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IETF RFC 8291
Last modified on Wednesday, November 29th, 2017
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Thomson
Request for Comments: 8291 Mozilla
Category: Standards Track November 2017
ISSN: 2070-1721
Message Encryption for Web Push
 Abstract
This document describes a message encryption scheme for the Web Push
protocol. This scheme provides confidentiality and integrity for
messages sent from an application server to a user agent.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8291.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Thomson Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
1.1. Notational Conventions .....................................3
2. Push Message Encryption Overview ................................3
2.1. Key and Secret Distribution ................................4
3. Push Message Encryption .........................................4
3.1. Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement ...............................5
3.2. Push Message Authentication ................................5
3.3. Combining Shared and Authentication Secrets ................5
3.4. Encryption Summary .........................................6
4. Restrictions on Use of "aes128gcm" Content Coding ...............7
5. Push Message Encryption Example .................................8
6. IANA Considerations .............................................8
7. Security Considerations .........................................8
8. References .....................................................10
8.1. Normative References ......................................10
8.2. Informative References ....................................11
Appendix A. Intermediate Values for Encryption ...................12
Author's Address ..................................................13
1. Introduction
The Web Push protocol [RFC 8030] is an intermediated protocol by
necessity. Messages from an application server are delivered to a
user agent (UA) via a push service, as shown in Figure 1.
+-------+ +--------------+ +-------------+
| UA | | Push Service | | Application |
+-------+ +--------------+ +-------------+
| | |
| Setup | |
|<====================>| |
| Provide Subscription |
|-------------------------------------------->|
| | |
: : :
| | Push Message |
| Push Message |<---------------------|
|<---------------------| |
| | |
Figure 1
This document describes how messages sent using this protocol can be
secured against inspection, modification, and forgery by a push
service.
Thomson Standards Track PAGE 2
RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
Web Push messages are the payload of an HTTP message [RFC 7230].
These messages are encrypted using an encrypted content encoding
[RFC 8188]. This document describes how this content encoding is
applied and describes a recommended key management scheme.
Multiple users of Web Push at the same user agent often share a
central agent that aggregates push functionality. This agent can
enforce the use of this encryption scheme by applications that use
push messaging. An agent that only delivers messages that are
properly encrypted strongly encourages the end-to-end protection of
messages.
A web browser that implements the Push API [API] can enforce the use
of encryption by forwarding only those messages that were properly
encrypted.
1.1. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC 2119] [RFC 8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
This document uses the terminology from [RFC 8030], primarily "user
agent", "push service", and "application server".
2. Push Message Encryption Overview
Encrypting a push message uses Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH)
[ECDH] on the P-256 curve [FIPS186] to establish a shared secret (see
Section 3.1) and a symmetric secret for authentication (see
Section 3.2).
A user agent generates an ECDH key pair and authentication secret
that it associates with each subscription it creates. The ECDH
public key and the authentication secret are sent to the application
server with other details of the push subscription.
When sending a message, an application server generates an ECDH key
pair and a random salt. The ECDH public key is encoded into the
"keyid" parameter of the encrypted content coding header, and the
salt is encoded into the "salt" parameter of that same header (see
Section 2.1 of [RFC 8188]). The ECDH key pair can be discarded after
encrypting the message.
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RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
The content of the push message is encrypted or decrypted using a
content encryption key and nonce. These values are derived by taking
the "keyid" and "salt" as input to the process described in
Section 3.
2.1. Key and Secret Distribution
The application using the subscription distributes the subscription
public key and authentication secret to an authorized application
server. This could be sent along with other subscription information
that is provided by the user agent, such as the push subscription
URI.
An application MUST use an authenticated, confidentiality-protected
communications medium for this purpose. In addition to the reasons
described in [RFC 8030], this use ensures that the authentication
secret is not revealed to unauthorized entities, which would allow
those entities to generate push messages that will be accepted by the
user agent.
Most applications that use push messaging have a preexisting
relationship with an application server that can be used for
distribution of subscription data. An authenticated communication
mechanism that provides adequate confidentiality and integrity
protection, such as HTTPS [RFC 2818], is sufficient.
3. Push Message Encryption
Push message encryption happens in four phases:
o A shared secret is derived using ECDH [ECDH] (see Section 3.1 of
this document).
o The shared secret is then combined with the authentication secret
to produce the input keying material (IKM) used in [RFC 8188] (see
Section 3.3 of this document).
o A content encryption key and nonce are derived using the process
in [RFC 8188].
o Encryption or decryption follows according to [RFC 8188].
The key derivation process is summarized in Section 3.4.
Restrictions on the use of the encrypted content coding are described
in Section 4.
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RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
3.1. Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement
For each new subscription that the user agent generates for an
application, it also generates a P-256 [FIPS186] key pair for use in
ECDH [ECDH].
When sending a push message, the application server also generates a
new ECDH key pair on the same P-256 curve.
The ECDH public key for the application server is included as the
"keyid" parameter in the encrypted content coding header (see
Section 2.1 of [RFC 8188]).
An application server combines its ECDH private key with the public
key provided by the user agent using the process described in [ECDH];
on receipt of the push message, a user agent combines its private key
with the public key provided by the application server in the "keyid"
parameter in the same way. These operations produce the same value
for the ECDH shared secret.
3.2. Push Message Authentication
To ensure that push messages are correctly authenticated, a symmetric
authentication secret is added to the information generated by a user
agent. The authentication secret is mixed into the key derivation
process described in Section 3.3.
A user agent MUST generate and provide a hard-to-guess sequence of 16
octets that is used for authentication of push messages. This SHOULD
be generated by a cryptographically strong random number generator
[RFC 4086].
3.3. Combining Shared and Authentication Secrets
The shared secret produced by ECDH is combined with the
authentication secret using the HMAC-based key derivation function
(HKDF) [RFC 5869]. This produces the input keying material used by
[RFC 8188].
The HKDF function uses the SHA-256 hash algorithm [FIPS180-4] with
the following inputs:
salt: the authentication secret
IKM: the shared secret derived using ECDH
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RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
info: the concatenation of the ASCII-encoded string "WebPush: info"
(this string is not NUL-terminated), a zero octet, the user
agent ECDH public key, and the application server ECDH public
key, (both ECDH public keys are in the uncompressed point form
defined in [X9.62]. That is:
key_info = "WebPush: info" || 0x00 || ua_public || as_public
L: 32 octets (i.e., the output is the length of the underlying
SHA-256 HMAC function output)
3.4. Encryption Summary
This results in a final content encryption key and nonce generation
using the following sequence, which is shown here in pseudocode with
HKDF expanded into separate discrete steps using HMAC with SHA-256:
-- For a user agent:
ecdh_secret = ECDH(ua_private, as_public)
auth_secret = random(16)
salt = <from content coding header>
-- For an application server:
ecdh_secret = ECDH(as_private, ua_public)
auth_secret = <from user agent>
salt = random(16)
-- For both:
## Use HKDF to combine the ECDH and authentication secrets
# HKDF-Extract(salt=auth_secret, IKM=ecdh_secret)
PRK_key = HMAC-SHA-256(auth_secret, ecdh_secret)
# HKDF-Expand(PRK_key, key_info, L_key=32)
key_info = "WebPush: info" || 0x00 || ua_public || as_public
IKM = HMAC-SHA-256(PRK_key, key_info || 0x01)
## HKDF calculations from RFC 8188
# HKDF-Extract(salt, IKM)
PRK = HMAC-SHA-256(salt, IKM)
# HKDF-Expand(PRK, cek_info, L_cek=16)
cek_info = "Content-Encoding: aes128gcm" || 0x00
CEK = HMAC-SHA-256(PRK, cek_info || 0x01)[0..15]
# HKDF-Expand(PRK, nonce_info, L_nonce=12)
nonce_info = "Content-Encoding: nonce" || 0x00
NONCE = HMAC-SHA-256(PRK, nonce_info || 0x01)[0..11]
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RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
Note that this omits the exclusive-OR of the final nonce with the
record sequence number, since push messages contain only a single
record (see Section 4) and the sequence number of the first record is
zero.
4. Restrictions on Use of "aes128gcm" Content Coding
An application server MUST encrypt a push message with a single
record. This allows for a minimal receiver implementation that
handles a single record. An application server MUST set the "rs"
parameter in the "aes128gcm" content coding header to a size that is
greater than the sum of the lengths of the plaintext, the padding
delimiter (1 octet), any padding, and the authentication tag (16
octets).
A push message MUST include the application server ECDH public key in
the "keyid" parameter of the encrypted content coding header. The
uncompressed point form defined in [X9.62] (that is, a 65-octet
sequence that starts with a 0x04 octet) forms the entirety of the
"keyid". Note that this means that the "keyid" parameter will not be
valid UTF-8 as recommended in [RFC 8188].
A push service is not required to support more than 4096 octets of
payload body (see Section 7.2 of [RFC 8030]). Absent header (86
octets), padding (minimum 1 octet), and expansion for
AEAD_AES_128_GCM (16 octets), this equates to, at most, 3993 octets
of plaintext.
An application server MUST NOT use other content encodings for push
messages. In particular, content encodings that compress could
result in leaking of push message contents. The Content-Encoding
header field therefore has exactly one value, which is "aes128gcm".
Multiple "aes128gcm" values are not permitted.
A user agent is not required to support multiple records. A user
agent MAY ignore the "rs" parameter. If a record size is unchecked,
decryption will fail with high probability for all valid cases. The
padding delimiter octet MUST be checked; values other than 0x02 MUST
cause the message to be discarded.
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RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
5. Push Message Encryption Example
The following example shows a push message being sent to a push
service.
POST /push/JzLQ3raZJfFBR0aqvOMsLrt54w4rJUsV HTTP/1.1
Host: push.example.net
TTL: 10
Content-Length: 145
Content-Encoding: aes128gcm
DGv6ra1nlYgDCS1FRnbzlwAAEABBBP4z9KsN6nGRTbVYI_c7VJSPQTBtkgcy27ml
mlMoZIIgDll6e3vCYLocInmYWAmS6TlzAC8wEqKK6PBru3jl7A_yl95bQpu6cVPT
pK4Mqgkf1CXztLVBSt2Ks3oZwbuwXPXLWyouBWLVWGNWQexSgSxsj_Qulcy4a-fN
This example shows the ASCII-encoded string, "When I grow up, I want
to be a watermelon". The content body is shown here with line
wrapping and URL-safe base64url [RFC 4648] encoding to meet
presentation constraints.
The keys used are shown below using the uncompressed form [X9.62]
encoded using base64url.
Authentication Secret: BTBZMqHH6r4Tts7J_aSIgg
Receiver:
private key: q1dXpw3UpT5VOmu_cf_v6ih07Aems3njxI-JWgLcM94
public key: BCVxsr7N_eNgVRqvHtD0zTZsEc6-VV-JvLexhqUzORcx
aOzi6-AYWXvTBHm4bjyPjs7Vd8pZGH6SRpkNtoIAiw4
Sender:
private key: yfWPiYE-n46HLnH0KqZOF1fJJU3MYrct3AELtAQ-oRw
public key: BP4z9KsN6nGRTbVYI_c7VJSPQTBtkgcy27mlmlMoZIIg
Dll6e3vCYLocInmYWAmS6TlzAC8wEqKK6PBru3jl7A8
Intermediate values for this example are included in Appendix A.
6. IANA Considerations
This document does not require any IANA actions.
7. Security Considerations
The privacy and security considerations of [RFC 8030] all apply to the
use of this mechanism.
The Security Considerations section of [RFC 8188] describes the
limitations of the content encoding. In particular, no HTTP header
fields are protected by the content encoding scheme. A user agent
MUST consider HTTP header fields to have come from the push service.
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RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
Though header fields might be necessary for processing an HTTP
response correctly, they are not needed for correct operation of the
protocol. An application on the user agent that uses information
from header fields to alter their processing of a push message is
exposed to a risk of attack by the push service.
The timing and length of communication cannot be hidden from the push
service. While an outside observer might see individual messages
intermixed with each other, the push service will see which
application server is talking to which user agent and the
subscription that is used. Additionally, the length of messages
could be revealed unless the padding provided by the content encoding
scheme is used to obscure length.
The user agent and application MUST verify that the public key they
receive is on the P-256 curve. Failure to validate a public key can
allow an attacker to extract a private key. The appropriate
validation procedures are defined in Section 4.3.7 of [X9.62] and,
alternatively, in Section 5.6.2.3 of [KEYAGREEMENT]. This process
consists of three steps:
1. Verify that Y is not the point at infinity (O),
2. Verify that for Y = (x, y), both integers are in the correct
interval,
3. Ensure that (x, y) is a correct solution to the elliptic curve
equation.
For these curves, implementers do not need to verify membership in
the correct subgroup.
In the event that this encryption scheme would need to be replaced, a
new content coding scheme could be defined. In order to manage
progressive deployment of the new scheme, the user agent can expose
information on the content coding schemes that it supports. The
"supportedContentEncodings" parameter of the Push API [API] is an
example of how this might be done.
Thomson Standards Track PAGE 9
RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[ECDH] SECG, "SEC 1: Elliptic Curve Cryptography", Version 2.0,
May 2009, <http://www.secg.org/>.
[FIPS180-4]
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
"Secure Hash Standard (SHS)", FIPS PUB 180-4,
DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4, August 2015.
[FIPS186] National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
"Digital Signature Standard (DSS)", FIPS PUB 186-4,
DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.186-4, July 2013.
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2119>.
[RFC 4086] Eastlake 3rd, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker,
"Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 4086, June 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 4086>.
[RFC 5869] Krawczyk, H. and P. Eronen, "HMAC-based Extract-and-Expand
Key Derivation Function (HKDF)", RFC 5869,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5869, May 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5869>.
[RFC 8030] Thomson, M., Damaggio, E., and B. Raymor, Ed., "Generic
Event Delivery Using HTTP Push", RFC 8030,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8030, December 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8030>.
[RFC 8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8174>.
[RFC 8188] Thomson, M., "Encrypted Content-Encoding for HTTP",
RFC 8188, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8188, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8188>.
[X9.62] ANSI, "Public Key Cryptography for the Financial Services
Industry: the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
(ECDSA)", ANSI X9.62, 2005.
Thomson Standards Track PAGE 10
RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
8.2. Informative References
[API] Beverloo, P., Thomson, M., van Ouwerkerk, M., Sullivan,
B., and E. Fullea, "Push API", October 2017,
<https://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/>.
[KEYAGREEMENT]
Barker, E., Chen, L., Roginsky, A., and M. Smid,
"Recommendation for Pair-Wise Key Establishment Schemes
Using Discrete Logarithm Cryptography", NIST Special
Publication 800-56A, Revision 2,
DOI 10.6028/NIST.SP.800-56Ar2, May 2013.
[RFC 2818] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2818, May 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2818>.
[RFC 4648] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
Encodings", RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC 4648, October 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 4648>.
[RFC 7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7230, June 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7230>.
Thomson Standards Track PAGE 11
RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
Appendix A. Intermediate Values for Encryption
The intermediate values calculated for the example in Section 5 are
shown here. The base64url values in these examples include
whitespace that can be removed.
The following are inputs to the calculation:
Plaintext: V2hlbiBJIGdyb3cgdXAsIEkgd2FudCB0byBiZSBhIHdhdGVybWVsb24
Application server public key (as_public):
BP4z9KsN6nGRTbVYI_c7VJSPQTBtkgcy27mlmlMoZIIg
Dll6e3vCYLocInmYWAmS6TlzAC8wEqKK6PBru3jl7A8
Application server private key (as_private):
yfWPiYE-n46HLnH0KqZOF1fJJU3MYrct3AELtAQ-oRw
User agent public key (ua_public): BCVxsr7N_eNgVRqvHtD0zTZsEc6-VV-
JvLexhqUzORcx aOzi6-AYWXvTBHm4bjyPjs7Vd8pZGH6SRpkNtoIAiw4
User agent private key (ua_private):
q1dXpw3UpT5VOmu_cf_v6ih07Aems3njxI-JWgLcM94
Salt: DGv6ra1nlYgDCS1FRnbzlw
Authentication secret (auth_secret): BTBZMqHH6r4Tts7J_aSIgg
Note that knowledge of just one of the private keys is necessary.
The application server randomly generates the salt value, whereas
salt is input to the receiver.
This produces the following intermediate values:
Shared ECDH secret (ecdh_secret):
kyrL1jIIOHEzg3sM2ZWRHDRB62YACZhhSlknJ672kSs
Pseudorandom key (PRK) for key combining (PRK_key):
Snr3JMxaHVDXHWJn5wdC52WjpCtd2EIEGBykDcZW32k
Info for key combining (key_info): V2ViUHVzaDogaW5mbwAEJXGyvs3942BVG
q8e0PTNNmwR zr5VX4m8t7GGpTM5FzFo7OLr4BhZe9MEebhuPI-OztV3
ylkYfpJGmQ22ggCLDgT-M_SrDepxkU21WCP3O1SUj0Ew
bZIHMtu5pZpTKGSCIA5Zent7wmC6HCJ5mFgJkuk5cwAv MBKiiujwa7t45ewP
Input keying material for content encryption key derivation (IKM):
S4lYMb_L0FxCeq0WhDx813KgSYqU26kOyzWUdsXYyrg
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RFC 8291 Web Push Encryption November 2017
PRK for content encryption (PRK):
09_eUZGrsvxChDCGRCdkLiDXrReGOEVeSCdCcPBSJSc
Info for content encryption key derivation (cek_info):
Q29udGVudC1FbmNvZGluZzogYWVzMTI4Z2NtAA
Content encryption key (CEK): oIhVW04MRdy2XN9CiKLxTg
Info for content encryption nonce derivation (nonce_info):
Q29udGVudC1FbmNvZGluZzogbm9uY2UA
Nonce (NONCE): 4h_95klXJ5E_qnoN
The salt, record size of 4096, and application server public key
produce an 86-octet header of:
DGv6ra1nlYgDCS1FRnbzlwAAEABBBP4z 9KsN6nGRTbVYI_c7VJSPQTBtkgcy27ml
mlMoZIIgDll6e3vCYLocInmYWAmS6Tlz AC8wEqKK6PBru3jl7A8
The push message plaintext has the padding delimiter octet (0x02)
appended to produce:
V2hlbiBJIGdyb3cgdXAsIEkgd2FudCB0 byBiZSBhIHdhdGVybWVsb24C
The plaintext is then encrypted with AES-GCM, which emits ciphertext
of:
8pfeW0KbunFT06SuDKoJH9Ql87S1QUrd irN6GcG7sFz1y1sqLgVi1VhjVkHsUoEs
bI_0LpXMuGvnzQ
The header and ciphertext are concatenated and produce the result
shown in Section 5.
Author's Address
Martin Thomson
Mozilla
Email: martin.thomson@gmail.com
Thomson Standards Track PAGE 13
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 25780 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Wednesday, November 29th, 2017
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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