[Cryptography] Shortening block cipher length...

[Christian Huitema]

On 7/20/2021 6:48 PM, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>
> On 7/20/21 6:11 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>> Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> writes:
>>
>>> I don't think NaCl as it is today is vulnerable
>> Unless it's changed recently, the NaCL API assumes the nonce is user-supplied,
>> which means it's completely vulnerable.  It's RC4 as used in the 1990s all
>> over again.
>>
>> Peter.
>
> Aw crap.  I'm so sorry to hear that, I thought it was better.

For AEAD, both ends of a communication channel have to agree on what the 
nonce is, and communication protocols have to specify that. For example, 
the nonce used in QUIC is a 64 bit packet number, guaranteed to occur at 
most once for the duration of the connection. But only the least 
significant bits of the packet number are sent in the packet, the rest 
is inferred. Which means the nonce is only known by the protocol logic. 
There has to be an API to pass it to the implementation of AES-GCM or 
ChaCha-poly. Which means the crypto library API needs to assume that the 
nonce is user supplied.

-- Christian Huitema