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Filename: 249-large-create-cells.txt
Title: Allow CREATE cells with >505 bytes of handshake data
Authors: Nick Mathewson, Isis Lovecruft
Created: 23 July 15
Updated: 13 December 2017
Status: Superseded
Superseded-By: 319-wide-everything.md

1. Summary

   There have been multiple proposals over the last year or so for
   adding post-quantum cryptography to Tor's circuit extension
   handshakes.  (See for example https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/008 or
   https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/287 .) These proposals share the property
   that the request and reply for a handshake message do not fit in a
   single RELAY cell.

   In this proposal I describe a new CREATE2V cell for handshakes that
   don't fit in a 505-byte CREATE2 cell's HDATA section, and a means for
   fragmenting these CREATE2V cells across multiple EXTEND2 cells.  I
   also discuss replies, migration, and DoS-mitigation strategies.

2. CREATE2V and CREATED2V

   First, we add two variable-width cell types, CREATE2V and CREATED2V.

   These cell formats are nearly the same as CREATE2 and CREATED2.  (Here
   specified using Trunnel.)

     struct create2v_cell_body {
        /* Handshake type */
        u16 htype;
        /* Length of handshake data */
        u16 hlen;
        /* Handshake data */
        u8 hdata[hlen];
        /* Padding data to be ignored */
        u8 ignored[];
     };

     struct created2v_cell_body {
        /* Handshake reply length */
        u16 hlen;
        /* Handshake reply data */
        u8 hdata[hlen];
        /* Padding data to be ignored */
        u8 ignored[];
     };

   The 'ignored' fields, which extend to the end of the variable-length
   cells, are reserved.  Initiators MAY set them to any length, and MUST
   fill them with either zero-valued bytes or pseudo-random bytes.
   Responders MUST ignore them, regardless of what they contain.  When a
   CREATE2V cell is generated in response to a set of EXTEND2 cells, these
   fields are set by the relay that receives the EXTEND2 cells.

   (The purpose of the 'ignored' fields here is future-proofing and
   padding.)

   Protocols MAY wish to pad to a certain multiple of bytes, or wish to pad
   the initiator/receiver payloads to be of equal length.  This is
   encouraged but NOT REQUIRED.

3. Fragmented EXTEND2 cells

   Without changing the current EXTEND2 cell format, we change its
   semantics:

   If the 'HLEN' field in an EXTEND2 cell describes a handshake data
   section that would be too long to fit in the EXTEND2 cell's payload,
   the handshake data of the EXTEND2 cell is to be continued in one or
   more subsequent EXTEND2 cells.  These subsequent cells MUST have zero
   link specifiers, handshake type 0xFFFF, and handshake data length
   field set to zero.

   Similarly, if the 'HLEN' field in an EXTENDED2 cell would be too long
   to fit into the EXTENDED2 cell's payload, the handshake reply data of
   the EXTENDED2 cell is to be continued in one or more subsequent
   EXTENDED2 cells.  These subsequent cells must have the handshake data
   length field set to zero.

   These cells must be sent on the circuit with no intervening cells.
   If any intervening cells are received, the receiver SHOULD destroy
   the circuit.

   Protocols which make use of CREATE(D)2V cells SHOULD send an equal number
   of cells in either direction, to avoid trivially disclosing information
   about the direction of the circuit: for example a relay might use the
   fact that it saw five EXTEND2 cells in one direction and three in the
   other to easily determine whether it is the middle relay on the onion
   service-side or the middle relay on the client-side of a rendezvous
   circuit.

4. Interacting with RELAY_EARLY cells

   The first EXTEND2 cell in a batch must arrive in a RELAY_EARLY cell.
   The others MAY arrive in RELAY_EARLY cells.  For many handshakes, for
   the possible lengths of many types of circuits, sending all EXTEND2 cells
   inside RELAY_EARLY cells will not be possible.  For example, for a
   fragmented EXTEND2 cell with parts A B C D E, A is the only fragment that
   MUST be sent within a RELAY_EARLY.  For parts B C D E, these are merely
   sent as EXTEND2{CREATE2V} cells.

   Note that this change leaks the size of the handshake being used to
   intermediate relays.  We should analyze this and see whether it matters.
   Clients and relays MAY send RELAY_DROP cells during circuit
   construction in order to hide the true size of their handshakes
   (but they can't send these drop cells inside a train of EXTEND2 or
   EXTENDED2 cells for a given handshake).

5. Example

   So for example, if we are a client, and we need to send a 2000-byte
   handshake to extend a circuit from relay X to relay Y, we might send
   cells as follows:

      EXTEND2 {
        nspec = 2;
          lstype = [0x01 || 0x02];          (IPv4 or IPv6 node address)
          lslen =  [0x04 || 0x16];
          lspec =  { node address for Y, taking 8 bytes or 16 bytes};
          lstype = 0x03;                    (An ed25519 node identity)
          lslen = 32;
          lspen = { ed25519 node ID for Y, taking 32 bytes }
        htype = {whatever the handshake type is.}
        hlen = 2000
        hdata = { the first 462 bytes of the handshake }
      }
      EXTEND2 {
        nspec = 0;
        htype = 0xffff;
        hlen = 0;
        hdata = { the next 492 bytes of the handshake }
      }
      EXTEND2 {
        nspec = 0;
        htype = 0xffff;
        hlen = 0;
        hdata = { the next 492 bytes of the handshake }
      }
      EXTEND2 {
        nspec = 0;
        htype = 0xffff;
        hlen = 0;
        hdata = { the next 492 bytes of the handshake }
      }
      EXTEND2 {
        nspec = 0;
        htype = 0xffff;
        hlen = 0;
        hdata = { the final 62 bytes of the handshake }
      }

   Upon receiving this last cell, the relay X would send a create2v cell
   to Y, containing the entire handshake.

6. Migration

   We can and should implement the EXTEND2 fragmentation feature before
   we implement anything that uses it.  If we can get it widely deployed
   before it's needed, we can use the new handshake types whenever both
   of the involved relays support this proposal.

   Clients MUST NOT send fragmented EXTEND2 cells to relays that don't
   support them, since this would cause them to close the circuit.

   Relays MAY send CREATE2V and CREATED2V cells to relays that don't
   support them, since unrecognized cell types are ignored.

6.1. New Subprotocols and Subprotocol Versions

   This proposal introduces, following prop#264, the following new
   subprotocol numbers and their uses.

6.1.1. Relay Subprotocol

     "Relay 3" -- The OP supports all of "Relay 2", plus support for CREATE2V
       and CREATED2V cells and their above specification for link-layer
       authentication specifiers.

6.1.2. Link Subprotocol

     "Link 5": The OP supports all of "Link 1-4", plus support for the new
       EXTEND2 semantics.  Namely, it understands that an EXTEND2 cell whose
       "hlen" field is greater than 505 will be followed by further "hdata"
       in fragmented EXTEND2 cells which MUST follow.  It also understands
       that the following combination of EXTEND2 payload specifiers
       indicates that the cell is a continuation of the earlier payload
       portions:

           nspec = 0;
           htype = 0xffff;
           hlen = 0;

6.1.3. Handshake Subprotocol

   Additionally, we introduce a new subprotocol, "Handshake" and the
   following number assignments for previously occuring instances:

     "Handshake 1" -- The OP supports the TAP handshake.

     "Handshake 2" -- The OP supports the ntor handshake.

   We also reserve the following assignments for future use:

     "Handshake 3" -- The OP supports the "hybrid+null" ntor-like handshake
       from prop#269.

     "Handshake 4" -- The OP supports a(n as yet unspecified) post-quantum
       secure hybrid handshake, that is, the "hybrid+null" handshake from
       "Handshake 3", except with "null" part replaced with another (as yet
       unspecified) protocol to be composed with the ntor-like ECDH-based
       handshake.

   Further handshakes MUST be specified with "Handshake" subprotocol
   numbers, and MUST NOT be specified with "Relay" subprotocol numbers.  The
   "Relay" subprotocol SHALL be used in the future to denote changes to
   handshake protocol handling of CREATE* and EXTEND* cells, i.e. CREATE,
   CREATED, CREATE_FAST, CREATED_FAST, CREATE2, CREATED2, CREATE2V,
   CREATED2V, EXTEND, EXTENDED, EXTEND2, and EXTENDED2.

   Thus, "Handshake 1" is taken to be synonymous with "Relay 1", and
   likewise "Handshake 2" is with "Relay 2".

6.2. Subprotocol Recommendations

   After the subprotocol additions above, we change to recommending the
   following in the consensus:

      recommended-client-protocols […] Link=5 Relay=3 Handshake=2
      recommended-relay-protocols  […] Link=5 Relay=3 Handshake=2
      required-client-protocols    […] Link=4-5 Relay=2-3 Handshake=1-2
      required-relay-protocols     […] Link=3-5 Relay=1-3 Handshake=1-2

6.2. New Consensus Parameters

   We introduce the following new consensus parameters:

     Create2VMaximumData SP int
        The maximum amount of "hlen" data, in bytes, which may carried in
        either direction within a set of CREATE(D)2V cells.  (default: 10240)

7. Resource management issues

   This feature requires relays and clients to buffer EXTEND2 cell
   bodies for incoming cells until the entire CREATE2V/CREATED2V body
   has arrived.  To avoid memory-related denial-of-service attacks,
   the buffers allocated for this data need to be counted against the
   total data usage of the circuit.

   Further, circuits which receive and buffer CREATE(D)2V cells MUST store
   the time the first buffer chunk was allocated, and use it to inform the
   OOM manager w.r.t. the amount of data used and its staleness.


Appendix A. A rejected idea for migration

   In section 5 above, I gave up on the idea of allowing relay A to
   extend to relay B with a large CREATE cell when relay A does not
   support this proposal.

   There are other ways to do this, but they are impressively kludgey.
   For example, we could have a fake CREATE cell for new handshake types
   that always elicits a "yes, keep going!" CREATED cell.  Then the
   client could send the rest of the handshake and receive the rest of
   the CREATED cell as RELAY cells inside the circuit.

   This design would add an extra round-trip to circuit extension
   whenever it was used, however, and would violate a number of Tor's
   assumptions about circuits (e.g., by having half-created circuits,
   where authentication hasn't actually been performed).  So I'm
   guessing we shouldn't do that.

Appendix B. Acknowledgements

  This research was supported in part by NSF grants CNS-1111539,
  CNS-1314637, CNS-1526306, CNS-1619454, and CNS-1640548.

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