I'm trying to implement OpenPGP end to end encryption on a simple messaging app which will be accessed on the web as well as mobile. I'm stuck at deciding where my private key should be generated and stored. The following two approaches are on the table(i don't want to go with approach 2 but that looks like the only feasible option) :-
Key storage approach 1:-
When the user logs into the Chat client the first time, the client (web/app) will generate a set of public and private keys.
The user's public key will be sent to the backend server. The user's private key will be encrypted and stored on the local storage of the client.
Problems with this approach:-
If the user has not logged into the client even once, how will the sender encrypt the message? (since the public key of the recipient is not available till now)
If the user logs into another client (another browser or different app), how will he get access to the private key? (since that is needed to decrypt the messages in the user's inbox)
Key storage approach 2:-
When the user is created on the backend server, create both public and private keys for the user using PGP on the backend itself. Public key can be stored in plain-text but the user's private key should be encrypted and stored. We can use symmetric encryption with a client-specific passphrase here.
When the user logs into the Chat client (web/app), the encrypted private key will be received from the backend upon login. In order to decrypt any message, then can decrypt their private key using their passphrase, then use the private key to decrypt the message received.
Problems with this approach:-
This is not truly end to end encryption, since who-ever knows the passphrase of the user, can have access to the private key.
Reg. approach 1: If the client hasn't had the opportunity to share their public key, then indeed, you cannot send encrypted messages. It's unclear how you would solve that problem. The private key you can encrypt with a passphrase and upload the encrypted version to your backend so that the client can then download it and have it available on other devices, as you write in your second approach. Or you can go a step further and generate the private from the passphrase.
Your approach 2 may actually not have much worse security properties, depending on how you look at it. You could argue that you have no infrastructure anyway to let clients make sure they have obtained the correct key material. So they cannot distinguish the actual public key of the user from a malicious one provided by the server.
How you design your system is up to you, of course. I suggest you start laying out your requirements. Your problems seems to become smaller if not-yet-known users do not need to receive encrypted messages.
Related
This is a more conceptual question, but I'm trying to have some content be made available only to a specific user at a time. To do so, I thought about using a users password as an encryption key. However, the problem with that is that if I encrypt it using the plaintext password, I won't be able to encrypt anything as I'm obviously storing a hashed version in my database. If I encrypt it using the hashed password, then any database admin will be able to read the content of every user.
So basically, I need some kind of public/private key concept where I can encrypt it with a users public key but only they have access to their private key to decrypt it. Using actual RSA keys will be annoying in terms of usability though, as a user would have to write down their private key somewhere.
Is there a clever way for me to store data in a way that only a specific user can see it, somehow accessible through a password they set without being able to see their data as a server admin?
Example, assuming a website:
Random person chooses a receiver person, writes a message. That message should be stored in encrypted form in the database, using some form of public key.
Receiver person enters their password (Not a huge RSA key, optimally, but a standard passphrase), on the server side this password will be treated as some form of private key in order to deencrypt the data and send it back to the client.
So basically, I want to treat a simple passphrase as a private key, and generate a corresponding public key for it.
It looks like you want to use the same password for both authentication and for encryption.
Lets assume that only hashes of passwords are stored in a database (as it should be).
Issues:
"Remember me" function of web/mobile/desktop app will render encryption function impossible because user can log-in without password via token.
Admin can intercept login request to know user's password while it is transmitted in plain-text over https (simple infrastructure reconfiguration allows admin to sniff on traffic).
There is a way to secure transfers by using the same password in case:
you change your authentication procedure in a way that user sends to the server hashes only instead of plain-text password
and will save plain-text password at client side (for "remember me" scenario)
Then you could generate key pair during registration and save encrypted private key at server.
This way you will have access to your private key even after client side reinstallation (web/mobile/desktop).
So upon login you request your private key from server and use password which was used for authentication to decrypt your private key.
If you trust that admin(or whoever else) will not be able to meddle with software (especially in key exchange phase) then you have a way to implement the feature you need.
This will be hacker-proof solution until someone patches your code and every user in system gets wrong public keys of other users.
I am using a local URL scheme to submit a payload to the client when a user clicks a link and have to make sure that this is only used in my specific web application.
So I am using a key pair, encrypting the payload on the server using the private key, generating a link that the protocol handler on the client can decrypt using the public key, verifying that the payload should be processed.
So is it less secure to send a private-key-encrypted payload instead of a cleartext payload plus signature (and if yes, why)?
Found out that there are other Stack Exchange sites that answer this question very well:
https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/2123/rsa-encryption-with-private-key-and-decryption-with-a-public-key
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/11879/is-encrypting-data-with-a-private-key-dangerous
I should have searched a little bit longer before asking.
What you are doing is signing!
Encrypting is when a payload is being concealed with one’s public key and later decrypted with a private key. When I want to send you a secret message, I will take your public key (because I know it) and encrypt my message. This will make sure that only you can decrypt it with your private key.
Signing works vice versa. If during encryption I want to make sure that only you can decrypt me message, with signing I want to make sure that all recipients of the message can be sure in its authenticity. If you encrypt something with your private (signing), anyone with your public key can decrypt it and verify its sender.
In your case, if you just want to prove your identity (like certificates, jwt tokens, etc.), you would need to use signing methods. If you want to transfer payload securely, use encryption.
Hope this helps!
I am trying to integrate Virgil security in my basic chat application but it won't as needed.
While chatting 2 users say A and B. After both users logged in and have some communication between them. Now both users reload/logged out or logged in then old messages was sent was not able to decrypt as new private keys will be generated.
I so not want to stored the public and private key of users in database or in local storage.
I'm Dim from Virgil. Let me help you with this use-case.
I prepared some additional information:
Steps #1 and #2 from Virgil Simple JS Demo (You’ve already seen it)
Step #1. User Registration Step.
users register their Public Keys
At this step:
You authenticate Alice
After you successfully authenticated Alice, you give her a JWT to grant her access to Virgil’s Cloud APIs
Alice generates her Private Key (2) -> stores her Private Key into Local Storage -> creates her Virgil Card
Alice Publishes (3) her Virgil Card on Virgil Cards Service (She uses her JWT to do it).
Then you authenticate Bob (User B): same story as Alice.
At the end, Alice and Bob have their own Private Keys and Virgil Cards (Public Key published into our cloud for users to find each other’s Public Keys).
Step #2. Simple Communication (chat).
Simple e2e encrypted communication
At this step:
Alice looks for & finds Bob’s Public Key at Virgil Cards Service (1)
Alice loads her Private Key from her Local Storage in a browser
Alice signs (with her Private Key) and encrypts (with Bob’s Public Key) a message and sends to Bob through your Application Server
Bob receives the encrypted and signed message
Bob goes to Cards Service to find Alice’s Public Key in order to verify her signature
Bob loads his Private Key from his Local Storage and decrypts the message
As a result, Bob verified Alice’s signature and decrypted the Message from Alice.
And now, comes the problem: Alice decided to use another Browser (or a Device B), but she can’t encrypt Bob’s previous messages on the new device.
Solution: you should transmit her Previous Private Key from Device A to Device B. To do this in the most secure way:
is to encrypt Private Key on a device A with some Additional Secret Key.
transmit encrypted Private Key to Device B.
use the same Additional Secret Key on Device B to decrypt the encrypted Private Key from Device A.
So, as you see you must use some special Additional Secret Key on both devices (some messengers do this with a QR code between the devices) to do it securely. To do it simpler though, we have a special tech for you to you generate the “Additional Secret Key” that will be the same on both devices. We call that Secret Key - a Brain Key. Brain Key - a strong cryptographic asymmetric key based on Alice’s PASSWORD.
You can find more information about this key here: https://developer.virgilsecurity.com/docs/java/use-cases/v1/brainkey
So now, let’s take a look at the next step.
Step #3. Store your Private Key in the Cloud
store somewhere encrypted Private Key
At this step:
Alice enters her Password
Alice generates a Brain Key from her password (1)
Alice encrypts her Private Key with the Brain Key (2)
Alice uploads her encrypted private key somewhere in Cloud (to your app’s backend/database)
As a result, Alice will have her encrypted Private Key in the cloud, that she used to chat with Bob.
Step #4. Alice now uses her new Browser (or new Device)
transmit a Private Key
At this step:
Alice enters her Password (the same that she used previously for Brain Key generation).
This generates her Brain Key (1)
Alice downloads her encrypted Private Key from the Cloud / from your backend/database (2)
Alice decrypts the encrypted Private Key with the Brain Key
As a result, Alice will get her Private Key on a Device B, that she used to chat with Bob on a Device A. This way, the chat conversation survived her device change.
Every time when Alice uses a new device, she can re-generate the same Brain Key and easily get her Private Key, the key that she uses on all her devices to chat with Bob.
David from Virgil here. Thanks for the question and sorry for making you puzzled.
I believe the issue is: while the sample app generated user private & public keys both for Alice and Bob, published the public keys to our Cards service, it hasn’t saved the private keys anywhere. So, the private keys remained in the browser's local storage and as such, didn’t sync to other browsers/devices where your users have logged in next. So in lack of their private keys, your users weren’t able to decrypt their messages... This is a limitation of the sample app and we should fix that ASAP (task created).
In order to get the app working, I.e. make your users be able to log in from another browser and decrypt messages, they need to retrieve their respected private keys from a central location. Now, it'd be too lame for me to recommend to just save the user private keys to your database (and enable others to access it + decrypt your users' messages), so we created a technology called BrainKey to encrypt the user private key with a key that we derive from the user’s password. Similar approach how Apple uses your TouchID-derived key to encrypt your keychain.
This is what you need to do to make it work:
During user signup (on the client device), generate a private key for your user and publish the public key to our Cards service.
Then use the user's password to generate a BrainKey (which technically is a private key).
Generate the public key from the BrainKey and encrypt the user's previously (Step 1) generated private key.
Now, save this encrypted private key to your database for the user.
Every single time your user logs in with her password, re-generate the same BrainKey from her password, download the encrypted private key from your DB, decrypt it with the BrainKey and now you can use this key to decrypt all chat messages that were sent to her.
Here’s a reference and sample code for our BrainKey tech: https://developer.virgilsecurity.com/docs/javascript/use-cases/v1/brainkey
Does it make sense? Would you like to see a sample code that does it? If you join our Slack, we can chat real-time, I’m #dave: https://join.slack.com/t/virgilsecurity/shared_invite/enQtMjg4MDE4ODM3ODA4LTc2OWQwOTQ3YjNhNTQ0ZjJiZDc2NjkzYjYxNTI0YzhmNTY2ZDliMGJjYWQ5YmZiOGU5ZWEzNmJiMWZhYWVmYTM
David
So I'm developing my messanging app with encryption evolved using RSA. Currently I came up with this algorithm:
= Update for auth =
Screenshot:
In this case private keys are generated only from password, and server knows only password hash just to authorize users (unhashed password is never transmitted to server), therefore is unable to generate private keys or decrypt any old message. If server will fake a public key recipent will be unable to verify signature encrypted with sender's private key.
The problem is that server can fake a sender's private, public key and password when he signs up on a service or requests a password change and recipent will be unable to detect it. So, how can I verify that keys were not faked by the server?
So, how can I verify that keys were not faked by the server?
You cannot. So long as the clients only communicate with the server, there's no way for them to distinguish between a "real" remote user and one that's being MITMed or otherwise faked by the server.
I see a couple other serious potential issues here:
Sending an unsalted hash of a password over the wire (during the login process) is hardly better than sending the password in the clear. An attacker can sniff the hash off the wire to log in -- they don't need the actual password! -- and a non-iterated SHA256 is highly vulnerable to brute force attacks.
"private key from pass" (also in the login process) implies that you're using some sort of KDF to generate a private key from the user's password. This has multiple negative implications:
Users are generally pretty bad at choosing passwords. This implies that the private keys will also be weak.
If two users happen to use the same password, they will end up with the same private key.
Any user can attack the password (and hence the private key) of any other user that they've communicated with by running the KDF on candidate passwords.
There is no process specified for negotiating a symmetric encryption key. Using RSA to encrypt messages directly limits each message to the size of the key, and makes it vulnerable to numerous attacks if the data being encrypted is not both random and unique.
In the message exchange, the user sends the server two copies of every message -- one encrypted to the target user's private key, one encrypted to their own private key. In some situations, this may make it possible to recover the message.
My application requires certain fields to be encrypted when stored at rest, and allow the user to decrypt them locally in the browser by entering a passphrase. However, these encrypted fields are not entered into the database by the authenticated user himself, but submissions from other people who are supplying the user with private information.
If I stored the passphrase in the database to encrypt new submissions, then anyone who got access to the database would be able to easily decrypt the encrypted information. So, I believe I need to store a public key in the database, encrypt incoming information with the public key, and then serve that encrypted info to the user and let him decrypt it with his passphrase in his browser. (Thus, serverside, we can never decrypt anything.)
I've looked into libraries like ursa, but the problem is that the user would have to save his private key. (Correct?) Is there any way that I can do this with a relatively short passphrase instead of a long private key?
You can use something like JSBN to generate a public-private key pair on the client and use CryptoJS in password encryption mode to encrypt the private key with AES. The encrypted private key and the plaintext public key are then posted to the server and added into the database.
The next time the user gets information encrypted with his/her public key, you send the encrypted information and the encrypted private key to the client/browser. The user can enter the passphrase again to decrypt the private key and then in a second phase decrypt the payload.
Note that this is not absolutely secure because unencrypted traffic (e.g. no TLS) will enable an attacker to extend the html/js to include a data stealing script. Furthermore, the developers of your system can also add such a script whenever they want regardless of TLS or not.