Subject: [TLS] draft-fossati-tls-iot-optimizations-00, 4.2, hash chain

From: "Kraus Achim (INST/ESY1)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 14:00:34 +0000

Dear Authors,

draft-fossati-tls-iot-optimizations-00 mentions in 4.2, page 5, a hash chain (Lampert, "Password Authentication with Insecure Communication"). 

Would it be possible, to get more details about that approach?

In my opinion, DTLS needs a connection id, the record is usually secured by the MAC. 
So the hash chain providing a "password" seems for me to rely on a "identity", for which the "password" should be verified. 
But that identity is missing and the verification is done with the MAC.

Use this in reverse, I could think of something as:

connection hash := H ^ record.sequence_number (connection id)
    
So with an incoming record {sequence_number, connection hash} you may look up, if "connection ids" hashed
"sequence_number" times results in the provided "connection hash" and then you may verify, if one of the
candidates will verify with the MAC.  Even with defining a "sequence number window" to exclude "faraway"
sessions, I'm not sure,  how such an approach would scale for a large number of session.

So could you please provide your ideas about that hash chain?

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Achim Kraus

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