On 06/09/15 12:51, Ximin Luo wrote:
> Thanks for the explanation previously. Let me put it into different terms, 
> which might make it clearer for others. Your scheme decouples these two 
> things:
> 
> 1. the ability to prevent decryption of messages sent in the past (that were 
> not received)
> 2. the abliity to prevent re-decryption of already-decrypted ciphertext
> 
> The first one as you say is dependent on the user, and is something that 
> would affect *all* forward secrecy schemes; the second one is always safe to 
> do.
> 
> In a simple interval-based approach, these two things are bound together. So 
> we keep the key for one interval around, because keeping keys for N intervals 
> is equivalent to setting T = N * T'. Then the user has the awkward decision 
> of having to choose T to balance (1) with (2).
> 
> In your scheme, you can keep keys for multiple intervals around, and this has 
> equivalent security to setting T = N * T', but lets us avoid paying the 
> Puncture decryption cost. (I see now that you did actually suggest this in 
> section VIII of the paper.) This is better for the user, who now only has to 
> consider (1) when choosing T, since the library handles (2) in all cases.
> 

Whoops, notation mess-up here. By "T" I meant the interval for the FS-PKE, and 
the previous quoted sentence is not exactly correct. To be more clear, I should 
have instead said:

This is better for the user, who now only has to consider (1) when choosing the 
{time beyond which to delete old keys}, since the library handles (2) in all 
cases. (He also has to tell the library what the {expected message interval} 
is, but this can in theory be measured objectively, and doesn't require 
security-related considerations.)

> I think it's good to make this point (the decoupling) with more weight moving 
> forward. It is, at first, non-intuitive to suggest to set T to expect 1 
> message per interval, since this "feels pointless" ("if you Puncture once 
> most of the time, how is this different from just deleting the key"), but 
> it's this decoupling of concerns that makes this not actually pointless.
> 

-- 
GPG: 4096R/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE
git://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git

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