Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                   A. Adamantiadis
Request for Comments: 8731                                        libssh
Category: Standards Track                                   S. Josefsson
ISSN: 2070-1721                                                   SJD AB
                                                             M. Baushke
                                                 Juniper Networks, Inc.
                                                          February 2020


 Secure Shell (SSH) Key Exchange Method Using Curve25519 and Curve448

Abstract

  This document describes the specification for using Curve25519 and
  Curve448 key exchange methods in the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol.

Status of This Memo

  This is an Internet Standards Track document.

  This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
  (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
  received public review and has been approved for publication by the
  Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
  Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.

  Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
  and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
  https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8731.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
  document authors.  All rights reserved.

  This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
  Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
  (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
  publication of this document.  Please review these documents
  carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
  to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
  include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
  the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
  described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

  1.  Introduction
  2.  Requirements Language
  3.  Key Exchange Methods
    3.1.  Shared Secret Encoding
  4.  Security Considerations
  5.  IANA Considerations
  6.  References
    6.1.  Normative References
    6.2.  Informative References
  Acknowledgements
  Authors' Addresses

1.  Introduction

  Secure Shell (SSH) [RFC4251] is a secure remote login protocol.  The
  key exchange protocol described in [RFC4253] supports an extensible
  set of methods.  [RFC5656] defines how elliptic curves are integrated
  into this extensible SSH framework, and this document reuses the
  Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange protocol messages
  defined in Section 7.1 (ECDH Message Numbers) of [RFC5656].  Other
  parts of [RFC5656], such as Elliptic Curve Menezes-Qu-Vanstone
  (ECMQV) key agreement and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
  (ECDSA), are not considered in this document.

  This document describes how to implement key exchange based on
  Curve25519 and Curve448 [RFC7748] in SSH.  For Curve25519 with
  SHA-256 [RFC6234][SHS], the algorithm described is equivalent to the
  privately defined algorithm "[email protected]", which at
  the time of publication was implemented and widely deployed in libssh
  [libssh] and OpenSSH [OpenSSH].  The Curve448 key exchange method is
  similar but uses SHA-512 [RFC6234][SHS].

2.  Requirements Language

  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.

3.  Key Exchange Methods

  The key exchange procedure is similar to the ECDH method described in
  Section 4 of [RFC5656], though with a different wire encoding used
  for public values and the final shared secret.  Public ephemeral keys
  are encoded for transmission as standard SSH strings.

  The protocol flow, the SSH_MSG_KEX_ECDH_INIT and
  SSH_MSG_KEX_ECDH_REPLY messages, and the structure of the exchange
  hash are identical to Section 4 of [RFC5656].

  The method names registered by this document are "curve25519-sha256"
  and "curve448-sha512".

  The methods are based on Curve25519 and Curve448 scalar
  multiplication, as described in [RFC7748].  Private and public keys
  are generated as described therein.  Public keys are defined as
  strings of 32 bytes for Curve25519 and 56 bytes for Curve448.

  The key-agreement schemes "curve25519-sha256" and "curve448-sha512"
  perform the Diffie-Hellman protocol using the functions X25519 and
  X448, respectively.  Implementations SHOULD compute these functions
  using the algorithms described in [RFC7748].  When they do so,
  implementations MUST check whether the computed Diffie-Hellman shared
  secret is the all-zero value and abort if so, as described in
  Section 6 of [RFC7748].  Alternative implementations of these
  functions SHOULD abort when either the client or the server input
  forces the shared secret to one of a small set of values, as
  described in Sections 6 and 7 of [RFC7748].  Clients and servers MUST
  also abort if the length of the received public keys are not the
  expected lengths.  An abort for these purposes is defined as a
  disconnect (SSH_MSG_DISCONNECT) of the session and SHOULD use the
  SSH_DISCONNECT_KEY_EXCHANGE_FAILED reason for the message
  [IANA-REASON].  No further validation is required beyond what is
  described in [RFC7748].  The derived shared secret is 32 bytes when
  "curve25519-sha256" is used and 56 bytes when "curve448-sha512" is
  used.  The encodings of all values are defined in [RFC7748].  The
  hash used is SHA-256 for "curve25519-sha256" and SHA-512 for
  "curve448-sha512".

3.1.  Shared Secret Encoding

  The following step differs from [RFC5656], which uses a different
  conversion.  This is not intended to modify that text generally, but
  only to be applicable to the scope of the mechanism described in this
  document.

  The shared secret, K, is defined in [RFC4253] and [RFC5656] as an
  integer encoded as a multiple precision integer (mpint).
  Curve25519/448 outputs a binary string X, which is the 32- or 56-byte
  point obtained by scalar multiplication of the other side's public
  key and the local private key scalar.  The 32 or 56 bytes of X are
  converted into K by interpreting the octets as an unsigned fixed-
  length integer encoded in network byte order.

  The mpint K is then encoded using the process described in Section 5
  of [RFC4251], and the resulting bytes are fed as described in
  [RFC4253] to the key exchange method's hash function to generate
  encryption keys.

  When performing the X25519 or X448 operations, the integer values
  there will be encoded into byte strings by doing a fixed-length
  unsigned little-endian conversion, per [RFC7748].  It is only later
  when these byte strings are then passed to the ECDH function in SSH
  that the bytes are reinterpreted as a fixed-length unsigned big-
  endian integer value K, and then later that K value is encoded as a
  variable-length signed "mpint" before being fed to the hash algorithm
  used for key generation.  The mpint K is then fed along with other
  data to the key exchange method's hash function to generate
  encryption keys.

4.  Security Considerations

  The security considerations of [RFC4251], [RFC5656], and [RFC7748]
  are inherited.

  Curve25519 with SHA-256 provides strong (~128 bits) security, is
  efficient on a wide range of architectures, and has characteristics
  that allow for better implementation properties compared to
  traditional elliptic curves.  Curve448 with SHA-512 provides stronger
  (~224 bits) security with similar implementation properties; however,
  it has not received the same cryptographic review as Curve25519.  It
  is also slower (larger key material and larger secure hash
  algorithm), but it is provided as a hedge to combat unforeseen
  analytical advances against Curve25519 and SHA-256 due to the larger
  number of security bits.

  The way the derived mpint binary secret string is encoded before it
  is hashed (i.e., adding or removing zero bytes for encoding) raises
  the potential for a side-channel attack, which could determine the
  length of what is hashed.  This would leak the most significant bit
  of the derived secret and/or allow detection of when the most
  significant bytes are zero.  For backwards-compatibility reasons, it
  was decided not to address this potential problem.

  This document provides "curve25519-sha256" as the preferred choice
  but suggests that the "curve448-sha512" be implemented to provide
  more than 128 bits of security strength should that become a
  requirement.

5.  IANA Considerations

  IANA has added "curve25519-sha256" and "curve448-sha512" to the "Key
  Exchange Method Names" registry for SSH [IANA-KEX] that was created
  in Section 4.10 of [RFC4250].

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

  [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
             Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

  [RFC4250]  Lehtinen, S. and C. Lonvick, Ed., "The Secure Shell (SSH)
             Protocol Assigned Numbers", RFC 4250,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC4250, January 2006,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4250>.

  [RFC4251]  Ylonen, T. and C. Lonvick, Ed., "The Secure Shell (SSH)
             Protocol Architecture", RFC 4251, DOI 10.17487/RFC4251,
             January 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4251>.

  [RFC4253]  Ylonen, T. and C. Lonvick, Ed., "The Secure Shell (SSH)
             Transport Layer Protocol", RFC 4253, DOI 10.17487/RFC4253,
             January 2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4253>.

  [RFC5656]  Stebila, D. and J. Green, "Elliptic Curve Algorithm
             Integration in the Secure Shell Transport Layer",
             RFC 5656, DOI 10.17487/RFC5656, December 2009,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5656>.

  [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
             2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
             May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

  [SHS]      National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Secure
             Hash Standard (SHS)", FIPS PUB 180-4,
             DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4, August 2015,
             <https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/FIPS/
             NIST.FIPS.180-4.pdf>.

6.2.  Informative References

  [IANA-KEX] IANA, "Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol Parameters: Key
             Exchange Method Names",
             <https://www.iana.org/assignments/ssh-parameters/>.

  [IANA-REASON]
             IANA, "Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol Parameters:
             Disconnection Messages Reason Codes and Descriptions",
             <https://www.iana.org/assignments/ssh-parameters/>.

  [libssh]   libssh, "The SSH Library", <https://www.libssh.org/>.

  [OpenSSH]  OpenSSH group of OpenBSD, "The OpenSSH Project",
             <https://www.openssh.com/>.

  [RFC6234]  Eastlake 3rd, D. and T. Hansen, "US Secure Hash Algorithms
             (SHA and SHA-based HMAC and HKDF)", RFC 6234,
             DOI 10.17487/RFC6234, May 2011,
             <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6234>.

  [RFC7748]  Langley, A., Hamburg, M., and S. Turner, "Elliptic Curves
             for Security", RFC 7748, DOI 10.17487/RFC7748, January
             2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7748>.

Acknowledgements

  The "curve25519-sha256" key exchange method is identical to the
  "[email protected]" key exchange method created by Aris
  Adamantiadis and implemented in libssh and OpenSSH.

  Thanks to the following people for review and comments: Denis Bider,
  Damien Miller, Niels Moeller, Matt Johnston, Eric Rescorla, Ron
  Frederick, and Stefan Buehler.

Authors' Addresses

  Aris Adamantiadis
  libssh

  Email: [email protected]


  Simon Josefsson
  SJD AB

  Email: [email protected]


  Mark D. Baushke
  Juniper Networks, Inc.

  Email: [email protected]

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