. For example, Welcome messages refer to KeyPackages for the members being welcomed, and Commits refer to Proposals they cover. These identifiers are computed as follows:
opaque HashReference[16];
MakeKeyPackageRef(value) = KDF.expand(
KDF.extract("", value), "MLS 1.0 KeyPackage Reference", 16)
MakeProposalRef(value) = KDF.expand(
KDF.extract("", value), "MLS 1.0 Proposal Reference", 16)
HashReference KeyPackageRef;
HashReference ProposalRef;
For a KeyPackageRef, the value input is the encoded KeyPackage, and the
ciphersuite specified in the KeyPackage determines the KDF used. For a
ProposalRef, the value input is the MLSPlaintext carrying the proposal, and
the KDF is determined by the group's ciphersuite.
A member of a group authenticates the identities of other participants by means of credentials issued by some authentication system, like a PKI. Each type of credential MUST express the following data in the context of the group it is used with:
- The public key of a signature key pair matching the SignatureScheme specified by the CipherSuite of the group
- One or more identifiers of the holder of the private key
Note that a Credential can provide multiple identifiers for the client. If an application wishes to decided whether a credential represents the correct identifier for a participant in a given context, it is up to the application to decide what the correct value is and compare it to the credential. For example, a certificate in an X509Credential may attest to several domain names or email addresses in its subjectAltName extension. An application may decide to present all of these to a user, or if it knows a "desired" domain name or email address, it can check that the desired identifier is among those attested. Using the terminology from {{?RFC6125}}, a Credential provides "presented identifiers", and it is up to the application to supply a "reference identifier" for the authenticated client, if any.
Credentials MAY also include information that allows a relying party to verify the identity / signing key binding.
Additionally, Credentials SHOULD specify the signature scheme corresponding to each contained public key.
// See RFC 8446 and the IANA TLS SignatureScheme registry
uint16 SignatureScheme;
// See IANA registry for registered values
uint16 CredentialType;
struct {
opaque identity<0..2^16-1>;
SignatureScheme signature_scheme;
opaque signature_key<0..2^16-1>;
} BasicCredential;
struct {
opaque cert_data<0..2^16-1>;
} Certificate;
struct {
CredentialType credential_type;
select (Credential.credential_type) {
case basic:
BasicCredential;
case x509:
Certificate chain<1..2^32-1>;
};
} Credential;
A BasicCredential is a raw, unauthenticated assertion of an identity/key
binding. The format of the key in the public_key field is defined by the
relevant ciphersuite: the group ciphersuite for a credential in a ratchet tree,
the KeyPackage ciphersuite for a credential in a KeyPackage object.
For ciphersuites using Ed25519 or Ed448 signature schemes, the public key is in
the format specified {{?RFC8032}}. For ciphersuites using ECDSA with the NIST
curves P-256 or P-521, the public key is the output of the uncompressed
Elliptic-Curve-Point-to-Octet-String conversion according to {{SECG}}.
For an X.509 credential, each entry in the chain represents a single DER-encoded
X.509 certificate. The chain is ordered such that the first entry (chain[0])
is the end-entity certificate and each subsequent certificate in the chain
MUST be the issuer of the previous certificate. The algorithm for the
public_key in the end-entity certificate MUST match the relevant
ciphersuite.
The signatures used in this document are encoded as specified in {{!RFC8446}}.
In particular, ECDSA signatures are DER-encoded and EdDSA signatures are defined
as the concatenation of r and s as specified in {{?RFC8032}}.
Each new credential that has not already been validated by the application MUST be validated against the Authentication Service. Applications SHOULD require that a client present the same set of identifiers throughout its presence in the group, even if its Credential is changed in a Commit or Update. If an application allows clients to change identifiers over time, then each time the client presents a new credential, the application MUST verify that the set of identifiers in the credential is acceptable to the application for this client.
MLS implementations will presumably provide applications with a way to request protocol operations with regard to other clients (e.g., removing clients). Such functions will need to refer to the other clients using some identifier. MLS clients have a few types of identifiers, with different operational properties.
The Credentials presented by the clients in a group authenticate application-level identifiers for the clients. These identifiers may not uniquely identify clients. For example, if a user has multiple devices that are all present in an MLS group, then those devices' clients will all present the user's application-layer identifiers.
Internally to the the protocol, group members are uniquely identified by their leaves, expressed as KeyPackageRef objects. These identifiers are unstable: They change whenever the member sends a Commit, or whenever an Update proposal from the member is committed.
MLS provides two unique client identifiers that are stable across epochs:
- The index of a client among the leaves of the tree
- The
epoch_idfield in the key package
The application may also provide application-specific unique identifiers in the
extensions field of KeyPackage object.
Handshake and application messages use a common framing structure. This framing provides encryption to ensure confidentiality within the group, as well as signing to authenticate the sender within the group.
The two main structures involved are MLSPlaintext and MLSCiphertext. MLSCiphertext represents a signed and encrypted message, with protections for both the content of the message and related metadata. MLSPlaintext represents a message that is only signed, and not encrypted. Applications MUST use MLSCiphertext to encrypt application messages and SHOULD use MLSCiphertext to encode handshake messages, but MAY transmit handshake messages encoded as MLSPlaintext objects in cases where it is necessary for the Delivery Service to examine such messages.
enum {
reserved(0),
application(1),
proposal(2),
commit(3),
(255)
} ContentType;
enum {
reserved(0),
member(1),
preconfigured(2),
new_member(3),
(255)
} SenderType;
struct {
SenderType sender_type;
switch (sender_type) {
case member: KeyPackageRef member;
case preconfigured: opaque external_key_id<0..255>;
case new_member: struct{};
}
} Sender;
struct {
opaque mac_value<0..255>;
} MAC;
enum {
reserved(0),
mls_plaintext(1),
mls_ciphertext(2),
(255)
} WireFormat;
struct {
WireFormat wire_format;
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
Sender sender;
opaque authenticated_data<0..2^32-1>;
ContentType content_type;
select (MLSPlaintext.content_type) {
case application:
opaque application_data<0..2^32-1>;
case proposal:
Proposal proposal;
case commit:
Commit commit;
}
// SignWithLabel(., "MLSPlaintextTBS", MLSPlaintextTBS)
opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
// MAC(confirmation_key, GroupContext.confirmed_transcript_hash)
optional<MAC> confirmation_tag;
// MAC(membership_key, MLSPlaintextTBM);
optional<MAC> membership_tag;
} MLSPlaintext;
struct {
WireFormat wire_format = mls_ciphertext;
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
ContentType content_type;
opaque authenticated_data<0..2^32-1>;
opaque encrypted_sender_data<0..255>;
opaque ciphertext<0..2^32-1>;
} MLSCiphertext;
The field confirmation_tag MUST be present if content_type equals commit.
Otherwise, it MUST NOT be present.
External sender types are sent as MLSPlaintext, see {{external-proposals}} for their use.
The remainder of this section describes how to compute the signature of an
MLSPlaintext object and how to convert it to an MLSCiphertext object for
member sender types. The steps are:
-
Set
group_id,epoch,content_typeandauthenticated_datafields from the MLSPlaintext object directly -
Identify the key and key generation depending on the content type
-
Encrypt an MLSCiphertextContent for the ciphertext field using the key identified and MLSPlaintext object
-
Encrypt the sender data using a key and nonce derived from the
sender_data_secretfor the epoch and a sample of the encrypted MLSCiphertextContent.
Decryption is done by decrypting the sender data, then the message, and then verifying the content signature.
The following sections describe the encryption and signing processes in detail.
The signature field in an MLSPlaintext object is computed using the signing
private key corresponding to the public key, which was authenticated by the
credential at the leaf of the tree indicated by the sender field. The signature
is computed using SignWithLabel with label "MLSPlaintextTBS" and with a content
that covers the plaintext metadata and message content, which is all of MLSPlaintext
except for the signature, the confirmation_tag and membership_tag fields.
If the sender is a member of the group, the content also covers the
GroupContext for the current epoch, so that signatures are specific to a given
group and epoch.
struct {
WireFormat wire_format;
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
Sender sender;
opaque authenticated_data<0..2^32-1>;
ContentType content_type;
select (MLSPlaintextTBS.content_type) {
case application:
opaque application_data<0..2^32-1>;
case proposal:
Proposal proposal;
case commit:
Commit commit;
}
select (MLSPlaintextTBS.sender.sender_type) {
case member:
case new_member:
GroupContext context;
case preconfigured:
struct{};
}
} MLSPlaintextTBS;
The membership_tag field in the MLSPlaintext object authenticates the sender's
membership in the group. For an MLSPlaintext with a sender type other than
member, this field MUST be omitted. For messages sent by members, it MUST be
present and set to the following value:
struct {
MLSPlaintextTBS tbs;
opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
optional<MAC> confirmation_tag;
} MLSPlaintextTBM;
membership_tag = MAC(membership_key, MLSPlaintextTBM);
Note that the membership_tag only needs to be computed for MLSPlaintext
messages that will be sent over the wire (wire_format == mls_plaintext). It
isn't needed for messages that will be encrypted and transmitted as
MLSCiphertext messages (wire_format == mls_ciphertext).
The ciphertext field of the MLSCiphertext object is produced by supplying the
inputs described below to the AEAD function specified by the ciphersuite in use.
The plaintext input contains the content and signature of the MLSPlaintext, plus
optional padding. These values are encoded in the following form:
struct {
select (MLSCiphertext.content_type) {
case application:
opaque application_data<0..2^32-1>;
case proposal:
Proposal proposal;
case commit:
Commit commit;
}
// SignWithLabel(., "MLSPlaintextTBS", MLSPlaintextTBS)
opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
// MAC(confirmation_key, GroupContext.confirmed_transcript_hash)
optional<MAC> confirmation_tag;
opaque padding<0..2^16-1>;
} MLSCiphertextContent;
In the MLS key schedule, the sender creates two distinct key ratchets for handshake and application messages for each member of the group. When encrypting a message, the sender looks at the ratchets it derived for its own member and chooses an unused generation from either the handshake or application ratchet depending on the content type of the message. This generation of the ratchet is used to derive a provisional nonce and key.
Before use in the encryption operation, the nonce is XORed with a fresh random value to guard against reuse. Because the key schedule generates nonces deterministically, a client must keep persistent state as to where in the key schedule it is; if this persistent state is lost or corrupted, a client might reuse a generation that has already been used, causing reuse of a key/nonce pair.
To avoid this situation, the sender of a message MUST generate a fresh random
4-byte "reuse guard" value and XOR it with the first four bytes of the nonce
from the key schedule before using the nonce for encryption. The sender MUST
include the reuse guard in the reuse_guard field of the sender data object, so
that the recipient of the message can use it to compute the nonce to be used for
decryption.
+-+-+-+-+---------...---+
| Key Schedule Nonce |
+-+-+-+-+---------...---+
XOR
+-+-+-+-+---------...---+
| Guard | 0 |
+-+-+-+-+---------...---+
===
+-+-+-+-+---------...---+
| Encrypt/Decrypt Nonce |
+-+-+-+-+---------...---+
The Additional Authenticated Data (AAD) input to the encryption contains an object of the following form, with the values used to identify the key and nonce:
struct {
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
ContentType content_type;
opaque authenticated_data<0..2^32-1>;
} MLSCiphertextContentAAD;
The "sender data" used to look up the key for the content encryption is
encrypted with the ciphersuite's AEAD with a key and nonce derived from both the
sender_data_secret and a sample of the encrypted content. Before being
encrypted, the sender data is encoded as an object of the following form:
struct {
KeyPackageRef sender;
uint32 generation;
opaque reuse_guard[4];
} MLSSenderData;
MLSSenderData.sender is assumed to be a member sender type. When constructing
an MLSSenderData from a Sender object, the sender MUST verify Sender.sender_type
is member and use Sender.sender for MLSSenderData.sender.
The reuse_guard field contains a fresh random value used to avoid nonce reuse
in the case of state loss or corruption, as described in {{content-encryption}}.
The key and nonce provided to the AEAD are computed as the KDF of the first
KDF.Nh bytes of the ciphertext generated in the previous section. If the
length of the ciphertext is less than KDF.Nh, the whole ciphertext is used
without padding. In pseudocode, the key and nonce are derived as:
ciphertext_sample = ciphertext[0..KDF.Nh-1]
sender_data_key = ExpandWithLabel(sender_data_secret, "key",
ciphertext_sample, AEAD.Nk)
sender_data_nonce = ExpandWithLabel(sender_data_secret, "nonce",
ciphertext_sample, AEAD.Nn)
The Additional Authenticated Data (AAD) for the SenderData ciphertext is all the
fields of MLSCiphertext excluding encrypted_sender_data:
struct {
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
ContentType content_type;
} MLSSenderDataAAD;
When parsing a SenderData struct as part of message decryption, the recipient
MUST verify that the KeyPackageRef indicated in the sender field identifies a
member of the group.
The ratchet tree for an epoch describes the membership of a group in that epoch, providing public-key encryption keys that can be used to encrypt to subsets of the group as well as information to authenticate the members. In order to reflect changes to the membership of the group from one epoch to the next, corresponding changes are made to the ratchet tree. In this section, we describe the content of the tree and the required operations.
A member of an MLS group advances the key schedule to provide forward secrecy and post-compromise security by providing the group with fresh key material to be added into the group's shared secret. To do so, one member of the group generates fresh key material, applies it to their local tree state, and then sends this key material to other members in the group via an UpdatePath message (see {{update-paths}}) . All other group members then apply the key material in the UpdatePath to their own local tree state to derive the group's now-updated shared secret.
To begin, the generator of the UpdatePath updates its leaf KeyPackage and its direct path to the root with new secret values. The HPKE leaf public key within the KeyPackage MUST be derived from a freshly generated HPKE secret key to provide post-compromise security.
The generator of the UpdatePath starts by sampling a fresh random value called "leaf_secret", and uses the leaf_secret to generate their leaf HPKE key pair (see {{key-packages}}) and to seed a sequence of "path secrets", one for each ancestor of its leaf. In this setting, path_secret[0] refers to the leaf's parent, path_secret[1] to the parent's parent, and so on. At each step, the path secret is used to derive a new secret value for the corresponding node, from which the node's key pair is derived.
leaf_node_secret = DeriveSecret(leaf_secret, "node")
path_secret[0] = DeriveSecret(leaf_secret, "path")
path_secret[n] = DeriveSecret(path_secret[n-1], "path")
node_secret[n] = DeriveSecret(path_secret[n], "node")
leaf_priv, leaf_pub = KEM.DeriveKeyPair(leaf_node_secret)
node_priv[n], node_pub[n] = KEM.DeriveKeyPair(node_secret[n])
The node secret is derived as a temporary intermediate secret so that each secret is only used with one algorithm: The path secret is used as an input to DeriveSecret and the node secret is used as an input to DeriveKeyPair.
For example, suppose there is a group with four members, with C an unmerged leaf at node 5:
Y
__|__
/ \
X Z[C]
/ \ / \
A B C D
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
If member B subsequently generates an UpdatePath based on a secret "leaf_secret", then it would generate the following sequence of path secrets:
path_secret[1] --> node_secret[1] --> node_priv[1], node_pub[1]
^
|
path_secret[0] --> node_secret[0] --> node_priv[0], node_pub[0]
^
|
leaf_secret --> leaf_node_secret --> leaf_priv, leaf_pub
~> leaf_key_package
After applying the UpdatePath, the tree will have the following structure, where
lp and np[i] represent the leaf_priv and node_priv values generated as
described above:
np[1] -> Y'
__|__
/ \
np[0] -> X' Z[C]
/ \ / \
A B C D
^
|
lp
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
After performing these operations, the generator of the UpdatePath MUST delete the leaf_secret.
In addition to the path-based updates to the tree described above, it is also necessary to add and remove leaves of the tree in order to reflect changes to the membership of the group (see {{add}} and {{remove}}). Leaves are always added and removed at the right edge of the tree: Either a new rightmost leaf is added, or the rightmost leaf is removed. Nodes' parent/child node relationships are then updated to maintain the tree's left-balanced structure. These operations are also known as extending and truncating the tree.
To add a new leaf: Add leaf L as the new rightmost leaf of the tree. Add a blank parent node P whose right child is L. P is attached to the tree as the right child of the only appropriate node to make the updated tree left-balanced (or set it as a new root). The former right child of P's parent becomes P's left child (or the old root becomes P's left child if P is the new root).
_ <-- new parent _
__|_ __|__
/ \ / \
X ===> X | ===> X _ <-- new parent
/ \ / \ | / \ / \
A B A B C <-- new leaf A B C D <-- new leaf
To remove the rightmost leaf: Remove the rightmost leaf node L and its parent node P. If P was the root of the tree, P's left child is now the root of the tree. Otherwise, set the right child of P's parent to be P's left child.
Y Y
__|__ __|_
/ \ / \
X Z <-- remove parent ===> X | <-- reassign child
/ \ / \ / \ |
A B C D <-- remove leaf A B C
Y <-- remove parent
__|_
/ \
X | ===> X <-- reassign root
/ \ | / \
A B C <-- remove leaf A B
Note that in the rest of the protocol, the rightmost leaf will only be removed when it is blank.
Concrete algorithms for these operations on array-based and link-based trees are provided in {{array-based-trees}} and {{link-based-trees}}. The concrete algorithms are non-normative. An implementation MAY use any algorithm that produces the correct tree in its internal representation.
After generating fresh key material and applying it to ratchet forward their local tree state as described in the prior section, the generator must broadcast this update to other members of the group in a Commit message, who apply it to keep their local views of the tree in sync with the sender's. More specifically, when a member commits a change to the tree (e.g., to add or remove a member), it transmits an UpdatePath containing a set of public keys and encrypted path secrets for intermediate nodes in the direct path of its leaf. The other members of the group use these values to update their view of the tree, aligning their copy of the tree to the sender's.
An UpdatePath contains the following information for each node in the direct path of the sender's leaf, including the root:
- The public key for the node
- Zero or more encrypted copies of the path secret corresponding to the node
The path secret value for a given node is encrypted for the subtree corresponding to the parent's non-updated child, that is, the child on the copath of the sender's leaf node. There is one encryption of the path secret to each public key in the resolution of the non-updated child.
The recipient of an UpdatePath processes it with the following steps:
- Compute the updated path secrets.
- Identify a node in the direct path for which the local member is in the subtree of the non-updated child.
- Identify a node in the resolution of the copath node for which this node has a private key.
- Decrypt the path secret for the parent of the copath node using the private key from the resolution node.
- Derive path secrets for ancestors of that node using the algorithm described above.
- The recipient SHOULD verify that the received public keys agree with the public keys derived from the new path_secret values.
- Merge the updated path secrets into the tree.
- For all updated nodes,
- Replace the public key for each node with the received public key.
- Set the list of unmerged leaves to the empty list.
- Store the updated hash of the node's parent (represented as a ParentNode struct), going from root to leaf, so that each hash incorporates all the nodes above it. The root node always has a zero-length hash for this value.
- For nodes where a path secret was recovered in step 1, compute and store the node's updated private key.
- For all updated nodes,
For example, in order to communicate the example update described in the previous section, the sender would transmit the following values:
| Public Key | Ciphertext(s) |
|---|---|
| node_pub[1] | E(pk(Z), path_secret[1]), E(pk(C), path_secret[1]) |
| node_pub[0] | E(pk(A), path_secret[0]) |
In this table, the value node_pub[i] represents the public key derived from node_secret[i], pk(X) represents the current public key of node X, and E(K, S) represents the public-key encryption of the path secret S to the public key K (using HPKE).
After processing the update, each recipient MUST delete outdated key material, specifically:
- The path secrets used to derive each updated node key pair.
- Each outdated node key pair that was replaced by the update.
To allow group members to verify that they agree on the public cryptographic state of the group, this section defines a scheme for generating a hash value (called the "tree hash") that represents the contents of the group's ratchet tree and the members' KeyPackages. The tree hash of a tree is the tree hash of its root node, which we define recursively, starting with the leaves.
As some nodes may be blank while others contain data we use the following struct to include data if present.
struct {
uint8 present;
select (present) {
case 0: struct{};
case 1: T value;
}
} optional<T>;
The tree hash of a leaf node is the hash of leaf's LeafNodeHashInput object which
might include a Key Package depending on whether or not it is blank.
struct {
uint32 leaf_index;
optional<KeyPackage> key_package;
} LeafNodeHashInput;
Now the tree hash of any non-leaf node is recursively defined to be the hash of
its ParentNodeHashInput. This includes an optional ParentNode
object depending on whether the node is blank or not.
struct {
HPKEPublicKey public_key;
opaque parent_hash<0..255>;
uint32 unmerged_leaves<0..2^32-1>;
} ParentNode;
struct {
optional<ParentNode> parent_node;
opaque left_hash<0..255>;
opaque right_hash<0..255>;
} ParentNodeHashInput;
The left_hash and right_hash fields hold the tree hashes of the node's
left and right children, respectively.
The parent_hash extension carries information to authenticate the structure of
the tree, as described below.
opaque parent_hash<0..255>;
Consider a ratchet tree with a parent node P and children V and S. The parent hash
of P changes whenever an UpdatePath object is applied to the ratchet tree along
a path traversing node V (and hence also P). The new "Parent Hash of P (with Co-Path
Child S)" is obtained by hashing P's ParentHashInput struct using the resolution
of S to populate the original_child_resolution field. This way, P's Parent Hash
fixes the new HPKE public keys of all nodes on the path from P to the root.
Furthermore, for each such key PK the hash also binds the set of HPKE public keys
to which PK's secret key was encrypted in the Commit that contained the
UpdatePath object.
struct {
HPKEPublicKey public_key;
opaque parent_hash<0..255>;
HPKEPublicKey original_child_resolution<0..2^32-1>;
} ParentHashInput;
The Parent Hash of P with Co-Path Child S is the hash of a ParentHashInput object
populated as follows. The field public_key contains the HPKE public key of P. If P
is the root, then parent_hash is set to a zero-length octet string.
Otherwise parent_hash is the Parent Hash of P's parent with P's sibling as the
co-path child.
Finally, original_child_resolution is the array of HPKEPublicKey values of the
nodes in the resolution of S but with the unmerged_leaves of P omitted. For
example, in the ratchet tree depicted in {{resolution-example}} the
ParentHashInput of node Z with co-path child C would contain an empty
original_child_resolution since C's resolution includes only itself but C is also
an unmerged leaf of Z. Meanwhile, the ParentHashInput of node Z with co-path child
D has an array with one element in it: the HPKE public key of D.
The Parent Hash of P appears in three types of structs. If V is itself a parent node
then P's Parent Hash is stored in the parent_hash fields of both V's
ParentHashInput struct and V's ParentNode struct. (The ParentNode struct is
used to encapsulate all public information about V that must be conveyed to a new
member joining the group as well as to define the Tree Hash of node V.)
If, on the other hand, V is a leaf and its KeyPackage contains the parent_hash
extension then the Parent Hash of P (with V's sibling as co-path child) is stored in
that field. In particular, the extension MUST be present in the leaf_key_package
field of an UpdatePath object. (This way, the signature of such a KeyPackage also
serves to attest to which keys the group member introduced into the ratchet tree and
to whom the corresponding secret keys were sent. This helps prevent malicious insiders
from constructing artificial ratchet trees with a node V whose HPKE secret key is
known to the insider yet where the insider isn't assigned a leaf in the subtree rooted
at V. Indeed, such a ratchet tree would violate the tree invariant.)
To this end, when processing a Commit message clients MUST recompute the
expected value of parent_hash for the committer's new leaf and verify that it
matches the parent_hash value in the supplied leaf_key_package. Moreover, when
joining a group, new members MUST authenticate each non-blank parent node P. A parent
node P is authenticated by performing the following check:
- Let L and R be the left and right children of P, respectively
- If L.parent_hash is equal to the Parent Hash of P with Co-Path Child R, the check passes
- If R is blank, replace R with its left child until R is either non-blank or a leaf node
- If R is a blank leaf node, the check fails
- If R.parent_hash is equal to the Parent Hash of P with Co-Path Child L, the check passes
- Otherwise, the check fails
The left-child recursion under the right child of P is necessary because the expansion of the tree to the right due to Add proposals can cause blank nodes to be interposed between a parent node and its right child.
As described in {{commit}}, each MLS Commit message may optionally transmit a KeyPackage leaf and node values along its direct path. The path contains a public key and encrypted secret value for all intermediate nodes in the path above the leaf. The path is ordered from the closest node to the leaf to the root; each node MUST be the parent of its predecessor.
struct {
opaque kem_output<0..2^16-1>;
opaque ciphertext<0..2^16-1>;
} HPKECiphertext;
struct {
HPKEPublicKey public_key;
HPKECiphertext encrypted_path_secret<0..2^32-1>;
} UpdatePathNode;
struct {
KeyPackage leaf_key_package;
UpdatePathNode nodes<0..2^32-1>;
} UpdatePath;
For each UpdatePathNode, the resolution of the corresponding copath node MUST
be filtered by removing all new leaf nodes added as part of this MLS Commit
message. The number of ciphertexts in the encrypted_path_secret vector MUST be
equal to the length of the filtered resolution, with each ciphertext being the
encryption to the respective resolution node.
The HPKECiphertext values are computed as
kem_output, context = SetupBaseS(node_public_key, group_context)
ciphertext = context.Seal("", path_secret)
where node_public_key is the public key of the node that the path
secret is being encrypted for, group_context is the current GroupContext object
for the group, and the functions SetupBaseS and
Seal are defined according to {{!I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke}}.
Decryption is performed in the corresponding way, using the private key of the resolution node.
Group keys are derived using the Extract and Expand functions from the KDF
for the group's ciphersuite, as well as the functions defined below:
ExpandWithLabel(Secret, Label, Context, Length) =
KDF.Expand(Secret, KDFLabel, Length)
Where KDFLabel is specified as:
struct {
uint16 length = Length;
opaque label<7..255> = "MLS 1.0 " + Label;
opaque context<0..2^32-1> = Context;
} KDFLabel;
DeriveSecret(Secret, Label) =
ExpandWithLabel(Secret, Label, "", KDF.Nh)
The value KDF.Nh is the size of an output from KDF.Extract, in bytes. In
the below diagram:
- KDF.Extract takes its salt argument from the top and its IKM argument from the left
- DeriveSecret takes its Secret argument from the incoming arrow
0represents an all-zero byte string of lengthKDF.Nh.
When processing a handshake message, a client combines the following information to derive new epoch secrets:
- The init secret from the previous epoch
- The commit secret for the current epoch
- The GroupContext object for current epoch
Given these inputs, the derivation of secrets for an epoch proceeds as shown in the following diagram:
init_secret_[n-1]
|
V
commit_secret -> KDF.Extract
|
V
ExpandWithLabel(., "joiner", GroupContext_[n], KDF.Nh)
|
V
joiner_secret
|
V
psk_secret (or 0) -> KDF.Extract
|
+--> DeriveSecret(., "welcome")
| = welcome_secret
|
V
ExpandWithLabel(., "epoch", GroupContext_[n], KDF.Nh)
|
V
epoch_secret
|
+--> DeriveSecret(., <label>)
| = <secret>
|
V
DeriveSecret(., "init")
|
V
init_secret_[n]
A number of secrets are derived from the epoch secret for different purposes:
| Secret | Label |
|---|---|
sender_data_secret |
"sender data" |
encryption_secret |
"encryption" |
exporter_secret |
"exporter" |
authentication_secret |
"authentication" |
external_secret |
"external" |
confirmation_key |
"confirm" |
membership_key |
"membership" |
resumption_secret |
"resumption" |
| {: title="Epoch-derived secrets" #epoch-derived-secrets} |
The "external secret" is used to derive an HPKE key pair whose private key is held by the entire group:
external_priv, external_pub = KEM.DeriveKeyPair(external_secret)
The public key external_pub can be published as part of the GroupInfo struct
in order to allow non-members to join the group using an external commit.
Each member of the group maintains a GroupContext object that summarizes the state of the group:
struct {
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
opaque tree_hash<0..255>;
opaque confirmed_transcript_hash<0..255>;
Extension extensions<0..2^32-1>;
} GroupContext;
The fields in this state have the following semantics:
- The
group_idfield is an application-defined identifier for the group. - The
epochfield represents the current version of the group key. - The
tree_hashfield contains a commitment to the contents of the group's ratchet tree and the credentials for the members of the group, as described in {{tree-hashes}}. - The
confirmed_transcript_hashfield contains a running hash over the messages that led to this state. - The
extensionsfield contains the details of any protocol extensions that apply to the group.
When a new member is added to the group, an existing member of the group provides the new member with a Welcome message. The Welcome message provides the information the new member needs to initialize its GroupContext.
Different changes to the group will have different effects on the group state. These effects are described in their respective subsections of {{proposals}}. The following general rules apply:
- The
group_idfield is constant. - The
epochfield increments by one for each Commit message that is processed. - The
tree_hashis updated to represent the current tree and credentials. - The
confirmed_transcript_hashfield is updated with the data for an MLSPlaintext message encoding a Commit message as described below. - The
extensionsfield changes when a GroupContextExtensions proposal is committed.
The transcript hashes computed in MLS represent a running hash over all Proposal and Commit messages that have ever been sent in a group. Commit messages are included directly. Proposal messages are indirectly included via the Commit that applied them. Both types of message are included by hashing the MLSPlaintext in which they were sent.
The confirmed_transcript_hash is updated with an MLSPlaintext containing a
Commit in two steps:
struct {
WireFormat wire_format;
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
Sender sender;
opaque authenticated_data<0..2^32-1>;
ContentType content_type = commit;
Commit commit;
opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
} MLSPlaintextCommitContent;
struct {
optional<MAC> confirmation_tag;
} MLSPlaintextCommitAuthData;
interim_transcript_hash_[0] = ""; // zero-length octet string
confirmed_transcript_hash_[n] =
Hash(interim_transcript_hash_[n] ||
MLSPlaintextCommitContent_[n]);
interim_transcript_hash_[n+1] =
Hash(confirmed_transcript_hash_[n] ||
MLSPlaintextCommitAuthData_[n]);
Thus the confirmed_transcript_hash field in a GroupContext object represents a
transcript over the whole history of MLSPlaintext Commit messages, up to the
confirmation_tag field of the most recent Commit. The confirmation
tag is then included in the transcript for the next epoch. The interim
transcript hash is computed by new members using the confirmation_tag of the
GroupInfo struct, while existing members can compute it directly.
As shown above, when a new group is created, the interim_transcript_hash field
is set to the zero-length octet string.
In addition to initializing a new epoch via KDF invocations as described above, an MLS group can also initialize a new epoch via an asymmetric interaction using the external key pair for the previous epoch. This is done when an new member is joining via an external commit.
In this process, the joiner sends a new init_secret value to the group using
the HPKE export method. The joiner then uses that init_secret with
information provided in the PublicGroupState and an external Commit to initialize
their copy of the key schedule for the new epoch.
kem_output, context = SetupBaseS(external_pub, "")
init_secret = context.export("MLS 1.0 external init secret", KDF.Nh)
Members of the group receive the kem_output in an ExternalInit proposal and
preform the corresponding calculation to retrieve the init_secret value.
context = SetupBaseR(kem_output, external_priv, "")
init_secret = context.export("MLS 1.0 external init secret", KDF.Nh)
In both cases, the info input to HPKE is set to the PublicGroupState for the
previous epoch, encoded using the TLS serialization.
Groups which already have an out-of-band mechanism to generate shared group secrets can inject those into the MLS key schedule to seed the MLS group secrets computations by this external entropy.
Injecting an external PSK can improve security in the case where having a full run of updates across members is too expensive, or if the external group key establishment mechanism provides stronger security against classical or quantum adversaries.
Note that, as a PSK may have a different lifetime than an update, it does not necessarily provide the same Forward Secrecy (FS) or Post-Compromise Security (PCS) guarantees as a Commit message. Unlike the key pairs populated in the tree by an Update or Commit, which are always freshly generated, PSKs may be pre-distributed and stored. This creates the risk that a PSK may be compromised in the process of distribution and storage. The security that the group gets from injecting a PSK thus depends on both the entropy of the PSK and the risk of compromise. These factors are outside of the scope of this document, but should be considered by application designers relying on PSKs.
Each PSK in MLS has a type that designates how it was provisioned. External PSKs are provided by the application, while resumption PSKs are derived from the MLS key schedule and used in cases where it is necessary to authenticate a member's participation in a prior epoch.
The injection of one or more PSKs into the key schedule is signaled in two ways: Existing members are informed via PreSharedKey proposals covered by a Commit, and new members added in the Commit are informed via GroupSecrets object in the Welcome message corresponding to the Commit. To ensure that existing and new members compute the same PSK input to the key schedule, the Commit and GroupSecrets objects MUST indicate the same set of PSKs, in the same order.
enum {
reserved(0),
external(1),
resumption(2),
(255)
} PSKType;
enum {
reserved(0),
application(1),
reinit(2),
branch(3),
} ResumptionPSKUsage;
struct {
PSKType psktype;
select (PreSharedKeyID.psktype) {
case external:
opaque psk_id<0..255>;
case resumption:
ResumptionPSKUsage usage;
opaque psk_group_id<0..255>;
uint64 psk_epoch;
}
opaque psk_nonce<0..255>;
} PreSharedKeyID;
struct {
PreSharedKeyID psks<0..2^16-1>;
} PreSharedKeys;
On receiving a Commit with a PreSharedKey proposal or a GroupSecrets object
with the psks field set, the receiving Client includes them in the key
schedule in the order listed in the Commit, or in the psks field respectively.
For resumption PSKs, the PSK is defined as the resumption_secret of the group and
epoch specified in the PreSharedKeyID object. Specifically, psk_secret is
computed as follows:
struct {
PreSharedKeyID id;
uint16 index;
uint16 count;
} PSKLabel;
psk_extracted_[i] = KDF.Extract(0, psk_[i])
psk_input_[i] = ExpandWithLabel(psk_extracted_[i], "derived psk",
PSKLabel, KDF.Nh)
psk_secret_[0] = 0
psk_secret_[i] = KDF.Extract(psk_input[i-1], psk_secret_[i-1])
psk_secret = psk_secret[n]
Here 0 represents the all-zero vector of length KDF.Nh. The index field in
PSKLabel corresponds to the index of the PSK in the psk array, while the
count field contains the total number of PSKs. In other words, the PSKs are
chained together with KDF.Extract invocations (labelled "Extract" for brevity
in the diagram), as follows:
0 0 = psk_secret_[0]
| |
V V
psk_[0] --> Extract --> ExpandWithLabel --> Extract = psk_secret_[1]
|
0 |
| |
V V
psk_[1] --> Extract --> ExpandWithLabel --> Extract = psk_secret_[1]
|
0 ...
| |
V V
psk_[n] --> Extract --> ExpandWithLabel --> Extract = psk_secret_[n]
In particular, if there are no PreSharedKey proposals in a given Commit, then
the resulting psk_secret is psk_secret_[0], the all-zero vector.
The main MLS key schedule provides an exporter_secret which can
be used by an application as the basis to derive new secrets called
exported_value outside the MLS layer.
MLS-Exporter(Label, Context, key_length) =
ExpandWithLabel(DeriveSecret(exporter_secret, Label),
"exporter", Hash(Context), key_length)
Each application SHOULD provide a unique label to MLS-Exporter that
identifies its use case. This is to prevent two
exported outputs from being generated with the same values and used
for different functionalities.
The exported values are bound to the group epoch from which the
exporter_secret is derived, hence reflects a particular state of
the group.
It is RECOMMENDED for the application generating exported values to refresh those values after a Commit is processed.
The main MLS key schedule provides a resumption_secret that is used as a PSK
to inject entropy from one epoch into another. This functionality is used in the
reinitialization and branching processes described in {{reinitialization}} and
{{sub-group-branching}}, but may be used by applications for other purposes.
Some uses of resumption PSKs might call for the use of PSKs from historical
epochs. The application SHOULD specify an upper limit on the number of past
epochs for which the resumption_secret may be stored.
The main MLS key schedule provides a per-epoch authentication_secret.
If one of the parties is being actively impersonated by an attacker, their
authentication_secret will differ from that of the other group members.
Thus, members of a group MAY use their authentication_secrets within
an out-of-band authentication protocol to ensure that they
share the same view of the group.
For the generation of encryption keys and nonces, the key schedule begins with
the encryption_secret at the root and derives a tree of secrets with the same
structure as the group's ratchet tree. Each leaf in the Secret Tree is
associated with the same group member as the corresponding leaf in the ratchet
tree.
If N is a parent node in the Secret Tree then the secrets of the children of N are defined as follows (where left(N) and right(N) denote the children of N):
tree_node_[N]_secret
|
|
+--> ExpandWithLabel(., "tree", "left", KDF.Nh)
| = tree_node_[left(N)]_secret
|
+--> ExpandWithLabel(., "tree", "right", KDF.Nh)
= tree_node_[right(N)]_secret
The secret in the leaf of the Secret Tree is used to initiate two symmetric hash ratchets, from which a sequence of single-use keys and nonces are derived, as described in {{encryption-keys}}. The root of each ratchet is computed as:
tree_node_[N]_secret
|
|
+--> ExpandWithLabel(., "handshake", "", KDF.Nh)
| = handshake_ratchet_secret_[N]_[0]
|
+--> ExpandWithLabel(., "application", "", KDF.Nh)
= application_ratchet_secret_[N]_[0]
As described in {{message-framing}}, MLS encrypts three different types of information:
- Metadata (sender information)
- Handshake messages (Proposal and Commit)
- Application messages
The sender information used to look up the key for content encryption is
encrypted with an AEAD where the key and nonce are derived from both
sender_data_secret and a sample of the encrypted message content.
For handshake and application messages, a sequence of keys is derived via a "sender ratchet". Each sender has their own sender ratchet, and each step along the ratchet is called a "generation".
A sender ratchet starts from a per-sender base secret derived from a Secret Tree, as described in {{secret-tree}}. The base secret initiates a symmetric hash ratchet which generates a sequence of keys and nonces. The sender uses the j-th key/nonce pair in the sequence to encrypt (using the AEAD) the j-th message they send during that epoch. Each key/nonce pair MUST NOT be used to encrypt more than one message.
Keys, nonces, and the secrets in ratchets are derived using DeriveTreeSecret. The context in a given call consists of the current position in the ratchet.
DeriveTreeSecret(Secret, Label, Generation, Length) =
ExpandWithLabel(Secret, Label, Generation, Length)
Where Generation is encoded as a uint32.
ratchet_secret_[N]_[j]
|
+--> DeriveTreeSecret(., "nonce", j, AEAD.Nn)
| = ratchet_nonce_[N]_[j]
|
+--> DeriveTreeSecret(., "key", j, AEAD.Nk)
| = ratchet_key_[N]_[j]
|
V
DeriveTreeSecret(., "secret", j, KDF.Nh)
= ratchet_secret_[N]_[j+1]
Here, AEAD.Nn and AEAD.Nk denote the lengths in bytes of the nonce and key for the AEAD scheme defined by the ciphersuite.
It is important to delete all security-sensitive values as soon as they are consumed. A sensitive value S is said to be consumed if
- S was used to encrypt or (successfully) decrypt a message, or if
- a key, nonce, or secret derived from S has been consumed. (This goes for values derived via DeriveSecret as well as ExpandWithLabel.)
Here, S may be the init_secret, commit_secret, epoch_secret,
encryption_secret as well as any secret in a Secret Tree or one of the
ratchets.
As soon as a group member consumes a value they MUST immediately delete (all representations of) that value. This is crucial to ensuring forward secrecy for past messages. Members MAY keep unconsumed values around for some reasonable amount of time to handle out-of-order message delivery.
For example, suppose a group member encrypts or (successfully) decrypts an application message using the j-th key and nonce in the ratchet of leaf node L in some epoch n. Then, for that member, at least the following values have been consumed and MUST be deleted:
- the
commit_secret,joiner_secret,epoch_secret,encryption_secretof that epoch n as well as theinit_secretof the previous epoch n-1, - all node secrets in the Secret Tree on the path from the root to the leaf with node L,
- the first j secrets in the application data ratchet of node L and
application_ratchet_nonce_[L]_[j]andapplication_ratchet_key_[L]_[j].
Concretely, suppose we have the following Secret Tree and ratchet for participant D:
G
/ \
/ \
E F
/ \ / \
A B C D
/ \
HR0 AR0 -+- K0
| |
| +- N0
|
AR1 -+- K1
| |
| +- N1
|
AR2
Then if a client uses key K1 and nonce N1 during epoch n then it must consume
(at least) values G, F, D, AR0, AR1, K1, N1 as well as the key schedule secrets
used to derive G (the encryption_secret), namely init_secret of epoch n-1
and commit_secret, joiner_secret, epoch_secret of epoch n. The client MAY
retain (not consume) the values K0 and N0 to allow for out-of-order delivery,
and SHOULD retain AR2 for processing future messages.
In order to facilitate the asynchronous addition of clients to a group, key packages are pre-published that provide some public information about a user. A KeyPackage object specifies:
- A protocol version and ciphersuite that the client supports,
- a public key that others can use for key agreement,
- a credential authenticating the client's application-layer identity, and
KeyPackages are intended to be used only once and SHOULD NOT be reused except in case of last resort. (See {{keypackage-reuse}}). Clients MAY generate and publish multiple KeyPackages to support multiple ciphersuites.
The value for hpke_init_key MUST be a public key for the asymmetric encryption scheme defined by cipher_suite, and it MUST be unique among the set of KeyPackages created by this client. The whole structure is signed using the client's signature key. A KeyPackage object with an invalid signature field MUST be considered malformed.
The signature is computed by the function SignWithLabel with a label
KeyPackage and a content comprising of all of the fields except for the
signature field.
enum {
reserved(0),
mls10(1),
(255)
} ProtocolVersion;
// See IANA registry for registered values
uint16 ExtensionType;
struct {
ExtensionType extension_type;
opaque extension_data<0..2^32-1>;
} Extension;
struct {
ProtocolVersion version;
CipherSuite cipher_suite;
HPKEPublicKey hpke_init_key;
Credential credential;
Extension extensions<8..2^32-1>;
// SignWithLabel(., "KeyPackageTBS", KeyPackageTBS)
opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
} KeyPackage;
struct {
ProtocolVersion version;
CipherSuite cipher_suite;
HPKEPublicKey hpke_init_key;
Credential credential;
Extension extensions<8..2^32-1>;
} KeyPackageTBS;
KeyPackage objects MUST contain at least two extensions, one of type
capabilities, and one of
type lifetime. The capabilities extension
allows MLS session establishment to be safe from downgrade attacks on the
parameters described (as discussed in {{group-creation}}), while still only advertising
one version / ciphersuite per KeyPackage.
As the KeyPackage is a structure which is stored in the Ratchet
Tree and updated depending on the evolution of the tree, each
modification of its content MUST be reflected by a change in its
signature. This allows other members to verify the validity of the KeyPackage
at any time, particularly in the case of a newcomer joining the group.
The validity of a KeyPackage needs to be verified at a few stages:
- When a KeyPackage is downloaded by a group member, before it is used to add the client to the group
- When a KeyPackage is received by a group member in an Add, Update, or Commit message
- When a client joining a group receives KeyPackages for the other members of the group in the group's ratchet tree
The client verifies the validity of a KeyPackage using the following steps:
-
Verify that the credential in the KeyPackage is valid according to the authentication service and the client's local policy. These actions MUST be the same regardless of at what point in the protocol the KeyPackage is being verified.
-
Verify that the signature on the KeyPackage is valid using the public key in the KeyPackage's credential
-
Verify that the KeyPackage is compatible with the group's parameters. The ciphersuite and protocol version of the KeyPackage must match those in use in the group. If the GroupContext has a
required_capabilitiesextension, then the required extensions and proposals MUST be listed in the KeyPackage'scapabilitiesextension. -
Verify that the following fields in the KeyPackage are unique among the members of the group (including any other members added in the same Commit):
credential.signature_keyhpke_init_key
The capabilities extension indicates what protocol versions, ciphersuites,
protocol extensions, and non-default proposal types are supported by a client.
Proposal types defined in this document are considered "default" and thus need
not be listed.
struct {
ProtocolVersion versions<0..255>;
CipherSuite ciphersuites<0..255>;
ExtensionType extensions<0..255>;
ProposalType proposals<0..255>;
} Capabilities;
This extension MUST be always present in a KeyPackage. Extensions that appear
in the extensions field of a KeyPackage MUST be included in the extensions
field of the capabilities extension.
The lifetime extension represents the times between which clients will
consider a KeyPackage valid. This time is represented as an absolute time,
measured in seconds since the Unix epoch (1970-01-01T00:00:00Z). A client MUST
NOT use the data in a KeyPackage for any processing before the not_before
date, or after the not_after date.
uint64 not_before;
uint64 not_after;
Applications MUST define a maximum total lifetime that is acceptable for a KeyPackage, and reject any KeyPackage where the total lifetime is longer than this duration.
This extension MUST always be present in a KeyPackage.
Within MLS, a KeyPackage is identified by its hash (see, e.g.,
{{joining-via-welcome-message}}). The external_key_id extension allows applications to add
an explicit, application-defined identifier to a KeyPackage.
opaque external_key_id<0..2^16-1>;
A group is always created with a single member, the "creator". The other members are added when the creator effectively sends itself an Add proposal and commits it, then sends the corresponding Welcome message to the new participants. These processes are described in detail in {{add}}, {{commit}}, and {{joining-via-welcome-message}}.
The creator of a group MUST take the following steps to initialize the group:
-
Fetch KeyPackages for the members to be added, and select a version and ciphersuite according to the capabilities of the members. To protect against downgrade attacks, the creator MUST use the
capabilitiesextensions in these KeyPackages to verify that the chosen version and ciphersuite is the best option supported by all members. -
Initialize a one-member group with the following initial values:
- Ratchet tree: A tree with a single node, a leaf containing an HPKE public key and credential for the creator
- Group ID: A value set by the creator
- Epoch: 0
- Tree hash: The root hash of the above ratchet tree
- Confirmed transcript hash: The zero-length octet string
- Interim transcript hash: The zero-length octet string
- Init secret: A fresh random value of size
KDF.Nh - Extensions: Any values of the creator's choosing
-
For each member, construct an Add proposal from the KeyPackage for that member (see {{add}})
-
Construct a Commit message that commits all of the Add proposals, in any order chosen by the creator (see {{commit}})
-
Process the Commit message to obtain a new group state (for the epoch in which the new members are added) and a Welcome message
-
Transmit the Welcome message to the other new members
The recipient of a Welcome message processes it as described in {{joining-via-welcome-message}}. If application context informs the recipient that the Welcome should reflect the creation of a new group (for example, due to a branch or reinitialization), then the recipient MUST verify that the epoch value in the GroupInfo is equal to 1.
In principle, the above process could be streamlined by having the creator directly create a tree and choose a random value for first epoch's epoch secret. We follow the steps above because it removes unnecessary choices, by which, for example, bad randomness could be introduced. The only choices the creator makes here are its own KeyPackage and the leaf secret from which the Commit is built.
The configuration of a group imposes certain requirements on clients in the
group. At a minimum, all members of the group need to support the ciphersuite
and protocol version in use. Additional requirements can be imposed by
including a required_capabilities extension in the GroupContext.
struct {
ExtensionType extensions<0..255>;
ProposalType proposals<0..255>;
} RequiredCapabilities;
This extension lists the extensions and proposal types that must be supported by all members of the group. The "default" proposal and extension types defined in this document are assumed to be implemented by all clients, and need not be listed in RequiredCapabilities in order to be safely used.
For new members, support for required capabilities is enforced by existing
members during the application of Add commits. Existing members should of
course be in compliance already. In order to ensure this continues to be the
case even as the group's extensions can be updated, a GroupContextExtensions
proposal is invalid if it contains a required_capabilities extension that
requires non-default capabilities not supported by all current members.
A group may be reinitialized by creating a new group with the same membership and different parameters, and linking it to the old group via a resumption PSK. The members of a group reinitialize it using the following steps:
- A member of the old group sends a ReInit proposal (see {{reinit}})
- A member of the old group sends a Commit covering the ReInit proposal
- A member of the old group sends a Welcome message for the new group that
matches the ReInit
- The
group_id,version, andcipher_suitefields in the Welcome message MUST be the same as the corresponding fields in the ReInit proposal. - The
epochin the Welcome message MUST be 1 - The Welcome MUST specify a PreSharedKey of type
resumptionwith usagereinit. Thegroup_idmust match the old group, and theepochmust indicate the epoch after the Commit covering the ReInit. - The
psk_nonceincluded in thePreSharedKeyIDof the resumption PSK MUST be a randomly sampled nonce of lengthKDF.Nh, for the KDF defined by the new grou's ciphersuite.
- The
Note that these three steps may be done by the same group member or different members. For example, if a group member sends a commit with an inline ReInit proposal (steps 1 and 2), but then goes offline, another group member may send the corresponding Welcome. This flexibility avoids situations where a group gets stuck between steps 2 and 3.
Resumption PSKs with usage reinit MUST NOT be used in other contexts. A
PreSharedKey proposal with type resumption and usage reinit MUST be
considered invalid.
A new group can be formed from a subset of an existing group's members, using
the same parameters as the old group. The creator of the group indicates this
situation by including a PreSharedKey of type resumption with usage branch
in the Welcome message that creates the branched subgroup.
A client receiving a Welcome including a PreSharedKey of type resumption with
usage branch MUST verify that the new group reflects a subgroup branched from
the referenced group.
- The
versionandciphersuitevalues in the Welcome MUST be the same as those used by the old group. - Each KeyPackage in a leaf node of the new group's tree MUST be a leaf in the old group's tree at the epoch indicated in the PreSharedKey.
In addition, to avoid key re-use, the psk_nonce included in the
PreSharedKeyID object MUST be a randomly sampled nonce of length KDF.Nh.
Resumption PSKs with usage branch MUST NOT be used in other contexts. A
PreSharedKey proposal with type resumption and usage branch MUST be
considered invalid.
Over the lifetime of a group, its membership can change, and existing members might want to change their keys in order to achieve post-compromise security. In MLS, each such change is accomplished by a two-step process:
- A proposal to make the change is broadcast to the group in a Proposal message
- A member of the group or a new member broadcasts a Commit message that causes one or more proposed changes to enter into effect
The group thus evolves from one cryptographic state to another each time a Commit message is sent and processed. These states are referred to as "epochs" and are uniquely identified among states of the group by eight-octet epoch values. When a new group is initialized, its initial state epoch is 0x0000000000000000. Each time a state transition occurs, the epoch number is incremented by one.
Proposals are included in an MLSPlaintext by way of a Proposal structure that indicates their type:
// See IANA registry for registered values
uint16 ProposalType;
struct {
ProposalType msg_type;
select (Proposal.msg_type) {
case add: Add;
case update: Update;
case remove: Remove;
case psk: PreSharedKey;
case reinit: ReInit;
case external_init: ExternalInit;
case app_ack: AppAck;
case group_context_extensions: GroupContextExtensions;
};
} Proposal;
On receiving an MLSPlaintext containing a Proposal, a client MUST verify the signature on the enclosing MLSPlaintext. If the signature verifies successfully, then the Proposal should be cached in such a way that it can be retrieved by hash (as a ProposalOrRef object) in a later Commit message.
An Add proposal requests that a client with a specified KeyPackage be added to the group. The proposer of the Add MUST verify the validity of the KeyPackage, as specified in {{keypackage-validation}}.
struct {
KeyPackage key_package;
} Add;
An Add is applied after being included in a Commit message. The position of the Add in the list of proposals determines the leaf node where the new member will be added. For the first Add in the Commit, the corresponding new member will be placed in the leftmost empty leaf in the tree, for the second Add, the next empty leaf to the right, etc. If no empty leaf exists, the tree is extended to the right.
-
Validate the KeyPackage as specified in {{keypackage-validation}}
-
Identify the leaf L for the new member: if there are empty leaves in the tree, L is the leftmost empty leaf. Otherwise, the tree is extended to the right by one leaf node and L is the new leaf.
-
For each non-blank intermediate node along the path from the leaf L to the root, add L's leaf index to the
unmerged_leaveslist for the node. -
Set the leaf node L to a new node containing the public key from the KeyPackage in the Add, as well as the credential under which the KeyPackage was signed.
An Update proposal is a similar mechanism to Add with the distinction that it is the sender's leaf KeyPackage in the tree which would be updated with a new KeyPackage.
struct {
KeyPackage key_package;
} Update;
A member of the group applies an Update message by taking the following steps:
-
Validate the KeyPackage as specified in {{keypackage-validation}}
-
Verify that the following fields in the new KeyPackage are the same as the one being replaced:
versioncipher_suite
-
Verify that the
hpke_init_keyvalue is different from the corresponding field in the KeyPackage being replaced. -
Verify that the set of identities attested by the credential is acceptable to the application for the participant being updated.
-
Replace the sender's leaf KeyPackage with the one contained in the Update proposal
-
Blank the intermediate nodes along the path from the sender's leaf to the root
A Remove proposal requests that the member with KeyPackageRef removed be removed
from the group.
struct {
KeyPackageRef removed;
} Remove;
A member of the group applies a Remove message by taking the following steps:
-
Identify a leaf node containing a key package matching
removed. This lookup MUST be done on the tree before any non-Remove proposals have been applied (the "old" tree in the terminology of {{commit}}), since proposals such as Update can change the KeyPackage stored at a leaf. Let L be this leaf node. -
Replace the leaf node L with a blank node
-
Blank the intermediate nodes along the path from L to the root
-
Truncate the tree by removing leaves from the right side of the tree as long as all of the following conditions hold (since non-blank intermediate nodes hold information that is necessary for verifying parent hashes):
- The rightmost leaf is blank
- The parent of the rightmost leaf is either blank or the root of the tree
A PreSharedKey proposal can be used to request that a pre-shared key be injected into the key schedule in the process of advancing the epoch.
struct {
PreSharedKeyID psk;
} PreSharedKey;
The psktype of the pre-shared key MUST be external and the psk_nonce MUST
be a randomly sampled nonce of length KDF.Nh. When processing a Commit message
that includes one or more PreSharedKey proposals, group members derive
psk_secret as described in {{pre-shared-keys}}, where the order of the PSKs
corresponds to the order of the PreSharedKey proposals in the Commit.
A ReInit proposal represents a request to reinitialize the group with different parameters, for example, to increase the version number or to change the ciphersuite. The reinitialization is done by creating a completely new group and shutting down the old one.
struct {
opaque group_id<0..255>;
ProtocolVersion version;
CipherSuite cipher_suite;
Extension extensions<0..2^32-1>;
} ReInit;
A member of the group applies a ReInit proposal by waiting for the committer to send the Welcome message that matches the ReInit, according to the criteria in {{reinitialization}}.
If a ReInit proposal is included in a Commit, it MUST be the only proposal
referenced by the Commit. If other non-ReInit proposals have been sent during
the epoch, the committer SHOULD prefer them over the ReInit proposal, allowing
the ReInit to be resent and applied in a subsequent epoch. The version field
in the ReInit proposal MUST be no less than the version for the current group.
An ExternalInit proposal is used by new members that want to join a group by using an external commit. This proposal can only be used in that context.
struct {
opaque kem_output<0..2^16-1>;
} ExternalInit;
A member of the group applies an ExternalInit message by initializing the next
epoch using an init secret computed as described in {{external-initialization}}.
The kem_output field contains the required KEM output.
An AppAck proposal is used to acknowledge receipt of application messages. Though this information implies no change to the group, it is structured as a Proposal message so that it is included in the group's transcript by being included in Commit messages.
struct {
KeyPackageRef sender;
uint32 first_generation;
uint32 last_generation;
} MessageRange;
struct {
MessageRange received_ranges<0..2^32-1>;
} AppAck;
An AppAck proposal represents a set of messages received by the sender in the
current epoch. Messages are represented by the sender and generation values
in the MLSCiphertext for the message. Each MessageRange represents receipt of a
span of messages whose generation values form a continuous range from
first_generation to last_generation, inclusive.
AppAck proposals are sent as a guard against the Delivery Service dropping
application messages. The sequential nature of the generation field provides
a degree of loss detection, since gaps in the generation sequence indicate
dropped messages. AppAck completes this story by addressing the scenario where
the Delivery Service drops all messages after a certain point, so that a later
generation is never observed. Obviously, there is a risk that AppAck messages
could be suppressed as well, but their inclusion in the transcript means that if
they are suppressed then the group cannot advance at all.
The schedule on which sending AppAck proposals are sent is up to the application, and determines which cases of loss/suppression are detected. For example:
-
The application might have the committer include an AppAck proposal whenever a Commit is sent, so that other members could know when one of their messages did not reach the committer.
-
The application could have a client send an AppAck whenever an application message is sent, covering all messages received since its last AppAck. This would provide a complete view of any losses experienced by active members.
-
The application could simply have clients send AppAck proposals on a timer, so that all participants' state would be known.
An application using AppAck proposals to guard against loss/suppression of application messages also needs to ensure that AppAck messages and the Commits that reference them are not dropped. One way to do this is to always encrypt Proposal and Commit messages, to make it more difficult for the Delivery Service to recognize which messages contain AppAcks. The application can also have clients enforce an AppAck schedule, reporting loss if an AppAck is not received at the expected time.
A GroupContextExtensions proposal is used to update the list of extensions in the GroupContext for the group.
struct {
Extension extensions<0..2^32-1>;
} GroupContextExtensions;
A member of the group applies a GroupContextExtensions proposal with the following steps:
-
If the new extensions include a
required_capabilitiesextension, verify that all members of the group support the required capabilities (including those added in the same commit, and excluding those removed). -
Remove all of the existing extensions from the GroupContext object for the group and replacing them with the list of extensions in the proposal. (This is a wholesale replacement, not a merge. An extension is only carried over if the sender of the proposal includes it in the new list.)
Note that once the GroupContext is updated, its inclusion in the confirmation_tag by way of the key schedule will confirm that all members of the group agree on the extensions in use.
Add and Remove proposals can be constructed and sent to the group by a party
that is outside the group. For example, a Delivery Service might propose to
remove a member of a group who has been inactive for a long time, or propose adding
a newly-hired staff member to a group representing a real-world team. Proposals
originating outside the group are identified by a preconfigured or
new_member SenderType in MLSPlaintext.
ReInit proposals can also be sent to the group by a preconfigured sender, for
example to enforce a changed policy regarding MLS version or ciphersuite.
The new_member SenderType is used for clients proposing that they themselves
be added. For this ID type the sender value MUST be zero and the Proposal type
MUST be Add. The MLSPlaintext MUST be signed with the private key corresponding
to the KeyPackage in the Add message. Recipients MUST verify that the
MLSPlaintext carrying the Proposal message is validly signed with this key.
The preconfigured SenderType is reserved for signers that are pre-provisioned
to the clients within a group. If proposals with these sender IDs are to be
accepted within a group, the members of the group MUST be provisioned by the
application with a mapping between these IDs and authorized signing keys.
Recipients MUST verify that the MLSPlaintext carrying the Proposal message is
validly signed with the corresponding key. To ensure consistent handling of
external proposals, the application MUST ensure that the members of a group
have the same mapping and apply the same policies to external proposals.
An external proposal MUST be sent as an MLSPlaintext object, since the sender will not have the keys necessary to construct an MLSCiphertext object.
A Commit message initiates a new epoch for the group, based on a collection of Proposals. It instructs group members to update their representation of the state of the group by applying the proposals and advancing the key schedule.
Each proposal covered by the Commit is included by a ProposalOrRef value, which identifies the proposal to be applied by value or by reference. Proposals supplied by value are included directly in the Commit object. Proposals supplied by reference are specified by including the hash of the MLSPlaintext in which the Proposal was sent (see {{hash-based-identifiers}}). For proposals supplied by value, the sender of the proposal is the same as the sender of the Commit. Conversely, proposals sent by people other than the committer MUST be included by reference.
enum {
reserved(0),
proposal(1)
reference(2),
(255)
} ProposalOrRefType;
struct {
ProposalOrRefType type;
select (ProposalOrRef.type) {
case proposal: Proposal proposal;
case reference: ProposalRef reference;
}
} ProposalOrRef;
struct {
ProposalOrRef proposals<0..2^32-1>;
optional<UpdatePath> path;
} Commit;
A group member that has observed one or more proposals within an epoch MUST send a Commit message before sending application data. This ensures, for example, that any members whose removal was proposed during the epoch are actually removed before any application data is transmitted.
The sender of a Commit MUST include all valid proposals that it has received during the current epoch. Invalid proposals include, for example, proposals with an invalid signature or proposals that are semantically invalid, such as an Add when the sender does not have the application-level permission to add new users. Proposals with a non-default proposal type MUST NOT be included in a commit unless the proposal type is supported by all the members of the group that will process the Commit (i.e., not including any members being added or removed by the Commit).
If there are multiple proposals that apply to the same leaf, the committer
chooses one and includes only that one in the Commit, considering the rest
invalid. The committer MUST NOT include any Update proposals generated by the
committer, since they would be duplicative with the path field in the Commit.
The committer MUST prefer any Remove received, or the most recent
Update for the leaf if there are no Removes. If there are multiple Add proposals
containing KeyPackages that the committer considers to represent the same client
or a client already in the group (for example, identical KeyPackages or
KeyPackages sharing the same Credential), the committer again chooses one to
include and considers the rest invalid. The committer MUST consider invalid any
Add or Update proposal if the Credential in the contained KeyPackage shares the
same signature key with a Credential in any leaf of the group, or if the
KeyPackage shares the same hpke_init_key with another KeyPackage in the group.
The Commit MUST NOT combine proposals sent within different epochs. Due to the asynchronous nature of proposals, receivers of a Commit SHOULD NOT enforce that all valid proposals sent within the current epoch are referenced by the next Commit. In the event that a valid proposal is omitted from the next Commit, and that proposal is still valid in the current epoch, the sender of the proposal MAY retransmit it.
A member of the group MAY send a Commit that references no proposals at all,
which would thus have an empty proposals vector. Such
a Commit resets the sender's leaf and the nodes along its direct path, and
provides forward secrecy and post-compromise security with regard to the sender
of the Commit. An Update proposal can be regarded as a "lazy" version of this
operation, where only the leaf changes and intermediate nodes are blanked out.
The path field of a Commit message MUST be populated if the Commit covers at
least one Update or Remove proposal. The path field MUST also be populated
if the Commit covers no proposals at all (i.e., if the proposals vector
is empty). The path field MAY be omitted if the Commit covers only Add
proposals. In pseudocode, the logic for validating a Commit is as follows:
hasUpdates = false
hasRemoves = false
for i, id in commit.proposals:
proposal = proposalCache[id]
assert(proposal != null)
hasUpdates = hasUpdates || proposal.msg_type == update
hasRemoves = hasRemoves || proposal.msg_type == remove
if len(commit.proposals) == 0 || hasUpdates || hasRemoves:
assert(commit.path != null)
To summarize, a Commit can have three different configurations, with different uses:
-
An "empty" Commit that references no proposals, which updates the committer's contribution to the group and provides PCS with regard to the committer.
-
A "partial" Commit that references Add, PreSharedKey, or ReInit proposals but where the path is empty. Such a commit doesn't provide PCS with regard to the committer.
-
A "full" Commit that references proposals of any type, which provides FS with regard to any removed members and PCS for the committer and any updated members.
When creating or processing a Commit, three different ratchet trees and their associated GroupContexts are used:
- "Old" refers to the ratchet tree and GroupContext for the epoch before the commit. The old GroupContext is used when signing the MLSPlainText so that existing group members can verify the signature before processing the commit.
- "Provisional" refers to the ratchet tree and GroupContext constructed after applying the proposals that are referenced by the Commit. The provisional GroupContext uses the epoch number for the new epoch, and the old confirmed transcript hash. This is used when creating the UpdatePath, if the UpdatePath is needed.
- "New" refers to the ratchet tree and GroupContext constructed after applying the proposals and the UpdatePath (if any). The new GroupContext uses the epoch number for the new epoch, and the new confirmed transcript hash. This is used when deriving the new epoch secrets, and is the only GroupContext that newly-added members will have.
A member of the group creates a Commit message and the corresponding Welcome message at the same time, by taking the following steps:
-
Construct an initial Commit object with the
proposalsfield populated from Proposals received during the current epoch, and an emptypathfield. -
Generate the provisional ratchet tree and GroupContext by applying the proposals referenced in the initial Commit object, as described in {{proposals}}. Update proposals are applied first, followed by Remove proposals, and then finally Add proposals. Add proposals are applied in the order listed in the
proposalsvector, and always to the leftmost unoccupied leaf in the tree, or the right edge of the tree if all leaves are occupied.-
Note that the order in which different types of proposals are applied should be updated by the implementation to include any new proposals added by negotiated group extensions.
-
PreSharedKey proposals are processed later when deriving the
psk_secretfor the Key Schedule.
-
-
Decide whether to populate the
pathfield: If thepathfield is required based on the proposals that are in the commit (see above), then it MUST be populated. Otherwise, the sender MAY omit thepathfield at its discretion. -
If populating the
pathfield: Create an UpdatePath using the provisional ratchet tree and GroupContext. Any new member (from an add proposal) MUST be excluded from the resolution during the computation of the UpdatePath. Theleaf_key_packagefor this UpdatePath must have aparent_hashextension. Note that the KeyPackage in theUpdatePatheffectively updates an existing KeyPackage in the group and thus MUST adhere to the same restrictions as KeyPackages used inUpdateproposals.-
Assign this UpdatePath to the
pathfield in the Commit. -
Apply the UpdatePath to the tree, as described in {{synchronizing-views-of-the-tree}}, creating the new ratchet tree. Define
commit_secretas the valuepath_secret[n+1]derived from thepath_secret[n]value assigned to the root node.
-
-
If not populating the
pathfield: Set thepathfield in the Commit to the null optional. Definecommit_secretas the all-zero vector of lengthKDF.Nh(the same length as apath_secretvalue would be). In this case, the new ratchet tree is the same as the provisional ratchet tree. -
Derive the
psk_secretas specified in {{pre-shared-keys}}, where the order of PSKs in the derivation corresponds to the order of PreSharedKey proposals in theproposalsvector. -
Construct an MLSPlaintext object containing the Commit object. Sign the MLSPlaintext using the old GroupContext as context.
- Use the MLSPlaintext to update the confirmed transcript hash and generate the new GroupContext.
- Use the
init_secretfrom the previous epoch, thecommit_secretand thepsk_secretas defined in the previous steps, and the new GroupContext to compute the newjoiner_secret,welcome_secret,epoch_secret, and derived secrets for the new epoch. - Use the
confirmation_keyfor the new epoch to compute theconfirmation_tagvalue, and themembership_keyfor the old epoch to compute themembership_tagvalue in the MLSPlaintext. - Calculate the interim transcript hash using the new confirmed transcript
hash and the
confirmation_tagfrom the MLSPlaintext.
-
Construct a GroupInfo reflecting the new state:
- Group ID, epoch, tree, confirmed transcript hash, interim transcript hash, and group context extensions from the new state
- The confirmation_tag from the MLSPlaintext object
- Other extensions as defined by the application
- Optionally derive an external keypair as described in {{key-schedule}} (required for External Commits, see {{joining-via-external-commits}})
- Sign the GroupInfo using the member's private signing key
- Encrypt the GroupInfo using the key and nonce derived from the
joiner_secretfor the new epoch (see {{joining-via-welcome-message}})
-
For each new member in the group:
- Identify the lowest common ancestor in the tree of the new member's leaf node and the member sending the Commit
- If the
pathfield was populated above: Compute the path secret corresponding to the common ancestor node - Compute an EncryptedGroupSecrets object that encapsulates the
init_secretfor the current epoch and the path secret (if present).
-
Construct a Welcome message from the encrypted GroupInfo object, the encrypted key packages, and any PSKs for which a proposal was included in the Commit. The order of the
psksMUST be the same as the order of PreSharedKey proposals in theproposalsvector. -
If a ReInit proposal was part of the Commit, the committer MUST create a new group with the parameters specified in the ReInit proposal, and with the same members as the original group. The Welcome message MUST include a
PreSharedKeyIDwith the following parameters:psktype:resumptionusage:reinitgroup_id: The group ID for the current groupepoch: The epoch that the group will be in after this Commit
A member of the group applies a Commit message by taking the following steps:
-
Verify that the
epochfield of the enclosing MLSPlaintext message is equal to theepochfield of the current GroupContext object -
Verify that the signature on the MLSPlaintext message verifies using the public key from the credential stored at the leaf in the tree indicated by the
senderfield. -
Verify that all PSKs specified in any PreSharedKey proposals in the
proposalsvector are available. -
Generate the provisional ratchet tree and GroupContext by applying the proposals referenced in the initial Commit object, as described in {{proposals}}. Update proposals are applied first, followed by Remove proposals, and then finally Add proposals. Add proposals are applied in the order listed in the
proposalsvector, and always to the leftmost unoccupied leaf in the tree, or the right edge of the tree if all leaves are occupied.- Note that the order in which different types of proposals are applied should be updated by the implementation to include any new proposals added by negotiated group extensions.
-
Verify that the
pathvalue is populated if theproposalsvector contains any Update or Remove proposals, or if it's empty. Otherwise, thepathvalue MAY be omitted. -
If the
pathvalue is populated: Process thepathvalue using the provisional ratchet tree and GroupContext, to generate the new ratchet tree and thecommit_secret:-
Verify that the KeyPackage is acceptable according to the rules for Update (see {{update}})
-
Apply the UpdatePath to the tree, as described in {{synchronizing-views-of-the-tree}}, and store
leaf_key_packageat the Committer's leaf. -
Verify that the KeyPackage has a
parent_hashextension and that its value matches the new parent of the sender's leaf node. -
Define
commit_secretas the valuepath_secret[n+1]derived from thepath_secret[n]value assigned to the root node.
-
-
If the
pathvalue is not populated: Definecommit_secretas the all-zero vector of lengthKDF.Nh(the same length as apath_secretvalue would be). -
Update the confirmed and interim transcript hashes using the new Commit, and generate the new GroupContext.
-
Derive the
psk_secretas specified in {{pre-shared-keys}}, where the order of PSKs in the derivation corresponds to the order of PreSharedKey proposals in theproposalsvector. -
Use the
init_secretfrom the previous epoch, thecommit_secretand thepsk_secretas defined in the previous steps, and the new GroupContext to compute the newjoiner_secret,welcome_secret,epoch_secret, and derived secrets for the new epoch. -
Use the
confirmation_keyfor the new epoch to compute the confirmation tag for this message, as described below, and verify that it is the same as theconfirmation_tagfield in the MLSPlaintext object. -
If the above checks are successful, consider the new GroupContext object as the current state of the group.
-
If the Commit included a ReInit proposal, the client MUST NOT use the group to send messages anymore. Instead, it MUST wait for a Welcome message from the committer meeting the requirements of {{reinitialization}}.
The confirmation tag value confirms that the members of the group have arrived at the same state of the group:
MLSPlaintext.confirmation_tag =
MAC(confirmation_key, GroupContext.confirmed_transcript_hash)
New members can join the group in two ways. Either by being added by a group member, or by adding themselves through an external Commit. In both cases, the new members need information to bootstrap their local group state.
struct {
ProtocolVersion version = mls10;
CipherSuite cipher_suite;
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
opaque tree_hash<0..255>;
opaque confirmed_transcript_hash<0..255>;
Extension group_context_extensions<0..2^32-1>;
Extension other_extensions<0..2^32-1>;
MAC confirmation_tag;
KeyPackageRef signer;
// SignWithLabel(., "GroupInfoTBS", GroupInfoTBS)
opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
} GroupInfo;
New members MUST verify the signature using the public key taken from the
credential in the leaf node of the member with KeyPackageRef signer. The
signature covers the following structure, comprising all the fields in the
GroupInfo above signature:
struct {
CipherSuite cipher_suite;
opaque group_id<0..255>;
uint64 epoch;
opaque tree_hash<0..255>;
opaque confirmed_transcript_hash<0..255>;
Extension group_context_extensions<0..2^32-1>;
Extension other_extensions<0..2^32-1>;
MAC confirmation_tag;
KeyPackageRef signer;
} GroupInfoTBS;
External Commits are a mechanism for new members (external parties that want to become members of the group) to add themselves to a group, without requiring that an existing member has to come online to issue a Commit that references an Add Proposal.
Whether existing members of the group will accept or reject an External Commit follows the same rules that are applied to other handshake messages.
New members can create and issue an External Commit if they have access to the following information for the group's current epoch:
- group ID
- epoch ID
- ciphersuite
- public tree hash
- confirmed transcript hash
- confirmation tag of the most recent Commit
- group extensions
- external public key
In other words, to join a group via an External Commit, a new member needs a
GroupInfo with an ExternalPub extension present in the other_extensions.
struct {
HPKEPublicKey external_pub;
} ExternalPub;
Thus, a member of the group can enable new clients to join by making a GroupInfo object available to them. Note that because a GroupInfo object is specific to an epoch, it will need to be updated as the group advances. In particular, each GroupInfo object can be used for one external join, since that external join will cause the epoch to change.
Note that the tree_hash field is used the same way as in the Welcome message.
The full tree can be included via the ratchet_tree extension
{{ratchet-tree-extension}}.
The signature on the GroupInfo struct authenticates the HPKE public key, so
that the joiner knows that the public key was provided by a member of the group.
The fields that are not signed are included in the key schedule via the
GroupContext object. If the joiner is provided an inaccurate data for these
fields, then its external Commit will have an incorrect confirmation_tag and
thus be rejected.
The information in a GroupInfo is not deemed public in general, but applications can choose to make it available to new members in order to allow External Commits.
External Commits work like regular Commits, with a few differences:
- External Commits MUST contain a
pathfield (and is therefore a "full" Commit). The joiner is added at the leftmost free leaf node (just as if they were added with an Add proposal), and the path is calculated relative to that leaf node. - The Commit MUST NOT include any proposals by reference, since an external joiner cannot determine the validity of proposals sent within the group
- The proposals included by value in an External Commit MUST meet the following
conditions:
- There MUST be a single ExternalInit proposal
- There MUST NOT be any Update proposals
- If a Remove proposal is present, then the leaf KeyPackage in the
pathfield MUST meet the same criteria as the KeyPackage in an Update for the removed leaf (see {{update}}). In particular, thecredentialin the KeyPackage MUST present a set of identifiers that is acceptable to the application for the removed participant.
- External Commits MUST be signed by the new member. In particular, the
signature on the enclosing MLSPlaintext MUST verify using the public key for
the credential in the
leaf_key_packageof thepathfield. - When processing a Commit, both existing and new members MUST use the external init secret as described in {{external-initialization}}.
- The sender type for the MLSPlaintext encapsulating the External Commit MUST be
new_member
In other words, External Commits come in two "flavors" -- a "join" commit that adds the sender to the group or a "resync" commit that replaces a member's prior appearance with a new one.
Note that the "resync" operation allows an attacker that has compromised a member's signature private key to introduce themselves into the group and remove the prior, legitimate member in a single Commit. Without resync, this can still be done, but requires two operations, the external Commit to join and a second Commit to remove the old appearance. Applications for whom this distinction is salient can choose to disallow external commits that contain a Remove, or to allow such resync commits only if they contain a "reinit" PSK proposal that demonstrates the joining member's presence in a prior epoch of the group. With the latter approach, the attacke would need to compromise the PSK as well as the signing key, but the application will need to ensure that continuing, non-resync'ing members have the required PSK.
The sender of a Commit message is responsible for sending a Welcome message to any new members added via Add proposals. The Welcome message provides the new members with the current state of the group, after the application of the Commit message. The new members will not be able to decrypt or verify the Commit message, but will have the secrets they need to participate in the epoch initiated by the Commit message.
In order to allow the same Welcome message to be sent to all new members,
information describing the group is encrypted with a symmetric key and nonce
derived from the joiner_secret for the new epoch. The joiner_secret is
then encrypted to each new member using HPKE. In the same encrypted package,
the committer transmits the path secret for the lowest node contained in the
direct paths of both the committer and the new member. This allows the new
member to compute private keys for nodes in its direct path that are being
reset by the corresponding Commit.
If the sender of the Welcome message wants the receiving member to include a PSK
in the derivation of the epoch_secret, they can populate the psks field
indicating which PSK to use.
struct {
opaque path_secret<1..255>;
} PathSecret;
struct {
opaque joiner_secret<1..255>;
optional<PathSecret> path_secret;
PreSharedKeys psks;
} GroupSecrets;
struct {
KeyPackageRef new_member;
HPKECiphertext encrypted_group_secrets;
} EncryptedGroupSecrets;
struct {
CipherSuite cipher_suite;
EncryptedGroupSecrets secrets<0..2^32-1>;
opaque encrypted_group_info<1..2^32-1>;
} Welcome;
The client processing a Welcome message will need to have a copy of the group's
ratchet tree. The tree can be provided in the Welcome message, in an extension
of type ratchet_tree. If it is sent otherwise (e.g., provided by a caching
service on the Delivery Service), then the client MUST download the tree before
processing the Welcome.
On receiving a Welcome message, a client processes it using the following steps:
-
Identify an entry in the
secretsarray where thenew_membervalue corresponds to one of this client's KeyPackages, using the hash indicated by thecipher_suitefield. If no such field exists, or if the ciphersuite indicated in the KeyPackage does not match the one in the Welcome message, return an error. -
Decrypt the
encrypted_group_secretsusing HPKE with the algorithms indicated by the ciphersuite and the HPKE private key corresponding to the GroupSecrets. If aPreSharedKeyIDis part of the GroupSecrets and the client is not in possession of the corresponding PSK, return an error. -
From the
joiner_secretin the decrypted GroupSecrets object and the PSKs specified in theGroupSecrets, derive thewelcome_secretand using that thewelcome_keyandwelcome_nonce. Use the key and nonce to decrypt theencrypted_group_infofield.
welcome_nonce = KDF.Expand(welcome_secret, "nonce", AEAD.Nn)
welcome_key = KDF.Expand(welcome_secret, "key", AEAD.Nk)
-
Verify the signature on the GroupInfo object. The signature input comprises all of the fields in the GroupInfo object except the signature field. The public key and algorithm are taken from the credential in the leaf node of the member with KeyPackageRef
signer. If there is no matching leaf node, or if signature verification fails, return an error. -
Verify the integrity of the ratchet tree.
-
Verify that the tree hash of the ratchet tree matches the
tree_hashfield in the GroupInfo. -
For each non-empty parent node, verify that exactly one of the node's children are non-empty and have the hash of this node set as their
parent_hashvalue (if the child is another parent) or has aparent_hashextension in the KeyPackage containing the same value (if the child is a leaf). If either of the node's children is empty, and in particular does not have a parent hash, then its respective children'sparent_hashvalues have to be considered instead. -
For each non-empty leaf node, verify the signature on the KeyPackage.
-
-
Identify a leaf in the
treearray (any even-numbered node) whosekey_packagefield is identical to the KeyPackage. If no such field exists, return an error. Letmy_leafrepresent this leaf in the tree. -
Construct a new group state using the information in the GroupInfo object.
-
The GroupContext contains the
group_id,epoch,tree_hash,confirmed_transcript_hash, andgroup_context_extensionsfields from the GroupInfo object. -
The new member's position in the tree is at the leaf
my_leaf, as defined above. -
Update the leaf
my_leafwith the private key corresponding to the public key in the node. -
If the
path_secretvalue is set in the GroupSecrets object: Identify the lowest common ancestor of the leaf nodemy_leafand of the node of the member with KeyPackageRefGroupInfo.signer. Set the private key for this node to the private key derived from thepath_secret. -
For each parent of the common ancestor, up to the root of the tree, derive a new path secret and set the private key for the node to the private key derived from the path secret. The private key MUST be the private key that corresponds to the public key in the node.
-
-
Use the
joiner_secretfrom the GroupSecrets object to generate the epoch secret and other derived secrets for the current epoch. -
Set the confirmed transcript hash in the new state to the value of the
confirmed_transcript_hashin the GroupInfo. -
Verify the confirmation tag in the GroupInfo using the derived confirmation key and the
confirmed_transcript_hashfrom the GroupInfo. -
Use the confirmed transcript hash and confirmation tag to compute the interim transcript hash in the new state.
By default, a GroupInfo message only provides the joiner with a commitment to the group's ratchet tree. In order to process or generate handshake messages, the joiner will need to get a copy of the ratchet tree from some other source. (For example, the DS might provide a cached copy.) The inclusion of the tree hash in the GroupInfo message means that the source of the ratchet tree need not be trusted to maintain the integrity of tree.
In cases where the application does not wish to provide such an external source,
the whole public state of the ratchet tree can be provided in an extension of
type ratchet_tree, containing a ratchet_tree object of the following form:
enum {
reserved(0),
leaf(1),
parent(2),
(255)
} NodeType;
struct {
NodeType node_type;
select (Node.node_type) {
case leaf: KeyPackage key_package;
case parent: ParentNode node;
};
} Node;
optional<Node> ratchet_tree<1..2^32-1>;
The nodes are listed in the order specified by a left-to-right in-order traversal of the rachet tree. Each node is listed between its left subtree and its right subtree. (This is the same ordering as specified for the array-based trees outlined in {{array-based-trees}}.)
The leaves of the tree are stored in even-numbered entries in the array (the leaf with index L in array position 2*L). The root node of the tree is at position 2^k - 1 of the array, where k is the largest number such that 2^k is smaller than the length of the array. Intermediate parent nodes can be identified by performing the same calculation to the subarrays to the left and right of the root, following something like the following algorithm:
# Assuming a class Node that has left and right members
def subtree_root(nodes):
# If there is only one node in the array return it
if len(nodes) == 1:
return Node(nodes[0])
# Otherwise, the length of the array MUST be odd
if len(nodes) % 2 == 0:
raise Exception("Malformed node array {}", len(nodes))
# Identify the root of the subtree
k = 0
while (2**(k+1)) < len(nodes):
k += 1
R = 2**k - 1
root = Node(nodes[R])
root.left = subtree_root(nodes[:R])
root.right = subtree_root(nodes[(R+1):])
return root
(Note that this is the same ordering of nodes as in the array-based tree representation described in {{array-based-trees}}. The algorithms in that section may be used to simplify decoding this extension into other representations.)
(Note that this is the same ordering of nodes as in the array-based tree representation described in {{array-based-trees}}. The algorithms in that section may be used to simplify decoding this extension into other representations.)
The example tree in {{ratchet-tree-terminology}} would be represented as an array of nodes in the following form, where R represents the "subtree root" for a given subarray of the node array:
X
______|______
/ \
V Z
__|__ __|
/ \ / \
U W Y |
/ \ / \ / \ |
A B C D E F G
1 1 1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2
<-----------> R <------->
<---> R <---> <---> R -
- R - - R - - R -
The presence of a ratchet_tree extension in a GroupInfo message does not
result in any changes to the GroupContext extensions for the group. The ratchet
tree provided is simply stored by the client and used for MLS operations.
If this extension is not provided in a Welcome message, then the client will need to fetch the ratchet tree over some other channel before it can generate or process Commit messages. Applications should ensure that this out-of-band channel is provided with security protections equivalent to the protections that are afforded to Proposal and Commit messages. For example, an application that encrypts Proposal and Commit messages might distribute ratchet trees encrypted using a key exchanged over the MLS channel.
Regardless of how the client obtains the tree, the client MUST verify that the
root hash of the ratchet tree matches the tree_hash of the GroupContext before
using the tree for MLS operations.
The base MLS protocol can be extended in a few ways. New ciphersuites can be added to enable the use of new cryptographic algorithms. New types of proposals can be used to perform new actions within an epoch. Extension fields can be used to add additional information to the protocol. In this section, we discuss some constraints on these extensibility mechanisms that are necessary to ensure broad interoperability.
As discussed in {{ciphersuites}}, MLS allows the participants in a group to negotiate the cryptographic algorithms used within the group. This extensibility is important for maintaining the security of the protocol over time {{?RFC7696}}. It also creates a risk of interoperability failure due to clients not supporting a common ciphersuite.
The ciphersuite registry defined in {{mls-ciphersuites}} attempts to strike a balance on this point. On the one hand, the base policy for the registry is Specification Required, a fairly low bar designed to avoid the need for standards work in cases where different ciphers are needed for niche applications. There is a higher bar (Standards Action) for ciphers to set the Recommended field in the registry. This higher bar is there in part to ensure that the interoperability implications of new ciphersuites are considered.
MLS ciphersuites are defined independent of MLS versions, so that in principle the same ciphersuite can be used across versions. Standards work defining new versions of MLS should consider whether it is desirable for the new version to be compatible with existing ciphersuites, or whether the new version should rule out some ciphersuites. For example, a new version could follow the example of HTTP/2, which restricted the set of allowed TLS ciphers (see Section 9.2.2 of {{?RFC7540}}.
Commit messages do not have an extension field because the set of protocols is extensible. As discussed in {{commit}}, Proposals with a non-default proposal type MUST NOT be included in a commit unless the proposal type is supported by all the members of the group that will process the Commit.
This protocol includes a mechanism for negotiating extension parameters similar to the one in TLS {{RFC8446}}. In TLS, extension negotiation is one-to-one: The client offers extensions in its ClientHello message, and the server expresses its choices for the session with extensions in its ServerHello and EncryptedExtensions messages. In MLS, extensions appear in the following places:
- In KeyPackages, to describe client capabilities and aspects of their participation in the group (once in the ratchet tree)
- In the GroupInfo, to tell new members of a group what parameters are being used by the group, and to provide any additional details required to join the group
- In the GroupContext object, to ensure that all members of the group have the same view of the parameters in use
In other words, an application can use GroupContext extensions to ensure that
all members of the group agree on a set of parameters. Clients indicate their
support for parameters in KeyPackage extensions. New members of a group are
informed of the group's GroupContext extensions via the
group_context_extensions field in the GroupInfo object. The other_extensions
field in a GroupInfo object can be used to provide additional parameters to new
joiners that are used to join the group.
This extension mechanism is designed to allow for secure and forward-compatible negotiation of extensions. For this to work, implementations MUST correctly handle extensible fields:
-
A client that posts a KeyPackage MUST support all parameters advertised in it. Otherwise, another client might fail to interoperate by selecting one of those parameters.
-
A client initiating a group MUST ignore all unrecognized ciphersuites, extensions, and other parameters. Otherwise, it may fail to interoperate with newer clients.
-
A client adding a new member to a group MUST verify that the KeyPackage for the new member contains extensions that are consistent with the group's extensions. For each extension in the GroupContext, the KeyPackage MUST have an extension of the same type, and the contents of the extension MUST be consistent with the value of the extension in the GroupContext, according to the semantics of the specific extension.
-
If any extension in a GroupInfo message is unrecognized (i.e., not contained in the corresponding KeyPackage), then the client MUST reject the Welcome message and not join the group.
-
The extensions populated into a GroupContext object are drawn from those in the GroupInfo object, according to the definitions of those extensions.
-
Any field containing a list of extensions MUST NOT have more than one extension of any given type.
Note that the latter two requirements mean that all MLS extensions are mandatory, in the sense that an extension in use by the group MUST be supported by all members of the group.
This document does not define any way for the parameters of the group to change once it has been created; such a behavior could be implemented as an extension.
Each Commit message is premised on a given starting state,
indicated by the epoch field of the enclosing MLSPlaintext
message. If the changes implied by a Commit messages are made
starting from a different state, the results will be incorrect.
This need for sequencing is not a problem as long as each time a group member sends a Commit message, it is based on the most current state of the group. In practice, however, there is a risk that two members will generate Commit messages simultaneously, based on the same state.
When this happens, there is a need for the members of the group to deconflict the simultaneous Commit messages. There are two general approaches:
- Have the Delivery Service enforce a total order
- Have a signal in the message that clients can use to break ties
As long as Commit messages cannot be merged, there is a risk of starvation. In a sufficiently busy group, a given member may never be able to send a Commit message, because he always loses to other members. The degree to which this is a practical problem will depend on the dynamics of the application.
It might be possible, because of the non-contributivity of intermediate nodes, that Commit messages could be applied one after the other without the Delivery Service having to reject any Commit message, which would make MLS more resilient regarding the concurrency of Commit messages. The Messaging system can decide to choose the order for applying the state changes. Note that there are certain cases (if no total ordering is applied by the Delivery Service) where the ordering is important for security, ie. all updates must be executed before removes.
Regardless of how messages are kept in sequence, implementations MUST only update their cryptographic state when valid Commit messages are received. Generation of Commit messages MUST NOT modify a client's state, since the endpoint doesn't know at that time whether the changes implied by the Commit message will succeed or not.
With this approach, the Delivery Service ensures that incoming messages are added to an ordered queue and outgoing messages are dispatched in the same order. The server is trusted to break ties when two members send a Commit message at the same time.
Messages should have a counter field sent in clear-text that can be checked by the server and used for tie-breaking. The counter starts at 0 and is incremented for every new incoming message. If two group members send a message with the same counter, the first message to arrive will be accepted by the server and the second one will be rejected. The rejected message needs to be sent again with the correct counter number.
To prevent counter manipulation by the server, the counter's integrity can be ensured by including the counter in a signed message envelope.
This applies to all messages, not only state changing messages.
Order enforcement can be implemented on the client as well, one way to achieve it is to use a two step update protocol: the first client sends a proposal to update and the proposal is accepted when it gets 50%+ approval from the rest of the group, then it sends the approved update. Clients which didn't get their proposal accepted, will wait for the winner to send their update before retrying new proposals.
While this seems safer as it doesn't rely on the server, it is more complex and harder to implement. It also could cause starvation for some clients if they keep failing to get their proposal accepted.
The primary purpose of the Handshake protocol is to provide an authenticated group key exchange to clients. In order to protect Application messages sent among the members of a group, the Application secret provided by the Handshake key schedule is used to derive nonces and encryption keys for the Message Protection Layer according to the Application Key Schedule. That is, each epoch is equipped with a fresh Application Key Schedule which consist of a tree of Application Secrets as well as one symmetric ratchet per group member.
Each client maintains their own local copy of the Application Key Schedule for each epoch during which they are a group member. They derive new keys, nonces and secrets as needed while deleting old ones as soon as they have been used.
Application messages MUST be protected with the Authenticated-Encryption with Associated-Data (AEAD) encryption scheme associated with the MLS ciphersuite using the common framing mechanism. Note that "Authenticated" in this context does not mean messages are known to be sent by a specific client but only from a legitimate member of the group. To authenticate a message from a particular member, signatures are required. Handshake messages MUST use asymmetric signatures to strongly authenticate the sender of a message.
The group members MUST use the AEAD algorithm associated with the negotiated MLS ciphersuite to AEAD encrypt and decrypt their Application messages according to the Message Framing section.
The group identifier and epoch allow a recipient to know which group secrets should be used and from which Epoch secret to start computing other secrets and keys. The sender identifier is used to identify the member's symmetric ratchet from the initial group Application secret. The application generation field is used to determine how far into the ratchet to iterate in order to reproduce the required AEAD keys and nonce for performing decryption.
Application messages SHOULD be padded to provide some resistance against traffic analysis techniques over encrypted traffic. {{?CLINIC=DOI.10.1007/978-3-319-08506-7_8}} {{?HCJ16=DOI.10.1186/s13635-016-0030-7}} While MLS might deliver the same payload less frequently across a lot of ciphertexts than traditional web servers, it might still provide the attacker enough information to mount an attack. If Alice asks Bob: "When are we going to the movie ?" the answer "Wednesday" might be leaked to an adversary by the ciphertext length. An attacker expecting Alice to answer Bob with a day of the week might find out the plaintext by correlation between the question and the length.
The content and length of the padding field in MLSCiphertextContent can be
chosen at the time of message encryption by the sender. It is recommended that
padding data is comprised of zero-valued bytes and follows an established
deterministic padding scheme.
During each epoch senders MUST NOT encrypt more data than permitted by the security bounds of the AEAD scheme used.
Note that each change to the Group through a Handshake message will also set a
new encryption_secret. Hence this change MUST be applied before encrypting
any new application message. This is required both to ensure that any users
removed from the group can no longer receive messages and to (potentially)
recover confidentiality and authenticity for future messages despite a past
state compromise.
Since each Application message contains the group identifier, the epoch and a message counter, a client can receive messages out of order. If they are able to retrieve or recompute the correct AEAD decryption key from currently stored cryptographic material clients can decrypt these messages.
For usability, MLS clients might be required to keep the AEAD key and nonce for a certain amount of time to retain the ability to decrypt delayed or out of order messages, possibly still in transit while a decryption is being done.
The security goals of MLS are described in {{?I-D.ietf-mls-architecture}}. We describe here how the protocol achieves its goals at a high level, though a complete security analysis is outside of the scope of this document.
Group secrets are partly derived from the output of a ratchet tree. Ratchet trees work by assigning each member of the group to a leaf in the tree and maintaining the following property: the private key of a node in the tree is known only to members of the group that are assigned a leaf in the node's subtree. This is called the ratchet tree invariant and it makes it possible to encrypt to all group members except one, with a number of ciphertexts that's logarithmic in the number of group members.
The ability to efficiently encrypt to all members except one allows members to be securely removed from a group. It also allows a member to rotate their keypair such that the old private key can no longer be used to decrypt new messages.
The first form of authentication we provide is that group members can verify a
message originated from one of the members of the group. For encrypted messages,
this is guaranteed because messages are encrypted with an AEAD under a key
derived from the group secrets. For plaintext messages, this is guaranteed by
the use of a membership_tag which constitutes a MAC over the message, under a
key derived from the group secrets.
The second form of authentication is that group members can verify a message originated from a particular member of the group. This is guaranteed by a digital signature on each message from the sender's signature key.
The signature keys held by group members are critical to the security of MLS against active attacks. If a member's signature key is compromised, then an attacker can create KeyPackages impersonating the member; depending on the application, this can then allow the attacker to join the group with the compromised member's identity. For example, if a group has enabled external parties to join via external commits, then an attacker that has compromised a member's signature key could use an external commit to insert themselves into the group -- even using a "resync"-style external commit to replace the compromised member in the group.
Applications can mitigate the risks of signature key compromise using pre-shared keys. If a group requires joiners to know a PSK in addition to authenticating with a credential, then in order to mount an impersonation attack, the attacker would need to compromise the relevant PSK as well as the victim's signature key. The cost of this mitigation is that the application needs some external arrangement that ensures that the legitimate members of the group to have the required PSKs.
Post-compromise security is provided between epochs by members regularly updating their leaf key in the ratchet tree. Updating their leaf key prevents group secrets from continuing to be encrypted to previously compromised public keys.
Forward-secrecy between epochs is provided by deleting private keys from past version of the ratchet tree, as this prevents old group secrets from being re-derived. Forward secrecy within an epoch is provided by deleting message encryption keys once they've been used to encrypt or decrypt a message.
Post-compromise security is also provided for new groups by members regularly generating new KeyPackages and uploading them to the Delivery Service, such that compromised key material won't be used when the member is added to a new group.
KeyPackages are intended to be used only once. That is, once a KeyPackage has been used to introduce the corresponding client to a group, it SHOULD be deleted from the KeyPackage publication system. Reuse of KeyPackages can lead to replay attacks.
An application MAY allow for reuse of a "last resort" KeyPackage in order to prevent denial of service attacks. Since a KeyPackage is needed to add a client to a new group, an attacker could prevent a client being added to new groups by exhausting all available KeyPackages. To prevent such a denial of service attack, the KeyPackage publication system SHOULD rate limit KeyPackage requests, especially if not authenticated.
It is possible for a malicious member of a group to "fragment" the group by crafting an invalid UpdatePath. Recall that an UpdatePath encrypts a sequence of path secrets to different subtrees of the group's ratchet trees. These path secrets should be derived in a sequence as described in {{ratchet-tree-evolution}}, but the UpdatePath syntax allows the sender to encrypt arbitrary, unrelated secrets. The syntax also does not guarantee that the encrypted path secret encrypted for a given node corresponds to the public key provided for that node.
Both of these types of corruption will cause processing of a Commit to fail for some members of the group. If the public key for a node does not match the path secret, then the members that decrypt that path secret will reject the commit based on this mismatch. If the path secret sequence is incorrect at some point, then members that can decrypt nodes before that point will compute a different public key for the mismatched node than the one in the UpdatePath, which also causes the Commit to fail. Applications SHOULD provide mechanisms for failed commits to be reported, so that group members who were not able to recognize the error themselves can reject the commit and roll back to a previous state if necessary.
Even with such an error reporting mechanism in place, however, it is still possible for members to get locked out of the group by a malformed commit. Since malformed Commits can only be recognized by certain members of the group, in an asynchronous application, it may be the case that all members that could detect a fault in a Commit are offline. In such a case, the Commit will be accepted by the group, and the resulting state possibly used as the basis for further Commits. When the affected members come back online, they will reject the first commit, and thus be unable to catch up with the group.
Applications can address this risk by requiring certain members of the group to acknowledge successful processing of a Commit before the group regards the Commit as accepted. The minimum set of acknowledgements necessary to verify that a Commit is well-formed comprises an acknowledgement from one member per node in the UpdatePath, that is, one member from each subtree rooted in the copath node corresponding to the node in the UpdatePath.
This document requests the creation of the following new IANA registries:
- MLS Ciphersuites ({{mls-ciphersuites}})
- MLS Extension Types ({{mls-extension-types}})
- MLS Proposal Types ({{mls-proposal-types}})
- MLS Credential Types ({{mls-credential-types}})
All of these registries should be under a heading of "Messaging Layer Security", and assignments are made via the Specification Required policy {{!RFC8126}}. See {{de}} for additional information about the MLS Designated Experts (DEs).
RFC EDITOR: Please replace XXXX throughout with the RFC number assigned to this document
A ciphersuite is a combination of a protocol version and the set of cryptographic algorithms that should be used.
Ciphersuite names follow the naming convention:
CipherSuite MLS_LVL_KEM_AEAD_HASH_SIG = VALUE;
Where VALUE is represented as a sixteen-bit integer:
uint16 CipherSuite;
| Component | Contents |
|---|---|
| LVL | The security level |
| KEM | The KEM algorithm used for HPKE in ratchet tree operations |
| AEAD | The AEAD algorithm used for HPKE and message protection |
| HASH | The hash algorithm used for HPKE and the MLS transcript hash |
| SIG | The Signature algorithm used for message authentication |
The columns in the registry are as follows:
-
Value: The numeric value of the ciphersuite
-
Name: The name of the ciphersuite
-
Recommended: Whether support for this ciphersuite is recommended by the IETF MLS WG. Valid values are "Y" and "N". The "Recommended" column is assigned a value of "N" unless explicitly requested, and adding a value with a "Recommended" value of "Y" requires Standards Action {{RFC8126}}. IESG Approval is REQUIRED for a Y->N transition.
-
Reference: The document where this ciphersuite is defined
Initial contents:
| Value | Name | Recommended | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0x0000 | RESERVED | N/A | RFC XXXX |
| 0x0001 | MLS_128_DHKEMX25519_AES128GCM_SHA256_Ed25519 | Y | RFC XXXX |
| 0x0002 | MLS_128_DHKEMP256_AES128GCM_SHA256_P256 | Y | RFC XXXX |
| 0x0003 | MLS_128_DHKEMX25519_CHACHA20POLY1305_SHA256_Ed25519 | Y | RFC XXXX |
| 0x0004 | MLS_256_DHKEMX448_AES256GCM_SHA512_Ed448 | Y | RFC XXXX |
| 0x0005 | MLS_256_DHKEMP521_AES256GCM_SHA512_P521 | Y | RFC XXXX |
| 0x0006 | MLS_256_DHKEMX448_CHACHA20POLY1305_SHA512_Ed448 | Y | RFC XXXX |
| 0x0007 | MLS_256_DHKEMP384_AES256GCM_SHA384_P384. | Y | RFC XXXX |
| 0xff00 - 0xffff | Reserved for Private Use | N/A | RFC XXXX |
All of these ciphersuites use HMAC {{!RFC2104}} as their MAC function, with different hashes per ciphersuite. The mapping of ciphersuites to HPKE primitives, HMAC hash functions, and TLS signature schemes is as follows {{I-D.irtf-cfrg-hpke}} {{RFC8446}}:
| Value | KEM | KDF | AEAD | Hash | Signature |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0x0001 | 0x0020 | 0x0001 | 0x0001 | SHA256 | ed25519 |
| 0x0002 | 0x0010 | 0x0001 | 0x0001 | SHA256 | ecdsa_secp256r1_sha256 |
| 0x0003 | 0x0020 | 0x0001 | 0x0003 | SHA256 | ed25519 |
| 0x0004 | 0x0021 | 0x0003 | 0x0002 | SHA512 | ed448 |
| 0x0005 | 0x0012 | 0x0003 | 0x0002 | SHA512 | ecdsa_secp521r1_sha512 |
| 0x0006 | 0x0021 | 0x0003 | 0x0003 | SHA512 | ed448 |
| 0x0007 | 0x0011 | 0x0002 | 0x0002 | SHA384 | ecdsa_secp384r1_sha384 |
The hash used for the MLS transcript hash is the one referenced in the ciphersuite name. In the ciphersuites defined above, "SHA256", "SHA384", and "SHA512" refer to the SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 functions defined in {{SHS}}.
It is advisable to keep the number of ciphersuites low to increase the chances clients can interoperate in a federated environment, therefore the ciphersuites only include modern, yet well-established algorithms. Depending on their requirements, clients can choose between two security levels (roughly 128-bit and 256-bit). Within the security levels clients can choose between faster X25519/X448 curves and FIPS 140-2 compliant curves for Diffie-Hellman key negotiations. Additionally clients that run predominantly on mobile processors can choose ChaCha20Poly1305 over AES-GCM for performance reasons. Since ChaCha20Poly1305 is not listed by FIPS 140-2 it is not paired with FIPS 140-2 compliant curves. The security level of symmetric encryption algorithms and hash functions is paired with the security level of the curves.
The mandatory-to-implement ciphersuite for MLS 1.0 is
MLS_128_DHKEMX25519_AES128GCM_SHA256_Ed25519 which uses
Curve25519 for key exchange, AES-128-GCM for HPKE, HKDF over SHA2-256, and
Ed25519 for signatures.
Values with the first byte 255 (decimal) are reserved for Private Use.
New ciphersuite values are assigned by IANA as described in {{iana-considerations}}.
This registry lists identifiers for extensions to the MLS protocol. The extension type field is two bytes wide, so valid extension type values are in the range 0x0000 to 0xffff.
Template:
-
Value: The numeric value of the extension type
-
Name: The name of the extension type
-
Message(s): The messages in which the extension may appear, drawn from the following list:
- KP: KeyPackage messages
- GC: GroupContext objects (and the
group_context_extensionsfield of GroupInfo objects) - GI: The
other_extensionsfield of GroupInfo objects
-
Recommended: Whether support for this extension is recommended by the IETF MLS WG. Valid values are "Y" and "N". The "Recommended" column is assigned a value of "N" unless explicitly requested, and adding a value with a "Recommended" value of "Y" requires Standards Action [RFC8126]. IESG Approval is REQUIRED for a Y->N transition.
-
Reference: The document where this extension is defined
Initial contents:
| Value | Name | Message(s) | Recommended | Reference | |:=================|:=========================|:===========|:============|:==========| | 0x0000 | RESERVED | N/A | N/A | RFC XXXX | | 0x0001 | capabilities | KP | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0002 | lifetime | KP | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0003 | external_key_id | KP | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0004 | parent_hash | KP | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0005 | ratchet_tree | GI | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0006 | required_capabilities | GC | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0007 | external_pub | GI | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0xff00 - 0xffff | Reserved for Private Use | N/A | N/A | RFC XXXX |
This registry lists identifiers for types of proposals that can be made for changes to an MLS group. The extension type field is two bytes wide, so valid extension type values are in the range 0x0000 to 0xffff.
Template:
-
Value: The numeric value of the proposal type
-
Name: The name of the proposal type
-
Recommended: Whether support for this extension is recommended by the IETF MLS WG. Valid values are "Y" and "N". The "Recommended" column is assigned a value of "N" unless explicitly requested, and adding a value with a "Recommended" value of "Y" requires Standards Action [RFC8126]. IESG Approval is REQUIRED for a Y->N transition.
-
Reference: The document where this extension is defined
Initial contents:
| Value | Name | Recommended | Reference | |:=================|:=========================|:============|:==========| | 0x0000 | RESERVED | N/A | RFC XXXX | | 0x0001 | add | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0002 | update | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0003 | remove | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0004 | psk | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0005 | reinit | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0006 | external_init | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0007 | app_ack | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0008 | group_context_extensions | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0xff00 - 0xffff | Reserved for Private Use | N/A | RFC XXXX |
This registry lists identifiers for types of credentials that can be used for authentication in the MLS protocol. The credential type field is two bytes wide, so valid credential type values are in the range 0x0000 to 0xffff.
Template:
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Value: The numeric value of the credential type
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Name: The name of the credential type
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Recommended: Whether support for this credential is recommended by the IETF MLS WG. Valid values are "Y" and "N". The "Recommended" column is assigned a value of "N" unless explicitly requested, and adding a value with a "Recommended" value of "Y" requires Standards Action [RFC8126]. IESG Approval is REQUIRED for a Y->N transition.
-
Reference: The document where this credential is defined
Initial contents:
| Value | Name | Recommended | Reference | |:=================|:=========================|:============|:==========| | 0x0000 | RESERVED | N/A | RFC XXXX | | 0x0001 | basic | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0x0002 | x509 | Y | RFC XXXX | | 0xff00 - 0xffff | Reserved for Private Use | N/A | RFC XXXX |
Specification Required {{RFC8126}} registry requests are registered after a three-week review period on the MLS DEs' mailing list: mls-reg-review@ietf.org, on the advice of one or more of the MLS DEs. However, to allow for the allocation of values prior to publication, the MLS DEs may approve registration once they are satisfied that such a specification will be published.
Registration requests sent to the MLS DEs mailing list for review SHOULD use an appropriate subject (e.g., "Request to register value in MLS Bar registry").
Within the review period, the MLS DEs will either approve or deny the registration request, communicating this decision to the MLS DEs mailing list and IANA. Denials SHOULD include an explanation and, if applicable, suggestions as to how to make the request successful. Registration requests that are undetermined for a period longer than 21 days can be brought to the IESG's attention for resolution using the iesg@ietf.org mailing list.
Criteria that SHOULD be applied by the MLS DEs includes determining whether the proposed registration duplicates existing functionality, whether it is likely to be of general applicability or useful only for a single application, and whether the registration description is clear. For example, the MLS DEs will apply the ciphersuite-related advisory found in {{ciphersuites}}.
IANA MUST only accept registry updates from the MLS DEs and SHOULD direct all requests for registration to the MLS DEs' mailing list.
It is suggested that multiple MLS DEs be appointed who are able to represent the perspectives of different applications using this specification, in order to enable broadly informed review of registration decisions. In cases where a registration decision could be perceived as creating a conflict of interest for a particular MLS DE, that MLS DE SHOULD defer to the judgment of the other MLS DEs.
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Joel Alwen \ Wickr \ joel.alwen@wickr.com
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Karthikeyan Bhargavan \ INRIA \ karthikeyan.bhargavan@inria.fr
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Cas Cremers \ University of Oxford \ cremers@cispa.de
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Alan Duric \ Wire \ alan@wire.com
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Britta Hale \ Naval Postgraduate School \ britta.hale@nps.edu
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Srinivas Inguva \ Twitter \ singuva@twitter.com
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Konrad Kohbrok \ Aalto University \ konrad.kohbrok@datashrine.de
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Albert Kwon \ MIT \ kwonal@mit.edu
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Brendan McMillion \ Cloudflare \ brendan@cloudflare.com
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Eric Rescorla \ Mozilla \ ekr@rtfm.com
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Michael Rosenberg \ Trail of Bits \ michael.rosenberg@trailofbits.com
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Thyla van der Merwe \ Royal Holloway, University of London \ thyla.van.der@merwe.tech
--- back
One benefit of using left-balanced trees is that they admit a simple flat array representation. In this representation, leaf nodes are even-numbered nodes, with the n-th leaf at 2*n. Intermediate nodes are held in odd-numbered nodes. For example, tree with 11 leaves has the following structure:
X
X
X X X
X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X X X
Node: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Leaf: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
This allows us to compute relationships between tree nodes simply by
manipulating indices, rather than having to maintain complicated structures in
memory. The basic rule is that the high-order bits of parent and child nodes
indices have the following relation (where x is an arbitrary bit string):
parent=01x => left=00x, right=10x
Since node relationships are implicit, the algorithms for adding and removing nodes at the right edge of the tree are quite simple:
- Add: Append a blank parent node to the array of nodes, then append the new leaf node
- Remove: Remove the rightmost two nodes from the array of nodes
The following python code demonstrates the tree computations necessary to use an array-based tree for MLS.
# The exponent of the largest power of 2 less than x. Equivalent to:
# int(math.floor(math.log(x, 2)))
def log2(x):
if x == 0:
return 0
k = 0
while (x >> k) > 0:
k += 1
return k-1
# The level of a node in the tree. Leaves are level 0, their parents are
# level 1, etc. If a node's children are at different levels, then its
# level is the max level of its children plus one.
def level(x):
if x & 0x01 == 0:
return 0
k = 0
while ((x >> k) & 0x01) == 1:
k += 1
return k
# The number of nodes needed to represent a tree with n leaves.
def node_width(n):
if n == 0:
return 0
else:
return 2*(n - 1) + 1
# The index of the root node of a tree with n leaves.
def root(n):
w = node_width(n)
return (1 << log2(w)) - 1
# The left child of an intermediate node. Note that because the tree is
# left-balanced, there is no dependency on the size of the tree.
def left(x):
k = level(x)
if k == 0:
raise Exception('leaf node has no children')
return x ^ (0x01 << (k - 1))
# The right child of an intermediate node. Depends on the number of
# leaves because the straightforward calculation can take you beyond the
# edge of the tree.
def right(x, n):
k = level(x)
if k == 0:
raise Exception('leaf node has no children')
r = x ^ (0x03 << (k - 1))
while r >= node_width(n):
r = left(r)
return r
# The immediate parent of a node. May be beyond the right edge of the
# tree.
def parent_step(x):
k = level(x)
b = (x >> (k + 1)) & 0x01
return (x | (1 << k)) ^ (b << (k + 1))
# The parent of a node. As with the right child calculation, we have to
# walk back until the parent is within the range of the tree.
def parent(x, n):
if x == root(n):
raise Exception('root node has no parent')
p = parent_step(x)
while p >= node_width(n):
p = parent_step(p)
return p
# The other child of the node's parent.
def sibling(x, n):
p = parent(x, n)
if x < p:
return right(p, n)
else:
return left(p)
# The direct path of a node, ordered from leaf to root.
def direct_path(x, n):
r = root(n)
if x == r:
return []
d = []
while x != r:
x = parent(x, n)
d.append(x)
return d
# The copath of a node, ordered from leaf to root.
def copath(x, n):
if x == root(n):
return []
d = direct_path(x, n)
d.insert(0, x)
d.pop()
return [sibling(y, n) for y in d]
# The common ancestor of two nodes is the lowest node that is in the
# direct paths of both leaves.
def common_ancestor_semantic(x, y, n):
dx = set([x]) | set(direct_path(x, n))
dy = set([y]) | set(direct_path(y, n))
dxy = dx & dy
if len(dxy) == 0:
raise Exception('failed to find common ancestor')
return min(dxy, key=level)
# The common ancestor of two nodes is the lowest node that is in the
# direct paths of both leaves.
def common_ancestor_direct(x, y, _):
# Handle cases where one is an ancestor of the other
lx, ly = level(x)+1, level(y)+1
if (lx <= ly) and (x>>ly == y>>ly):
return y
elif (ly <= lx) and (x>>lx == y>>lx):
return x
# Handle other cases
xn, yn = x, y
k = 0
while xn != yn:
xn, yn = xn >> 1, yn >> 1
k += 1
return (xn << k) + (1 << (k-1)) - 1
An implementation may choose to store ratchet trees in a "link-based" representation, where each node stores references to its parents and/or children. (As opposed to the array-based representation suggested above, where these relationships are computed from relationships between nodes' indices in the array.) Such an implementation needs to update these links to maintain the left-balanced structure of the tree as the tree is extended to add new members, or truncated when memebers are removed.
The following code snippet shows how these algorithms could be implemented in Python.
class Node:
def __init__(self, value, parent=None, left=None, right=None):
self.value = value # Value of the node
self.parent = parent # Parent node
self.left = left # Left child node
self.right = right # Right child node
def leaf(self):
return self.left == None and self.right == None
def span(self):
if self.leaf():
return 1
return self.left.span() + self.right.span()
def full(self):
span = self.span()
while span % 2 == 0:
span >>= 1
return span == 1
def rightmost_leaf(self):
X = self
while X.right != None:
X = X.right
return X
class Tree:
def __init__(self):
self.root = None # Root node of the tree, initially empty
def extend(self, N):
if self.root == None:
self.root = N
return
# Identify the proper point to insert the new parent node
X = self.root.rightmost_leaf()
while X.full() and X != self.root:
X = X.parent
# If X is not full, insert the new parent under X
P = Node("_", right=N)
N.parent = P
if not X.full():
P.parent = X
P.left = X.right
X.right.parent = P
X.right = P
return
# If X is full, then X is the root, so P replaces the root
P.left = self.root
self.root.parent = P
self.root = P
return
def truncate(self):
X = self.root.rightmost_leaf()
if X == self.root:
self.root = None
return
# If X's parent is the root, then shift the root to the left
if X.parent == self.root:
self.root = self.root.left
self.root.parent = None
return
# Otherwise, reassign the right child of the parent's parent
Q = X.parent.parent
Q.right = X.parent.left
Q.right.parent = Q
return