[tahoe-dev] proposal: add padding

Iraklis . leontiad at gmail.com
Tue Jul 9 09:53:52 UTC 2013


That would destroy any dedup service if different random bytes are 
appended. Even if the same number of random bytes are appended for 
equivalent encryption keys. Or i am missing sth?
On 07/08/2013 01:12 AM, Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:
> Folks:
>
> I think Tahoe-LAFS should automatically pad files when encrypting them
> in order to hide the specific length of the file. Avi Freedman just
> reminded me of this issue in private email conversation, so I finally
> got around to writing up a proposal that has been nagging me for years
> (ticket #2018):
>
> -------
>
> Even though LAFS keeps the contents of files secret from attackers, it
> currently exposes the length (in bytes) of that content. This can be
> useful information to an attacker in various ways. For one thing, an
> attacker might be able to "recognize" specific files or kinds of files
> from a pattern of file sizes. More subtle dangers may also exist,
> depending on the circumstances, for example the famous "CRIME" attack
> on SSL (​http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/19911/crime-how-to-beat-the-beast-successor/19914#19914)
> which depends crucially on the attacker being able to measure the
> exact size of certain encrypted output. Ticket #925 is about how
> potentially interesting metadata about the LAFS filesystem itself can
> be inferred from the byte-level granularity of exposed sizes.
>
> I propose that LAFS automatically add a randomized number of padding
> bytes to files when encrypting. Concretely, how about something like
> this. With F as the file size in bytes,
>
>      Let the "max padding", X, be 32 * log₂(F), rounded up to the
> nearest multiple of 32.
>
>      Choose a number of padding bytes, P, evenly from [0..X) as
> determined by the encryption key. Note: this is important that the
> number is deterministic from the key, so that multiple encryptions of
> the same-keyed file will not pick different random numbers and allow
> an attacker to statistically observe the padding's size.
>
>      Append P bytes of padding (0 bytes) to the ciphertext before encryption.
>
> https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/925# Information leak to
> holders of a directory read cap, about whether each dir entry is
> writeable and the length of its write cap
> https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/2018# padding to hide
> the size of plaintexts
> _______________________________________________
> tahoe-dev mailing list
> tahoe-dev at tahoe-lafs.org
> https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev




More information about the tahoe-dev mailing list