[HN Gopher] RFC 9420 - A Messaging Layer Security Overview
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RFC 9420 - A Messaging Layer Security Overview
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 106 points
Date : 2023-11-11 07:34 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thestack.technology)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thestack.technology)
| isodev wrote:
| I just can't help but wonder if RFC9420 has had enough time to
| mature enough to offer sufficient features to be adopted
| by/replace say Signal (Whatsapp, iMessage) and similar solutions.
| The group key security sounds nice, but the lack of end to end
| authentication or message integrity/sender signing does not feel
| very reassuring.
|
| It feels like some design decisions and compromises have been
| made in order to optimize the use-case for large group chats at
| the expense of some safety aspects that exist today in current
| protocols.
| ekr____ wrote:
| MLS provides end-to-end integrity via signatures.
|
| https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9420.html#name-content-aut...
| camgunz wrote:
| AFAIK at least Element/Matrix are actively working on adopting
| it.
| Arathorn wrote:
| https://arewemlsyet.com for the Matrix progress
| monocasa wrote:
| Given what I saw at the MLS working group meeting at IETF last
| week (as in what'll be all of MLS, not just RFC9420), it's
| actively being worked on by people who share your concerns. The
| higher levels of the stack concerned with "what are all of the
| options for what's inside an actual message" are under active
| development, both code and standards work. Those writing code
| will almost certainly have to change their implementation to be
| interoperable with the final standards there, but IMO bless
| them for coming to these meetings with "I tried to implement
| it, it's broken for these reasons you can see in code here".
| exabrial wrote:
| Most E2E systems require some sort of long term identity key with
| the other person(s), I assume MLS is the same? (this is a good
| thing IMHO)
|
| If so, I would really like this to be flexible enough to say
| derive or pull a key from PGP, and/or a verifying service/website
| (such as Keybase). I'd really like to move away from "Your cell
| phone number is your identity" to a "a cryptographic primitive is
| your identity".
| ekr____ wrote:
| Yeah, MLS just assumes there is _some_ mechanism for
| authorizing keys. Right now it just supports certificates and
| raw keys (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9420.html#name-
| credentials) but this is extensible so you just need to add a
| new credential type, and there are others under consideration.
| EthanHeilman wrote:
| You could use OpenPubkey [0] to bind your identity key to your
| say Google or Okta account. With an MFA Cosigner, a malicious
| Google wouldn't be able to impersonate you.
|
| IF you really wanted to go full cipherpunk, you could use the
| stuff risc.zero [1] is building to could keep your identity
| secret via ZKPs on your ID Token.
|
| [0]: OpenPubkey: Augmenting OpenID Connect with User held
| Signing Keys, Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/296 Code:
| https://github.com/openpubkey/openpubkey
|
| [1]: "Under the hood is JWT and OIDC verification on top of the
| RISC Zero zkVM" https://www.risczero.com/news/bonsai-pay
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(page generated 2023-11-13 23:02 UTC)