On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 1:43 AM Neil Madden <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> On 10 Jun 2024, at 22:30, Orie Steele <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> 
> Brian wrote:
>
> > The 'dir" Key Management algorithm for JWE is defined in JWA as Direct
> Encryption with a Shared Symmetric Key, which is not what's happening with
> that HPKE Direct Encryption mode.
>
> > This section defines the specifics of directly performing symmetric
>    key encryption without performing a key wrapping step.  In this case,
>    the shared symmetric key is used directly as the Content Encryption
>    Key (CEK) value for the "enc" algorithm.
>
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7518.html#section-4.5
>
> It is true that when 7518 was written, "alg : dir" only had one meaning,
> for example:
>
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7520#section-5.6
>
> In the case of "HPKE Direct Encryption", consider the single shot APIs:
>
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9180#name-single-shot-apis
>
> Instead of seeing:
>
> {
>      "alg": "dir",
>      "kid": "77c7e2b8-6e13-45cf-8672-617b5b45243a",
>      "enc": "A128GCM"
> }
>
> You would see:
>
> {
>      "alg": "dir",
>      "kid": "77c7e2b8-6e13-45cf-8672-617b5b45243a",
>      "enc": "HPKE-Base-P256-SHA256-A128GCM"
> }
>
>
> This is a total nonstarter. “Dir” with any “enc” value currently provides
> symmetric *authenticated encryption*. You cannot just change this to
> suddenly provide public key unauthenticated encryption. That is an enormous
> change in security properties that will absolutely lead to vulnerabilities.
>

Completely agree that this is a nonstarter. My prior comment was about
the inappropriate use of the "dir" alg just from a spec perspective.  But
Neil's point here shows that there are dangerous implications to that kind
of inappropriate use too.

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