Use message tags and network identifiers for signatures

Hello everyone,

I would like to propose a new LIP for the roadmap objective “Enhance signature scheme.” This LIP introduces the concept of message tags which prevent some kind of signature repurposing. This will be important once we sign more objects next to transactions and blocks. Moreover, it expands the usage of network identifiers to arbitrary objects such that any signature cannot be replayed on another chain, not just transaction or block signatures.

I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Here is the complete LIP draft:

LIP: <LIP number>
Title: Use message tags and network identifiers for signatures
Author: Andreas Kendziorra <andreas.kendziorra@lightcurve.io>
Type: Standards Track
Created: <YYYY-MM-DD>
Updated: <YYYY-MM-DD>

Abstract

We introduce the concept of message tags for signatures. These message tags are prepended to the binary messages before being signed. A unique tag has to be used for each message type (transaction, block header, etc.), and in particular for each schema. This ensures that a signature for one message cannot be a valid signature for another message that serializes to the same binary message.

Moreover, we generalize the usage of the network identifiers, which are currently used for transaction and block header signatures, to arbitrary signatures. This will prevent replay attacks for arbitrary messages.

Copyright

This LIP is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal.

Motivation

We want to avoid (1) replay attacks and (2) the re-usage of a signature for a different message of a different type.

Case (2) could happen if there are two messages that are of different types but are serialized to the same binary message. For example, consider a block header bh that is serialized to the binary message bm. If the binary message bm can be deserialized against a transaction schema to a transaction tx, then a signature of bh would also be a valid signature of tx for the generator public key of bh. Note that for several reasons it is very unlikely that a concrete instance of this example passes block validation for bh and transaction validation for tx. For instance, the current schemas do not allow thatbh.generatorPublicKey and tx.senderPublicKey are encoded in the same position of the binary message.

Nevertheless, it is highly desirable to prevent such re-usage cases in general. In particular for new data structures that require a signature introduced by some future protocol enhancements.

Replay attacks for transactions and blocks, i.e. replaying transactions or blocks on other chains, are already addressed by LIP 0009 and LIP 0024 respectively. However, replay attacks should be prevented for any kind of data structure for the same reason as above.

Rationale

Message Tags

Prepending a tag to a binary message before signing, where the tag is specific to the type of the message, prevents the signature re-usage in general. Consider again the blockheader bh and the transaction tx that are serialized to the same binary message bm. When the tag "LSK_BH_" is used for block header signatures and the tag "LSK_TX_" for transaction signatures, then the signatures for bh and tx are computed by signing the messages "LSK_BH_" || bm and "LSK_TX_" || bm respectively, where "||" denotes concatenation. Hence, the signature of bh cannot be a valid signature for tx and vice versa (assuming no collisions in the signing function).

Note that any updates to the serialization specification of a message type must be accompanied by introducing a new tag. For example, when the transaction schema is updated, a new tag like "LSK_TX:V2_" must be defined and used.

Network Identifiers

Network identifiers for transaction signatures and block signatures were already introduced in LIP 0009 and LIP 0024 respectively to prevent replay attacks on other chains. Here, we specify how to use a network identifier for any kind of message to prevent replay attacks on other chains in general.

Specification

Message Tags

Every binary message must be tagged before being signed. This is done as specified by the function tagMessage in the pseudo code below: A specific ASCII-encoded tag and a network identifier as specified in LIP 0009 are prepended to the message.

tagMessage(tag, networkIdentifier, message):
    return tag || networkIdentifier || message

The tag is chosen depending on the message type. Moreover, different serialization methods for the same message type require different tags. The following table defines the tags currently needed.

message type tag
transaction with serialization as specified in LIP 0028 “LSK_TX_”
block header with serialization as specified in LIP 0029 “LSK_BH_”

Creating New Tags

When a new tag is required in the future, the format

"LSK_" || TAG || "_"

has to be used where:

  • Strings in double quotes are ASCII-encoded literals.
  • TAG is a unique string indicating the scheme and, optionally, additional information, e.g., to specify a version number as shown above. TAG must contain only ASCII characters between 0x21 and 0x7e (inclusive), except that it must not contain underscore (0x5f).

Signing and Verifying with Ed25519

Let Sign and Verify be the signing and verifying functions of Ed25519 as specified in RFC 8032. Then the signature for a binary message m and a secret key sk is generated by signMessage(sk, tag, networkIdentifier, m) as defined below. tag must be the correct message tag for m and networkIdentifier the correct network identifier for the chain. The resulting signature sig in combination with the message m and the matching public key pk is verified by verifyMessageSig(pk, tag, networkIdentifier, m, sig).

signMessage(sk, tag, networkIdentifier, m):
    taggedMessage = tagMessage(tag, networkIdentifier, m)
    return Sign(sk, taggedMessage)

verifyMessageSig(pk, tag, networkIdentifier, m, sig):
    taggedMessage = tagMessage(tag, networkIdentifier, m)
    return Verify(pk, taggedMessage, sig)

Backwards Compatibility

Due to adding message tags to transaction and block signatures, the proposed signature scheme is incompatible with the current one and implies a hard fork.

Appendix

Examples

TBA

3 Likes

I create a pull request for this proposal on the LIPs repository.

The mentioned pull request on the lips repository got merched. The LIP got the number 0037.