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A message encryption scheme is described for the Web Push protocol. This scheme provides confidentiality and integrity for messages sent from an Application Server to a User Agent.

The Web Push protocol is an intermediated protocol by necessity. Messages from an Application Server are delivered to a User Agent via a Push Service.

| | | Provide Subscription | |-------------------------------------------->| | | | : : : | | Push Message | | Push Message |<---------------------| |<---------------------| | | | | ]]>

This document describes how messages sent using this protocol can be secured against inspection, modification and falsification by a Push Service. Web Push messages are the payload of an HTTP message . These messages are encrypted using an encrypted content encoding . This document describes how this content encoding is applied and describes a recommended key management scheme. For efficiency reasons, multiple users of Web Push often share a central agent that aggregates push functionality. This agent can enforce the use of this encryption scheme by applications that use push messaging. An agent that only delivers messages that are properly encrypted strongly encourages the end-to-end protection of messages. A web browser that implements the Web Push API can enforce the use of encryption by forwarding only those messages that were properly encrypted.

The words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “SHOULD”, and “MAY” are used in this document. It’s not shouting, when they are capitalized, they have the special meaning described in .

Encrypting a push message uses elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) on the P-256 curve to establish a shared secret (see ) and a symmetric secret for authentication (see ). A User Agent generates an ECDH key pair and authentication secret that it associates with each subscription it creates. The ECDH public key and the authentication secret are sent to the Application Server with other details of the push subscription. When sending a message, an Application Server generates an ECDH key pair and a random salt. The ECDH public key is encoded into the dh parameter of the Crypto-Key header field; the salt is encoded into message payload. The ECDH key pair can be discarded after encrypting the message. The content of the push message is encrypted or decrypted using a content encryption key and nonce that is derived using all of these inputs and the process described in .

The application using the subscription distributes the subscription public key and authentication secret to an authorized Application Server. This could be sent along with other subscription information that is provided by the User Agent, such as the push subscription URI. An application MUST use an authenticated, confidentiality protected communications medium for this purpose. In addition to the reasons described in , this ensures that the authentication secret is not revealed to unauthorized entities, which can be used to generate push messages that will be accepted by the User Agent. Most applications that use push messaging have a pre-existing relationship with an Application Server. Any existing communication mechanism that is authenticated and provides confidentiality and integrity, such as HTTPS , is sufficient.

Push message encryption happens in four phases: A shared secret is derived using elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (). The shared secret is then combined with the application secret to produce the input keying material used in (). A content encryption key and nonce are derived using the process in . Encryption or decryption follows according to . The key derivation process is summarized in . Restrictions on the use of the encrypted content coding are described in .

For each new subscription that the User Agent generates for an Application, it also generates a P-256 key pair for use in elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) . When sending a push message, the Application Server also generates a new ECDH key pair on the same P-256 curve. The ECDH public key for the Application Server is included in the dh parameter of the Crypto-Key header field (see ). The uncompressed point form defined in (that is, a 65 octet sequence that starts with a 0x04 octet) is encoded using base64url to produce the dh parameter value. An Application combines its ECDH private key with the public key provided by the User Agent using the process described in ; on receipt of the push message, a User Agent combines its private key with the public key provided by the Application Server in the dh parameter in the same way. These operations produce the same value for the ECDH shared secret.

To ensure that push messages are correctly authenticated, a symmetric authentication secret is added to the information generated by a User Agent. The authentication secret is mixed into the key derivation process shown in . A User Agent MUST generate and provide a hard to guess sequence of 16 octets that is used for authentication of push messages. This SHOULD be generated by a cryptographically strong random number generator .

The shared secret produced by ECDH is combined with the authentication secret using HMAC-based key derivation function (HKDF) described in . This produces the input keying material used by . The HKDF function uses SHA-256 hash algorithm with the following inputs: the authentication secret the shared secret derived using ECDH the concatenation of the ASCII-encoded string “WebPush: info”, a zero octet, the X9.62 encoding of the User Agent ECDH public key, and X9.62 encoding of the Application Server ECDH public key; that is

32 octets (i.e., the output is the length of the underlying SHA-256 HMAC function output)

This results in a the final content encryption key and nonce generation using the following sequence, which is shown here in pseudocode with HKDF expanded into separate discrete steps using HMAC with SHA-256:

-- For both: PRK_key = HMAC-SHA-256(auth_secret, ecdh_secret) key_info = "WebPush: info" || 0x00 || ua_public || as_public IKM = HMAC-SHA-256(PRK_cek, key_info || 0x01) salt = random(16) PRK = HMAC-SHA-256(salt, IKM) cek_info = "Content-Encoding: aes128gcm" || 0x00 CEK = HMAC-SHA-256(PRK, cek_info || 0x01)[0..15] nonce_info = "Content-Encoding: nonce" || 0x00 NONCE = HMAC-SHA-256(PRK, nonce_info || 0x01)[0..11] ]]>

Note that this omits the exclusive OR of the final nonce with the record sequence number, since push messages contain only a single record (see ) and the sequence number of the first record is zero.

An Application Server MUST encrypt a push message with a single record. This allows for a minimal receiver implementation that handles a single record. An application server MUST set the rs parameter in the aes128gcm content coding header to a size that is greater than the length of the plaintext, plus any padding (which is at least 2 octets). A push message MUST include a zero length keyid parameter in the content coding header. This allows implementations to ignore the first 21 octets of a push message. A push service is not required to support more than 4096 octets of payload body (see Section 7.2 of ), which equates to at most 4059 octets of cleartext. An Application Server MUST NOT use other content encodings for push messages. In particular, content encodings that compress could result in leaking of push message contents. The Content-Encoding header field therefore has exactly one value, which is aes128gcm. Multiple aes128gcm values are not permitted. An Application Server MUST include exactly one aes128gcm content coding, and at most one entry in the Crypto-Key field. This allows the keyid parameter to be omitted. An Application Server MUST NOT include an aes128gcm parameter in the Crypto-Key header field. A User Agent is not required to support multiple records. A User Agent MAY ignore the rs field and assume that the keyid field is empty. If a record size is unchecked, decryption will fail with high probability for all valid cases. However, decryption will also succeed if the push message contains a single record from a longer truncated message. Given that an Application Server is prohibited from generating such a message, this is not considered a serious risk.

The following example shows a push message being sent to a push service.

This example shows the ASCII encoded string, “When I grow up, I want to be a watermelon”. The content body is shown here with line wrapping and URL-safe base64url encoding to meet presentation constraints. Similarly, the “dh” parameter wrapped to meet line length constraints. Since there is no ambiguity about which keys are being used, the “keyid” parameter is omitted from both the Encryption and Crypto-Key header fields. The keys shown below use uncompressed points encoded using base64url.

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Intermediate values for this example are included in .

This document defines the “dh” parameter for the Crypto-Key header field in the “Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Crypto-Key Parameters” registry defined in . Parameter Name: dh Purpose: The “dh” parameter contains a Diffie-Hellman share which is used to derive the input keying material used in aes128gcm content coding. Reference: this document.

The security considerations of describe the limitations of the content encoding. In particular, any HTTP header fields are not protected by the content encoding scheme. A User Agent MUST consider HTTP header fields to have come from the Push Service. An application on the User Agent that uses information from header fields to alter their processing of a push message is exposed to a risk of attack by the Push Service. The timing and length of communication cannot be hidden from the Push Service. While an outside observer might see individual messages intermixed with each other, the Push Service will see what Application Server is talking to which User Agent, and the subscription that is used. Additionally, the length of messages could be revealed unless the padding provided by the content encoding scheme is used to obscure length.

SECG National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ANSI A simple protocol for the delivery of real-time events to user agents is described. This scheme uses HTTP/2 server push. This memo introduces a content coding for HTTP that allows message payloads to be encrypted. Note to Readers Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTP working group mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org), which is archived at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/ . Working Group information can be found at http://httpwg.github.io/ ; source code and issues list for this draft can be found at https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/labels/encryption . In many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. JSON Web Signature (JWS) represents content secured with digital signatures or Message Authentication Codes (MACs) using JSON-based data structures. Cryptographic algorithms and identifiers for use with this specification are described in the separate JSON Web Algorithms (JWA) specification and an IANA registry defined by that specification. Related encryption capabilities are described in the separate JSON Web Encryption (JWE) specification. Security systems are built on strong cryptographic algorithms that foil pattern analysis attempts. However, the security of these systems is dependent on generating secret quantities for passwords, cryptographic keys, and similar quantities. The use of pseudo-random processes to generate secret quantities can result in pseudo-security. A sophisticated attacker may find it easier to reproduce the environment that produced the secret quantities and to search the resulting small set of possibilities than to locate the quantities in the whole of the potential number space.Choosing random quantities to foil a resourceful and motivated adversary is surprisingly difficult. This document points out many pitfalls in using poor entropy sources or traditional pseudo-random number generation techniques for generating such quantities. It recommends the use of truly random hardware techniques and shows that the existing hardware on many systems can be used for this purpose. It provides suggestions to ameliorate the problem when a hardware solution is not available, and it gives examples of how large such quantities need to be for some applications. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. This document specifies a simple Hashed Message Authentication Code (HMAC)-based key derivation function (HKDF), which can be used as a building block in various protocols and applications. The key derivation function (KDF) is intended to support a wide range of applications and requirements, and is conservative in its use of cryptographic hash functions. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypertext information systems. This document provides an overview of HTTP architecture and its associated terminology, defines the "http" and "https" Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) schemes, defines the HTTP/1.1 message syntax and parsing requirements, and describes related security concerns for implementations. This memo describes how to use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connections over the Internet. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

The intermediate values calculated for the example in are shown here. The following are inputs to the calculation: V2hlbiBJIGdyb3cgdXAsIEkgd2FudCB0byBiZSBhIHdhdGVybWVsb24 BP4z9KsN6nGRTbVYI_c7VJSPQTBtkgcy27mlmlMoZIIg Dll6e3vCYLocInmYWAmS6TlzAC8wEqKK6PBru3jl7A8 yfWPiYE-n46HLnH0KqZOF1fJJU3MYrct3AELtAQ-oRw BCVxsr7N_eNgVRqvHtD0zTZsEc6-VV-JvLexhqUzORcx aOzi6-AYWXvTBHm4bjyPjs7Vd8pZGH6SRpkNtoIAiw4 q1dXpw3UpT5VOmu_cf_v6ih07Aems3njxI-JWgLcM94 DGv6ra1nlYgDCS1FRnbzlw BTBZMqHH6r4Tts7J_aSIgg Note that knowledge of just one of the private keys is necessary. The Application Server randomly generates the salt value, whereas salt is input to the receiver. This produces the following intermediate values: kyrL1jIIOHEzg3sM2ZWRHDRB62YACZhhSlknJ672kSs Snr3JMxaHVDXHWJn5wdC52WjpCtd2EIEGBykDcZW32k V2ViUHVzaDogaW5mbwAE_jP0qw3qcZFNtVgj9ztUlI9 BMG2SBzLbuaWaUyhkgiAOWXp7e8JguhwieZhYCZLpOX MALzASooro8Gu7eOXsDwQlcbK-zf3jYFUarx7Q9M02b BHOvlVfiby3sYalMzkXMWjs4uvgGFl70wR5uG48j47O 1XfKWRh-kkaZDbaCAIsO dTQXtQpktdp6UQb29SUBcO5igFtC9WsXlhlNr2jRkkY BEhmz5JYdOXMsFJf_WDU8fJlOURaExoUoFuaGU86Fuc Q29udGVudC1FbmNvZGluZzogYWVzZ2NtMTI4AA wgJKGPLNgnI3CKy09z19Qw Q29udGVudC1FbmNvZGluZzogbm9uY2UA w5SniqvyjVui9OoV The salt and a record size of 4096 produce a 21 octet header of DGv6ra1nlYgDCS1FRnbzlwAAxowA. The push message plaintext is padded to produce AABXaGVuIEkgZ3JvdyB1cCwgSSB3YW50IHRvIGJl IGEgd2F0ZXJtZWxvbg. The plaintext is then encrypted with AES-GCM, which emits ciphertext of Ig1VvoJvrVBFhclGlx4G2FuProCVzJY04Lg5vUP2 LeswtWoBGHGoYXUzAwuxQGRGxoNbh8BROK3gmJ0. The header and cipher text are concatenated and produce the result shown in the example.