Right. I’m just thinking out loud here.

 

If the Generic is

 

KDF(counter || KEM1_ct || KEM1_ss || KEM2_ct  || KEM2_ss || fixedInfo)

 

And X-Wing is:

 

SHA3-256( “\.//^\” || ML-KEM_ss || X25519_ss || X25519_ct || X25519_pk )

 

It looks pretty close to me; you’ve dropped the ML-KEM CT, added the X25519 
recipient public key, and moved the fixedInfo from the end to the beginning.

 

The question is: is that close enough to be considered a profile? Do we want to 
adapt the Generic so that X-Wing is properly a profile? Binding to the ECC 
public keys is probably not a bad idea in general. Certainly it would make no 
sense for some IETF protocols to use X-Wing while others use the ML-KEM + 
X25519 instantiation of the generic. I think I’m convincing myself that the 
Generic should be adjusted so that X-Wing is the obvious instantiation for 
ML-KEM + X25519.

 

Aside: do you have an opinion about fixedInfo as a prefix vs a suffix? We chose 
suffix simply because it more obviously aligns with SP 800-56Cr2, and we’ve all 
had the experience of FIPS labs being picky about things like that.

 

---

Mike Ounsworth

 

From: Bas Westerbaan <bas=40cloudflare....@dmarc.ietf.org> 
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2024 7:07 AM
To: Mike Ounsworth <mike.ounswo...@entrust.com>
Cc: IRTF CFRG <c...@irtf.org>; <tls@ietf.org> <tls@ietf.org>; Deirdre Connolly 
<durumcrustu...@gmail.com>; k...@cupdev.net
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] [CFRG] X-Wing: the go-to PQ/T hybrid KEM?

 

Speaking for myself (not for my co-authors), this feels like friendly, 
complementary work to draft-ounsworth-cfrg-kem-combiners; I agree. We could 
consider adding a section with concrete instantiations, and the first one would 
be X-Wing 😊 (followed 



 

Speaking for myself (not for my co-authors), this feels like friendly, 
complementary work to draft-ounsworth-cfrg-kem-combiners;

 

I agree.

 

We could consider adding a section with concrete instantiations, and the first 
one would be X-Wing 😊 (followed by ML-KEM + P-256, Brainpool, and RSA variants).

 

I guess that leads to the following question:  
<mailto:bas=40cloudflare....@dmarc.ietf.org> @Bas Westerbaan,  
<mailto:durumcrustu...@gmail.com> @Deirdre Connolly, Peter, would you be open 
to merging X-Wing into the generic combiner draft, or is there value in it 
being standalone?

 

X-Wing explicitly trades genericity for simplicity. We will not get such a 
simple and efficient construction if it is the instantiation of an easy-to-use 
generic construction.

 

Best,

 

 Bas

 

 

---

Mike Ounsworth

 

From: CFRG <cfrg-boun...@irtf.org <mailto:cfrg-boun...@irtf.org> > On Behalf Of 
Bas Westerbaan
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2024 2:14 PM
To: IRTF CFRG <c...@irtf.org <mailto:c...@irtf.org> >; <tls@ietf.org 
<mailto:tls@ietf.org> > <tls@ietf.org <mailto:tls@ietf.org> >
Cc: k...@cupdev.net <mailto:k...@cupdev.net> 
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [CFRG] X-Wing: the go-to PQ/T hybrid KEM?

 

Dear tls and cfrg working groups, With ML-KEM (née Kyber) expected to be 
finalized this year, it’s time to revisit the question of which PQ/T hybrid 
KEMs to standardize, and which to recommend. # Status quo For TLS at the time 
of writing there 

Dear tls and cfrg working groups,

With ML-KEM (née Kyber) expected to be finalized this year, it’s time to 
revisit the question of which PQ/T hybrid KEMs to standardize, and which to 
recommend.

# Status quo

For TLS at the time of writing there are two PQ/T hybrids registered: 
X25519Kyber768 [1] and P256Kyber768 [2]. The former has been deployed widely 
[3]. Both are instances of the hybrid-design draft [4], which use the simple 
combiner ss_ECC || ss_Kyber, which is suitable for TLS, but not for other 
applications such as HPKE, as it’s not IND-CCA2 robust [5].

For HPKE, there is a different KEM called X25519Kyber768 [6], which uses a 
different combiner that mixes in the X25519 ephemeral key, by using HPKE’s 
DHKEM construction instead of raw X25519.

There is also the ounsworth-kem-combiners I-D [7] that informed by [5] proposes 
the generic combiner

  KDF( counter || ct1 || ss1 || ct2 || ss2 || fixedInfo, outputBits )

>From a security standpoint that would be suitable for HPKE and TLS. To TLS it 
>is somewhat unattractive as it requires hashing the typically large PQ 
>ciphertexts, and adds some extra hashing in the conversion of the ECDH into a 
>KEM. On the other hand, for TLS it would be nice to have a KEM that is also 
>suitable for HPKE, as HPKE is used in ECH.

>From a usability perspective, ounsworth-kem-combiners requires the user to 
>make several choices: which KEMs and in particular which method to use to turn 
>ECDH into a KEM, which security levels, which KDF, etc.

# The proposal: X-Wing

Let us introduce X-Wing [0]. The goal of X-Wing is to be *the* go-to PQ/T 
hybrid KEM for the majority of use cases (including TLS and HPKE): no need to 
make choices, or understand the subtleties.

X-Wing aims for 128-bit security, and for that combines the time-tested X25519 
with ML-KEM-768 [8]. X-Wing uses the combiner

  SHA3-256( xwing-label || ss_ML-KEM || ss_X25519 || ct_X25519 || pk_X25519 )

Here ss_X25519 is the plain X25519 shared secret; ct_X25519 is the ephemeral 
public key; xwing-label a 6-byte label. Note that it doesn’t hash in the ML-KEM 
ciphertext. For a generic KEM one cannot leave out the ciphertext, but in the 
case of ML-KEM we can, assuming we can model SHA3/SHAKE as a random oracle. 
This is proven in [0]. The gist is that FO transform in ML-KEM makes it 
“ciphertext collision resistant”: even if the underlying lattice problem is 
broken, it’s infeasible to create from one ciphertext another different 
ciphertext with the same shared secret.

# Not final

We would love to hear your input: X-Wing is not final. For one, ML-KEM itself 
might still change (presumably only in minor ways) before final 
standardization. We think the CFRG would be a good venue to standardize X-Wing 
— do you concur?

Best,

Bas, Deirdre, Karolin, Manuel, Peter


PS. We want to mention explicitly that we see value in the kem-combiners and 
hybrid-design drafts as generic safe methods to construct hybrids for those use 
cases where X-Wing would not suffice.


[0] Spec: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-connolly-cfrg-xwing-kem/ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-connolly-cfrg-xwing-kem/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-Y-JP2DY$>
 
Proof: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/039 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eprint.iacr.org/2024/039__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-Xl0zY2C$>
 
[1] Full name X25519Kyber768Draft00. 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-tls-westerbaan-xyber768d00/ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-tls-westerbaan-xyber768d00/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-bUDJTlz$>
 
[2] Full name SecP256r1Kyber768Draft00. 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kwiatkowski-tls-ecdhe-kyber/ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kwiatkowski-tls-ecdhe-kyber/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-cpge9_6$>
 
[3] 
https://blog.chromium.org/2023/08/protecting-chrome-traffic-with-hybrid.html 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/blog.chromium.org/2023/08/protecting-chrome-traffic-with-hybrid.html__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-X2cJwvg$>
 
https://twitter.com/bwesterb/status/1734586155868287457 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/twitter.com/bwesterb/status/1734586155868287457__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-agVitjD$>
 
[4] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design/ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-axrezMz$>
 
[5] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-76578-5_7 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-76578-5_7__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-U_tyIdl$>
 
[6] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-westerbaan-cfrg-hpke-xyber768d00/ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-westerbaan-cfrg-hpke-xyber768d00/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-V-p_aAA$>
 
[7] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ounsworth-cfrg-kem-combiners/ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ounsworth-cfrg-kem-combiners/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!YuGyk3egE_PIU03oVixCUPtatL8PHtv4HwoB1vN5giqCIDkH6AQcs-lATDzPlozu91nN60pT2kp1AwmLESgzB4xc58lF-bx4gLTn$>
 
[8] Following earlier deployment of X25519Kyber768, despite targeting 128 bits, 
we use ML-KEM-768 instead of ML-KEM-512 to hedge against advances in lattice 
attacks.

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