One document matched: draft-irtf-cfrg-xmss-hash-based-signatures-01.xml
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<rfc ipr="trust200902" category="info" docName="draft-irtf-cfrg-xmss-hash-based-signatures-01">
<front>
<title abbrev="XMSS: Extended Hash-Based Signatures">XMSS: Extended Hash-Based Signatures</title>
<author fullname="Andreas Huelsing" initials="A" surname="Huelsing">
<organization>TU Eindhoven</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>P.O. Box 513</street>
<city>Eindhoven</city>
<code>5600 MB</code>
<country>The Netherlands</country>
</postal>
<email>a.t.huelsing@tue.nl</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Denis Butin" initials="D" surname="Butin">
<organization>TU Darmstadt</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Hochschulstrasse 10</street>
<city>Darmstadt</city>
<code>64289</code>
<country>Germany</country>
</postal>
<email>dbutin@cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Stefan-Lukas Gazdag" initials="S" surname="Gazdag">
<organization>genua GmbH</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>Domagkstrasse 7</street>
<city>Kirchheim bei Muenchen</city>
<code>85551</code>
<country>Germany</country>
</postal>
<email>stefan-lukas_gazdag@genua.eu</email>
</address>
</author>
<author fullname="Aziz Mohaisen" initials="A" surname="Mohaisen">
<organization>Verisign Labs</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>12061 Bluemont Way</street>
<city>Reston</city>
<region>VA</region>
<code>20190</code>
</postal>
<phone>+1 703 948-3200 </phone>
<email>amohaisen@verisign.com</email>
</address>
</author>
<date month="July" year="2015"/>
<area>IRTF</area>
<workgroup>Crypto Forum Research Group</workgroup>
<abstract>
<t>
This note describes the eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme (XMSS), a hash-based digital signature system.
It follows existing descriptions in scientific
literature. The note specifies the WOTS+ one-time signature scheme,
a single-tree (XMSS) and a multi-tree variant (XMSS^MT)
of XMSS. Both variants use WOTS+ as a main building block.
XMSS provides cryptographic digital signatures without relying on the conjectured hardness of
mathematical problems. Instead, it is proven that it only relies on the properties of cryptographic hash functions.
XMSS provides strong security guarantees and, besides some special instantiations, is even secure when the collision resistance of
the underlying hash function is broken. It is
suitable for compact implementations, relatively simple to implement,
and naturally resists side-channel attacks. Unlike most other
signature systems, hash-based signatures withstand attacks using
quantum computers.
</t>
</abstract>
</front>
<middle>
<section title="Introduction">
<t>
A (cryptographic) digital signature scheme provides asymmetric message authentication. The key
generation algorithm produces a key pair consisting of a private and a public key. A message is
signed using a private key to produce a signature. A message/signature
pair can be verified using a public key. A One-Time Signature (OTS) scheme allows using a
key pair to sign exactly one message securely. A many-time signature
system can be used to sign multiple messages.
</t>
<t>
One-Time Signature schemes, and Many-Time Signature (MTS) schemes
composed of them, were proposed by Merkle in 1979 <xref target="Merkle79"/>.
They were well-studied in the 1990s and have regained interest from 2006 onwards because of their
resistance against quantum-computer-aided attacks. These kinds of signature schemes are called
hash-based signature schemes as they are built out of a cryptographic hash function.
Hash-based signature schemes generally feature small
private and public keys as well as fast signature generation and verification
but large signatures and relatively slow key generation. In addition, they are suitable for compact
implementations that benefit various applications and are naturally resistant to most kinds of side-channel attacks.
</t>
<t>
Some progress has already been made toward standardizing and introducing
hash-based signatures. McGrew and Curcio have published an Internet-Draft
<xref target="DC14"/> specifying the "textbook" Lamport-Diffie-Winternitz-Merkle
(LDWM) scheme based on early publications. Independently, Buchmann, Dahmen and
Huelsing have proposed XMSS <xref target="BDH11"/>, the eXtended Merkle Signature
Scheme, offering better efficiency and a modern security proof. Very recently,
the stateless hash-based signature scheme SPHINCS was introduced <xref target="BHH15"/>,
with the intent of being easier to deploy in current applications. A reasonable next step
toward introducing hash-based signatures would be to complete the specifications of the basic
algorithms - LDWM, XMSS, SPHINCS and/or variants <xref target="Kaliski15"/>.
</t>
<t>
The eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme (XMSS) <xref target="BDH11"/> is the latest
stateful hash-based signature scheme. It has the smallest signatures out of such schemes and comes
with a multi-tree variant that solves the problem of slow key generation. Moreover,
it can be shown that XMSS is secure, making only mild assumptions on the underlying hash function. Especially,
it is not required that the cryptographic hash function is collision-resistant for the security of XMSS.
</t>
<t>
This document describes a single-tree and a multi-tree variant of XMSS.
It also describes WOTS+, a variant of the Winternitz OTS scheme
introduced in <xref target="Huelsing13"/> that is used by XMSS. The schemes are described with
enough specificity to ensure interoperability between implementations.
</t>
<t>
This document is structured as follows. Notation is introduced in
<xref target="notation"/>. <xref target="primitives"/> describes
the WOTS+ signature system. MTS schemes are defined in <xref target="schemes"/>: the eXtended Merkle
Signature Scheme (XMSS) in <xref target="xmss"/>, and its Multi-Tree
variant (XMSS^MT) in <xref target="xmssmt"/>. Parameter sets are
described in <xref target="param"/>.
<xref target="rationale"/> describes the rationale behind choices in this note.
The IANA registry for these signature systems is described in
<xref target="IANA"/>. Finally, security considerations are presented in
<xref target="Security"/>.
</t>
<section title="Conventions Used In This Document">
<t>
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
"SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described
in <xref target="RFC2119" />.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title="Notation" anchor="notation">
<section title="Data Types" anchor="datatypes">
<t>
Bytes and byte strings are the fundamental data types. A byte
is a sequence of eight bits. A single byte is denoted as a
pair of hexadecimal digits with a leading "0x". A byte string is an
ordered sequence of zero or more bytes and is denoted as an ordered
sequence of hexadecimal characters with a leading "0x". For example,
0xe534f0 is a byte string of length 3. An array of byte strings is an
ordered, indexed set starting with index 0 in which all byte strings
have identical length. If not stated or handled otherwise, we
assume big-endian representation of data types.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Operators" anchor="operators">
<t>
When a and b are integers, mathematical operators are defined as follows:
<list>
<t>^ : a ^ b denotes the result of a raised to the power of b.</t>
<t>* : a * b denotes the product of a and b. This operator is
sometimes used implicitly in the absence of ambiguity, as in
usual mathematical notation.</t>
<t>/ : a / b denotes the quotient of a by b.</t>
<t>% : a % b denotes the non-negative remainder of the integer division of a by b.</t>
<t>+ : a + b denotes the sum of a and b.</t>
<t>- : a - b denotes the difference of a and b.</t>
</list>
The standard order of operations is used when evaluating arithmetic expressions.
</t>
<t>
Arrays are used in the common way, where the i^th element of an array A is denoted A[i].
Byte strings are treated as arrays of bytes where necessary: If X is a byte string, then X[i] denotes its i^th byte, where
X[0] is the leftmost byte.<!--In addition, bytes(X, i, j) with i < j
denotes the range of bytes from the i^th to the j^th byte in X, inclusively. For
example, if X = 0x01020304, then X[0] is 0x01 and bytes(X, 1, 2) is 0x0203.-->
</t>
<t>
If A and B are byte strings of equal length, then:
<list>
<t>A AND B denotes the bitwise logical conjunction operation.</t>
<t>A XOR B denotes the bitwise logical exclusive disjunction operation.</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
When B is a byte and i is an integer, then B >> i denotes the logical
right-shift operation.
Similarly, B << i denotes the logical left-shift operation.
</t>
<t>
If X is a x-byte string and Y a y-byte string, then X || Y denotes the concatenation
of X and Y, with X || Y = X[0] ... X[x-1] Y[0] ... Y[y-1].
</t>
</section>
<section title="Functions" anchor="functions">
<t>
If x is a non-negative real number, then we define the following functions:
<list>
<t>ceil(x) : returns the smallest integer greater or equal than x.</t>
<t>floor(x) : returns the largest integer less or equal than x.</t>
<t>lg(x) : returns the logarithm to base 2 of x.</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section title="Integer to Byte Conversion" anchor="intToByte">
<t>
If x and y are non-negative integers, we define Z = toByte(x,y) the y-byte representation of x as
the y-byte string that contains the binary representation of x padded with zeros in the most significant
bit positions in little endian byte-order.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Hash Function Address Scheme" anchor="address">
<t>
The schemes described in this document randomize each hash function call.
This means that aside of the initial message digest, for each hash function call
a different key and different bitmask is used. These values are pseudorandomly
generated using a pseudorandom generator that takes a seed S and a 16-byte address A.
The latter is used to select the A-th n-byte block from the PRG output where n is the
security parameter. Here we explain the structure of address A. We explain the construction
of the addresses in the following sections where they are used.
</t>
<t>
The schemes in the next two sections use two kinds of hash functions parameterized by security
parameter n. For the hash tree constructions a hash function that maps 2n-byte inputs and an n-byte key to n-byte outputs is used.
To randomize this function, 3n bytes are needed - n bytes for the key and 2n bytes for a bitmask.
For the one-time signature scheme constructions a hash function that maps n-byte inputs and n-byte keys to n-byte outputs is used.
To randomize this function, 2n bytes are needed - n bytes for the key and n bytes for a bitmask.
Consequently, three addresses are needed for the first function and two addresses for the second one.
</t>
<t>
There are three different address formats for the different use cases. One format for the hashes
used in one-time signature schemes, one for hashes used within the main Merkle-tree construction,
and one for hashes used in the L-trees. The latter being used to compress one-time public keys. All
these formats share as much format as possible. In the following we describe these formats in detail.
</t>
<t>
An address is structured as follows. It always starts with 46 zero bits in the most significant bits. These are followed
by a layer address of 8 bits, and a tree address of 24 bits. The next bit decides whether it is an OTS construction or a hash tree address.
This OTS bit is set to zero for a tree hash address and it is set to one for an OTS hash address.
</t>
<t>
We first describe the OTS address case as the hash tree case again splits into two cases. In this case, the OTS bit is followed
by a 24-bit OTS address that encodes the index of the OTS key pair within a tree.
The next 16 bits encode the chain address followed by 8 bits that encode the address of the hash function call within a chain.
The key bit is used to generate two different addresses for one hash function call. The bit is set to one to generate the key.
To generate the n-byte bitmask, the key bit is set to zero.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
</preamble>
<artwork>
Index i for OTS hash
+------------------------+
| Padding = 0 (46 bit)|
+------------------------+
| layer address (8 bit)|
+------------------------+
| tree address (24 bit)|
+------------------------+
| OTS bit = 1 (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
| OTS address (24 bit)|
+------------------------+
| chain address (16 bit)|
+------------------------+
| hash address (8 bit)|
+------------------------+
| key bit (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
Now we describe the hash tree address case. This case again splits into two.
The OTS bit is followed by an L-tree bit. This bit is set to zero in case of an L-tree
and set to one for main tree nodes. We first discuss the L-tree case.
In this case the L-tree bit is followed by a 24 bit L-tree address,
encoding the index of the leaf computed with this L-tree.
The next 6 bits encode the height of the node inside the L-tree and the following
16 bit encode the index of the node at that height, inside the L-tree.
The last two bits are used to generate three different addresses for one node.
The first of these bits is set to one to generate the key.
In that case the last bit is always zero.
To generate the 2n-byte bitmask, the key bit is set to zero.
The most significant n bytes are generated using the address with the last bit zero.
The least significant bytes are
generated using the address with the last bit set to one.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
</preamble>
<artwork>
An L-tree address
+------------------------+
| Padding = 0 (46 bit)|
+------------------------+
| layer address (8 bit)|
+------------------------+
| tree address (24 bit)|
+------------------------+
| OTS bit = 0 (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
| L-tree bit = 1 (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
| L-tree address (24 bit)|
+------------------------+
| tree height (6 bit)|
+------------------------+
| tree index (16 bit)|
+------------------------+
| key bit (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
| block bit (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
We now describe the remaining format for the main tree hash addresses.
In this case the L-tree bit is set to zero and followed by 14 zero bits padding as there are less hash tree addresses required.
The next 8 bits encode the height of the tree node to be computed within the tree,
followed by 24 bits that encode the index of this node at that height.
The last two bits are used to generate three different addresses for one node as described for the L-tree case.
The first of these bits is set to one to generate the key. In that case the last bit is always zero.
To generate the 2n-byte bitmask, the key bit is set to zero.
The most significant n bytes are generated using the address with the last bit zero. The least significant bytes are
generated using the address with the last bit set to one.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
</preamble>
<artwork>
A hash tree address
+------------------------+
| Padding = 0 (46 bit)|
+------------------------+
| layer address (8 bit)|
+------------------------+
| tree address (24 bit)|
+------------------------+
| OTS bit = 0 (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
| L-tree bit = 0 (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
| Padding = 0 (14 bit)|
+------------------------+
| tree height (8 bit)|
+------------------------+
| tree index (24 bit)|
+------------------------+
| key bit (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
| block bit (1 bit)|
+------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
All fields within these addresses encode unsigned integers. When describing
the generation of addresses we use setter-methods that take positive integers
and set the bits of a field to the binary representation of that integer of the length
of the field. We also assume that setting the L-tree bit to zero,
does also set the (second) padding block to zero.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Strings of Base w Numbers" anchor="basew">
<t>
A byte string can be considered as a string of base w numbers, i.e.
integers in the set {0, ... , w - 1}. The correspondence is defined by
the function base_w(X, w) as follows. If X is an m-byte string, w is a
member of the set {4, 16}, then base_w(X, w) outputs a length
8 * m / lg(w) array of integers between 0 and w - 1.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
Algorithm 1: base_w(X, w)
</preamble>
<artwork>
int in = 0;
int out = 0;
unsigned int total = 0;
int bits = 0;
int consumed;
for ( consumed = 0; consumed < 8 * m; consumed += lg(w) ) {
if ( bits == 0 ) {
total = X[m - 1 - in];
in++;
bits += 8;
}
bits -= lg(w);
basew[out] = (total >> bits) AND (w - 1);
out++;
}
return basew;
</artwork>
</figure>
<figure>
<preamble>
For example, if X is the (big endian) byte string 0x1234, then base_w(X, 4) returns the array
a = {0, 3, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2}.
</preamble>
<artwork>
X (represented as bits)
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
| 0| 0| 0| 1| 0| 0| 1| 0| 0| 0| 1| 1| 0| 1| 0| 0|
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
X[0] | X[1]
X (represented as base 4 numbers)
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
base_w(X, 4)
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
a[0] a[1] a[2] a[3] a[4] a[5] a[6] a[7]
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section title="Member Functions" anchor="member_f">
<t>
To simplify algorithm descriptions, we assume the existence of member functions.
If a complex data structure like a public key PK contains a value X then getX(PK) returns
the value of X for this public key. Accordingly, setX(PK, X, Y) sets value X in PK to the
value hold by Y.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="primitives" title="Primitives">
<section anchor="wots" title="WOTS+ One-Time Signatures">
<t>
This section describes the WOTS+ one-time signature system, in a version similar to
<xref target="Huelsing13"/>. WOTS+ is a one-time signature scheme; while a private key can be
used to sign any message, each private key MUST be used only once to sign a single message. In particular, if a
secret key is used to sign two different messages, the scheme becomes insecure.
</t>
<t>
The section starts with an explanation of parameters. Afterwards, the so-called chaining function,
which forms the main building block of the WOTS+ scheme, is explained. It follows a description of the algorithms for
key generation, signing and verification. Finally, pseudorandom key generation is discussed.
</t>
<section title='WOTS+ Parameters' anchor='wots_params'>
<t>
WOTS+ uses the parameters m, n, and w; they all take
positive integer values. These parameters are summarized as follows:
<list>
<t>m : the message length in bytes</t>
<t>n : the length, in bytes, of a secret key, public key, or signature element</t>
<t>w : the Winternitz parameter; it is a member of the set {4, 16}
</t>
</list>
The parameters are used to compute values len, len_1 and len_2:
<list>
<t>len : the number of n-byte string elements in a WOTS+
secret key, public key, and signature. It is computed as len = len_1 + len_2,
with len_1 = ceil(8m/lg(w)) and len_2 = floor(lg(len_1*(w-1))/lg(w)) + 1
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
The value of n is determined by the cryptographic hash function used
for WOTS+.
The hash function is chosen to ensure an appropriate level of
security. The value of m is the input length that can be processed by the signing algorithm.
It is often the length of a message digest. The parameter w can be chosen from the set {4, 16}. A larger
value of w results in shorter signatures but slower overall signing operations; it has little
effect on security. Choices of w are limited to the values 4 and 16 since
these values yield optimal trade-offs and easy implementation.
</t>
<section title='WOTS+ Functions' anchor='wots_hash_func'>
<t>
The WOTS+ algorithm uses a keyed cryptographic hash function F.
F accepts and returns byte strings of length n using keys of length n. Security requirements on F
are discussed in <xref target='Security' />.
In addition, WOTS+ uses a pseudorandom generator G. G takes as input an n-byte key and a 16-byte
index and generates pseudorandom outputs of length n. Security requirements on G
are discussed in <xref target='Security' />.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section title='WOTS+ Chaining Function' anchor='wots_chain'>
<t>
The chaining function (Algorithm 2) computes an iteration of F on an n-byte input
using outputs of G. It takes a hash function address as input.
This address will have the first 119 bits set to encode the address of this chain.
In each iteration, one output of G is used as key for F and a second output is XORed to the intermediate result before it is
processed by F. In the following, ADRS is a 16-byte hash function address as specified in <xref target='address'/> and SEED is an n-byte string, both
used to generate the outputs of G. The chaining function takes
as input an n-byte string X, a start index i, a number of steps s, as well as ADRS and SEED.
The chaining function returns as output the value obtained by iterating F for s times on
input X, using the outputs of G.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 2: Chaining Function</preamble>
<artwork>
if ( s is equal to 0 ) {
return X;
}
if ( (i+s) > w-1 ) {
return NULL;
}
byte[n] tmp = chain(X, i, s-1, SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setHashAddress(i+s-1);
ADRS.setKeyBit(0);
BM = G(SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setKeyBit(1);
KEY = G(SEED, ADRS);
tmp = F(KEY, tmp XOR BM);
return tmp;
</artwork>
<postamble>
</postamble>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='WOTS+ Private Key' anchor='wots_prv_key'>
<t>
The private key in WOTS+, denoted by sk, is a length len array of n-byte strings. This
private key MUST be only used to sign exactly one message. Each n-byte string MUST either
be selected randomly from the uniform distribution or using a cryptographically secure pseudorandom procedure.
In the latter case, the security of the used procedure MUST at least match that of the WOTS+ parameters used.
For a further discussion on pseudorandom key generation see the end of this section.
The following pseudocode (Algorithm 3) describes an algorithm for generating sk.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 3: Generating a WOTS+ Private Key</preamble>
<artwork>
for ( i = 0; i < len; i = i + 1 ) {
set sk[i] to a uniformly random n-byte string;
}
return sk;
</artwork>
<postamble>
</postamble>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='WOTS+ Public Key' anchor='wots_pub_key'>
<t>
A WOTS+ key pair defines a virtual structure that consists
of len hash chains of length w. The len n-byte strings in the secret
key each define the start node for one hash chain. The public
key consists of the end nodes of these hash chains. Therefore, like
the secret key, the public key is also a length len array of n-byte
strings. To compute the hash chain, the chaining function (Algorithm 2)
is used. A hash function address ADRS and a seed SEED has to be provided by the calling algorithm.
This address will encode the address of the WOTS+ key pair within a greater structure.
Hence, a WOTS+ algorithm MUST NOT manipulate any other fields of ADRS
than chain address, hash address and key bit.
Please note that the SEED used here is public information also available to a verifier.
The following pseudocode (Algorithm 4) describes an algorithm for generating
the public key pk, where sk is the private key.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 4 (WOTS_genPK):
Generating a WOTS+ Public Key From a Private Key
</preamble>
<artwork>
for ( i = 0; i < len; i = i + 1 ) {
ADRS.setChainAddress(i);
pk[i] = chain(sk[i], 0, w-1, SEED, ADRS);
}
return pk;
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='WOTS+ Signature Generation' anchor='wots_sig_gen'>
<t>
A WOTS+ signature is a length len array of n-byte strings. The WOTS+
signature is generated by mapping a message to len integers between 0 and
w - 1. To this end, the message is transformed into base w numbers using the base_w function defined in <xref target="basew"/>.
Next, a checksum is computed and appended to the transformed message as len_2 base w numbers using the base_w function.
Each of the base w integers is used to select a node from a different hash chain. The
signature is formed by concatenating the selected nodes.
The pseudocode for signature generation is shown below (Algorithm 5), where M is the message and sig
is the resulting signature.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 5 (WOTS_sign):
Generating a signature from a private key and a
message</preamble>
<artwork>
csum = 0;
// convert message to base w
msg = base_w(M,w);
// compute checksum
for ( i = 0; i < len_1; i = i + 1 ) {
csum = csum + w - 1 - msg[i];
}
// Convert csum to base w
csum = csum << ( 8 - ( len_2 % 8 ));
len_2_bytes = ceil( len_2 / 8 );
msg = msg || base_w(toByte(csum, len_2_bytes), w);
for ( i = 0; i < len; i = i + 1 ) {
ADRS.setChainAddress(i);
sig[i] = chain(sk[i], 0, msg[i], SEED, ADRS);
}
return sig;
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
The data format for a signature is given below.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>WOTS+ Signature</preamble>
<artwork>
+---------------------------------+
| algorithm OID |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| sig_ots[0] | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
~ .... ~
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| sig_ots[len-1] | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='WOTS+ Signature Verification' anchor='wots_sig_vrf'>
<t>
In order to verify a signature sig on a message M, the verifier computes a WOTS+ public key value from the signature.
This can be done by "completing" the chain computations starting from the signature values,
using the base w values of the message hash and its checksum. This step, called WOTS_pkFromSig, is described below
in Algorithm 6. The result of WOTS_pkFromSig is then compared to the given public key. If the values are equal, the signature is accepted.
Otherwise, the signature is rejected.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 6 (WOTS_pkFromSig):
Computing a WOTS+ public key from a message and its signature</preamble>
<artwork>
csum = 0;
// convert message to base w
msg = base_w(M,w);
// compute checksum
for ( i = 0; i < len_1; i = i + 1 ) {
csum = csum + w - 1 - msg[i];
}
// Convert csum to base w
csum = csum << ( 8 - ( len_2 % 8 ));
len_2_bytes = ceil( len_2 / 8 );
msg = msg || base_w(toByte(csum, len_2_bytes), w);
for ( i = 0; i < len; i = i + 1 ) {
ADRS.setChainAddress(i);
tmp_pk[i] = chain(sig[i], msg[i], w-1-msg[i], SEED, ADRS);
}
return tmp_pk;
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
Note: XMSS uses WOTS_pkFromSig to compute a public key value and delays the comparison to a later point.
</t>
</section>
<section title='Pseudorandom Key Generation' anchor='prg_kg'>
<t>
An implementation MAY use a cryptographically secure pseudorandom method to
generate the secret key from a single n-byte value. For example, the method
suggested in <xref target="BDH11"/> and explained below MAY be used. Other methods MAY be used. The choice of a
pseudorandom method does not affect interoperability, but the
cryptographic strength MUST match that of the used WOTS+ parameters.
</t>
<t>
The advantage of generating the secret key elements from a random n-byte string is
that only this n-byte string needs to be stored instead of the full secret key. The key
can be regenerated when needed. The suggested method from <xref target="BDH11"/>
can be described using G. During key generation a uniformly random n-byte string S is sampled
from a secure source of randomness. This string S is stored as secret key. The secret key elements
are computed as sk[i] = G'(S, toByte(i,16)) whenever needed. Please note that this seed S MUST be different
from the seed SEED used to randomize the hash function calls. Also, this seed S MUST be kept secret.
</t>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="schemes" title="Schemes">
<t>
In this section, the eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme
(XMSS) is described using WOTS+. XMSS comes in two flavors: First, a single-tree
variant (XMSS) and second a multi-tree variant (XMSS^MT). Both allow
combining a large number of WOTS+ key pairs under a single small public
key. The main ingredient added is a binary hash tree construction.
XMSS uses a single hash tree while XMSS^MT uses a tree of XMSS
key pairs.
</t>
<section anchor="xmss" title="XMSS: eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme">
<t>
XMSS is a method for signing a potentially large but fixed number of
messages. It is based on the Merkle signature scheme. XMSS uses five
cryptographic components: WOTS+ as OTS method, two additional
cryptographic hash functions H and H_m, a pseudorandom function
PRF_m, and a pseudorandom generator G. One of the main advantages of XMSS with WOTS+ is that it does
not rely on the collision resistance of the used hash functions but on
weaker properties. Each XMSS public/private key pair is associated
with a perfect binary tree, every node of which contains an n-byte
value. Each tree leaf contains a special tree hash of a WOTS+ public
key value. Each non-leaf tree node is computed by first concatenating
the values of its child nodes, computing the XOR with a bitmask, and
applying the keyed hash function H to the result. The bitmasks and the keys
for the hash function H are generated from a (public) seed that is part of the
public key using the pseudorandom generator G. The value corresponding to
the root of the XMSS tree forms the XMSS public key together with the
seed.
</t>
<t>
To generate a key pair that can be used to sign 2^h messages, a tree of
height h is used. XMSS is a stateful signature scheme, meaning that
the secret key changes after every signature. To prevent one-time
secret keys from being used twice, the WOTS+ key pairs are numbered
from 0 to (2^h)-1 according to the related leaf, starting from index 0
for the leftmost leaf. The secret key contains an index that is
updated after every signature, such that it contains the index of the
next unused WOTS+ key pair.
</t>
<t>
A signature consists of the index of the used WOTS+ key pair, the WOTS+
signature on the message and the so-called authentication path. The
latter is a vector of tree nodes that allow a verifier to compute a
value for the root of the tree starting from a WOTS+ signature. A verifier computes the root value and
compares it to the respective value in the XMSS public key. If they
match, the signature is valid. The XMSS secret key consists of all
WOTS+ secret keys and the actual index. To reduce storage, a
pseudorandom key generation procedure, as described in
<xref target="BDH11"/>, MAY be used. The security of the used method
MUST at least match the security of the XMSS instance.
</t>
<section title='XMSS Parameters' anchor='xmss_params'>
<t>
XMSS has the following parameters:
<list>
<t>
h : the height (number of levels - 1) of the tree
</t>
<t>
n : the length in bytes of each node
</t>
<t>
m : the length of the message digest
</t>
<t>
w : the Winternitz parameter as defined for WOTS+ in
<xref target="wots"/>
</t>
</list>
There are N = 2^h leaves in the tree.
</t>
<t>
For XMSS and XMSS^MT, secret and public keys are denoted by SK and PK.
For WOTS+, secret and public keys are denoted by sk and pk,
respectively. XMSS and XMSS^MT signatures are denoted by Sig. WOTS+
signatures are denoted by sig.
</t>
</section>
<section title='XMSS Hash Functions' anchor='xmss_hash_func'>
<t>
Besides the cryptographic hash function F required by WOTS+, XMSS
uses four more functions:
<list>
<t>A cryptographic hash function H. H accepts n-byte keys and byte strings of length
(2 * n) and returns an n-byte string.</t>
<t>A cryptographic hash function H_m. H_m accepts m-byte keys and byte strings of arbitrary
length and returns an m-byte string.</t>
<t>A pseudorandom function PRF_m. PRF_m accepts byte strings of
arbitrary length and an m-byte key and returns an m-byte string.</t>
<t>A pseudorandom generator G. G takes as input an n-byte key and a 16-byte
index and generates pseudorandom outputs of length n.</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmsss_priv" title="XMSS Private Key">
<t>
An XMSS private key contains N = 2^h WOTS+ private keys,
the leaf index idx of the next WOTS+ private key that has not yet
been used and SK_PRF, an m-byte key for the PRF. The leaf
index idx is initialized to zero when the XMSS private key is created. The PRF key SK_PRF
MUST be sampled from a secure source of randomness that follows the uniform distribution.
The WOTS+ secret keys MUST be generated as described in <xref target="wots"/>. To reduce
the secret key size, a cryptographic pseudorandom method MAY be used as discussed at the end
of this section.
For the following algorithm descriptions, the existence of a method getWOTS_SK(SK,i) is assumed.
This method takes as inputs an XMSS secret key SK and an integer i and outputs the i^th WOTS+ secret
key of SK.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="rand_hash" title="Randomized Tree Hashing">
<t>
To improve readability we introduce a function RAND_HASH(LEFT, RIGHT, SEED, ADRS) that does the randomized hashing.
It takes as input two n-byte values LEFT and RIGHT that represent the left and the right half
of the hash function input, the seed SEED for G and the address ADRS of this hash function call.
RAND_HASH first uses G with SEED and ADRS to generate a key KEY and n-byte bitmasks BM_0, BM_1.
Then it returns the randomized hash H(KEY, (LEFT XOR BM_0)||(RIGHT XOR BM_1)).
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 7: RAND_HASH </preamble>
<artwork>
ADRS.setKeyBit(0);
ADRS.setBlockBit(0);
BM_0 = G(SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setBlockBit(1);
BM_1 = G(SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setKeyBit(1);
ADRS.setBlockBit(0);
KEY = G(SEED, ADRS);
return H(KEY, (LEFT XOR BM_0) || (RIGHT XOR BM_1));
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='L-Trees' anchor='ltree'>
<t>
To compute the leaves of the binary hash tree, a so-called L-tree is used. An L-tree is an unbalanced binary
hash tree, distinct but similar to the main XMSS binary hash tree. The
algorithm ltree (Algorithm 8) takes as input a WOTS+ public key pk and
compresses it to a single n-byte value pk[0]. Towards this end it also takes an
address ADRS as input that encodes the address of the L-tree.
The algorithm uses G and the seed SEED generated during public key generation.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 8: ltree </preamble>
<artwork>
unsigned int len' = len;
unsigned int j = 0;
ADRS.setTreeHeight(0);
while ( len' > 1 ) {
for ( i = 0; i < floor(len' / 2); i = i + 1 ) {
ADRS.setTreeIndex(i);
pk[i] = RAND_HASH(pk[2i], pk[2i + 1], SEED, ADRS);
}
if ( len' % 2 == 1 ) {
pk[floor(len' / 2) + 1] = pk[len'];
}
len' = ceil(len' / 2);
ADRS.setTreeHeight(ADRS.getTreeHeight() + 1);
}
return pk[0];
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='TreeHash' anchor='treehash'>
<t>
For the computation of the internal n-byte nodes of a Merkle tree, the
subroutine treeHash (Algorithm 9) accepts an XMSS secret key SK,
an unsigned integer s (the start index), an unsigned integer t (the target node height),
a seed SEED, and an address ADRS that encodes the address of the containing tree.
For the height of a node within a tree counting starts with the leaves at height zero.
The treeHash algorithm returns the root node of a tree of height t
with the leftmost leaf being the hash of the WOTS+ pk with index s.
It is REQUIRED that s % 2^t = 0, i.e. that the leaf at index s is a left most
leaf of a sub-tree of height t. Otherwise the hash-addressing scheme fails.
The treeHash algorithm uses a stack holding up to (t-1) n-byte strings, with
the usual stack functions push() and pop().
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 9: treeHash</preamble>
<artwork>
if( s % (1 << t) != 0 ) return -1;
for ( i = 0; i < 2^t; i = i + 1 ) {
ADRS.setOTSBit(1);
ADRS.setOTSAddress(s+i);
pk = WOTS_genPK (getWOTS_SK(SK, s+i), SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setOTSBit(0);
ADRS.setLTreeBit(1);
ADRS.setLTreeAddress(s+i);
node = ltree(pk, SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setLTreeBit(0);
ADRS.setTreeHeight(0);
ADRS.setTreeIndex(i+s);
while ( Top node on Stack has same height t' as node ) {
ADRS.setTreeIndex((ADRS.getTreeIndex() - 1) / 2);
node = RAND_HASH(Stack.pop(), node, SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setTreeHeight(ADRS.getTreeHeight() + 1);
}
Stack.push(node);
}
return Stack.pop();
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section anchor="xmss_alg" title="XMSS Public Key">
<t>
The XMSS public key is computed as described in XMSS_genPK (Algorithm 10).
The algorithm takes the XMSS secret key SK, and the tree height h. The XMSS public key PK
consists of the root of the binary hash tree and the seed SEED. SEED is generated as
a uniformly random n-byte string. Although SEED is public, it is important that it is
generated using a good entropy source. The root is computed using treeHash.
For XMSS, there is only a single main tree. Hence, the used address is set to the all-zero-string.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 10: XMSS_genPK - Generate an XMSS public key from an
XMSS private key</preamble>
<artwork>
set SEED to a uniformly random n-byte string;
ADRS = toByte(0,16);
root = treeHash(SK, 0, h, SEED, ADRS);
PK = root || SEED;
return PK;
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
Public and private key generation MAY be interleaved to save space. Especially, when
a pseudorandom method is used to generate the secret key, generation MAY be done when
the respective WOTS+ key pair is needed by treeHash.
</t>
<t>
The format of an XMSS public key is given below.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>XMSS Public Key</preamble>
<artwork>
+---------------------------------+
| algorithm OID |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| root node | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| SEED | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section anchor="xmss_sig" title="XMSS Signature">
<t>
An XMSS signature is a (4 + m + (len + h) * n)-byte string consisting of
<list>
<t>
the index idx_sig of the used WOTS+ key pair (4 bytes),
</t>
<t>
a byte string r used for randomized message hashing (m bytes),
</t>
<t>
a WOTS+ signature sig_ots (len * n bytes),
</t>
<t>
the so-called authentication path 'auth' for the leaf associated with the used
WOTS+ key pair (h * n bytes).
</t>
</list>
</t>
<t>
The authentication path is an array of h n-byte strings. It contains
the siblings of the nodes on the path from the used leaf to the root.
It does not contain the nodes on the path itself. These nodes are
needed by a verifier to compute a root node for the tree from the WOTS+
public key. A node Node is addressed by its position in the tree.
Node(x,y) denotes the x^th node on level y with x = 0 being the leftmost node on a level.
The leaves are on level 0, the root is on level h. An authentication path contains exactly
one node on every layer 0 ≤ x ≤ h-1.
For the i^th WOTS+ key pair, counting from zero,
the j^th authentication path node is
<list>
<t>Node(j, floor(i / (2^j)) XOR 1)</t>
</list>
Given an XMSS secret key SK and seed SEED, all nodes in a tree are determined. Their value is defined in terms of treeHash(Algorithm 9).
Hence, one can compute the authentication path:
</t>
<figure>
<artwork>
ADRS = toByte(0, 16);
for (j = 0; j < h; j++) {
k = floor(i / (2^j)) XOR 1;
auth[j] = treeHash(SK, k * 2^j, j, SEED, ADRS);
}
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
The data format for a signature is given below.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>XMSS Signature</preamble>
<artwork>
+---------------------------------+
| |
| index idx_sig | 4 bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| randomness r | m bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| WOTS+ signature sig_ots | len * n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| auth[0] | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
~ .... ~
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| auth[h-1] | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section anchor="xmss_sig_gen" title="XMSS Signature Generation">
<t>
To compute the XMSS signature of a message M with an XMSS private key,
the signer first computes a randomized message digest. Then a WOTS+
signature of the message is computed using the next unused WOTS+ private key.
Next, the authentication path is computed. Finally, the secret key is updated, i.e.
idx is incremented. An implementation MUST NOT output the signature
before the updated private key.
</t>
<t>
The node values of the authentication path MAY be computed in any way.
This computation is assumed to be performed by the subroutine buildAuth
for the function XMSS_sign, as below. The fastest alternative is to store all tree nodes and set the
array in the signature by copying them, respectively. The least
storage-intensive alternative is to recompute all nodes for each
signature online. There exist several algorithms in between, with different
time/storage trade-offs. For an overview see <xref target="BDS09"/>.
Note that the details of this procedure are not
relevant to interoperability; it is not necessary to know any of these
details in order to perform the signature verification operation. As a
consequence, buildAuth is not specified here.
</t>
<t>
The algorithm XMSS_sign (Algorithm 11) described below calculates an
updated secret key SK and a signature on a message M. XMSS_sign takes as inputs a message M of an arbitrary length,
an XMSS secret key SK and seed SEED. It returns the byte string containing the concatenation of
the updated secret key SK and the signature Sig.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 11: XMSS_sign - Generate an XMSS signature and
update the XMSS secret key</preamble>
<artwork>
idx_sig = getIdx(SK);
ADRS = toByte(0,16);
auth = buildAuth(SK, idx_sig, SEED, ADRS);
byte[m] r = PRF_m(getSK_PRF(SK), M);
byte[m] M' = H_m(r, M);
ADRS.setOTSBit(0);
ADRS.setOTSAddress(idx_sig);
sig_ots = WOTS_sign(getWOTS_SK(SK, idx_sig), M', SEED, ADRS);
Sig = (idx_sig || r || sig_ots || auth);
setIdx(SK, idx_sig + 1);
return (SK || Sig);
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section anchor="xmss_sig_vrf" title="XMSS Signature Verification">
<t>
An XMSS signature is verified by first computing the message digest
using randomness r and a message M. Then the used WOTS+ public key pk_ots is computed
from the WOTS+ signature using WOTS_pkFromSig. The WOTS+ public key in turn is used to compute the
corresponding leaf using an L-tree. The leaf, together with index idx_sig and
authentication path auth is used to compute an
alternative root value for the tree. These first steps are done by XMSS_rootFromSig (Algorithm 12). The
verification succeeds if and only if the computed root value matches the one in the XMSS public key.
In any other case it MUST return fail.
</t>
<t>
The main part of XMSS signature verification is done by the function XMSS_rootFromSig (Algorithm 12) described below.
XMSS_rootFromSig takes as inputs an XMSS signature Sig, a
message M, and seed SEED. XMSS_rootFromSig returns an n-byte string holding
the value of the root of a tree defined by the input data.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
Algorithm 12: XMSS_rootFromSig - Compute a root node using an XMSS
signature, a message, and seed SEED
</preamble>
<artwork>
byte[m] M' = H_m(r, M);
ADRS = toByte(0,16);
ADRS.setOTSBit(1);
ADRS.setOTSAddress(idx_sig);
pk_ots = WOTS_pkFromSig(sig_ots, M', SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setOTSBit(0);
ADRS.setLTreeBit(1);
ADRS.setLTreeAddress(idx_sig);
byte[n][2] node;
node[0] = ltree(pk_ots, SEED, ADRS);
ADRS.setLTreeBit(0);
ADRS.setTreeIndex(idx_sig);
for ( k = 0; k < h; k = k + 1 ) {
ADRS.setTreeHeight(k);
if ( floor(idx_sig / (2^k)) % 2 is equal to 0 ) {
ADRS.setTreeIndex(ADRS.getTreeIndex() / 2);
node[1] = RAND_HASH(node[0], auth[k], SEED, ADRS);
} else {
ADRS.setTreeIndex(ADRS.getTreeIndex() - 1 / 2);
node[1] = RAND_HASH(auth[k], node[0], SEED, ADRS);
}
node[0] = node[1];
}
return node[0];
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
The full XMSS signature verification is depicted below. XMSS^MT uses only XMSS_rootFromSig and delegates
the comparison to a later comparison of data depending on its output.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
Algorithm 13: XMSS_verify - Verify an XMSS signature using an XMSS
signature, the corresponding XMSS public key and a message
</preamble>
<artwork>
byte[n] node = XMSS_rootFromSig(Sig, M, getSEED(PK));
if ( node is equal to root in PK ) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='Pseudorandom Key Generation' anchor='prg_kg_xmss'>
<t>
An implementation MAY use a cryptographically secure pseudorandom method to
generate the XMSS secret key from a single n-byte value. For example, the method
suggested in <xref target="BDH11"/> and explained below MAY be used. Other methods MAY be used. The choice of a
pseudorandom method does not affect interoperability, but the
cryptographic strength MUST match that of the used XMSS parameters.
</t>
<t>
For XMSS a similar method than the one used for WOTS+ can be used.
The suggested method from <xref target="BDH11"/> can be described using G.
During key generation a uniformly random n-byte string S is sampled
from a secure source of randomness. This seed S MUST NOT be confused with the public seed SEED.
The seed S MUST be independent of SEED and as it is the main secret, it MUST be kept secret.
This seed S is used to generate an n-byte value S_ots for each WOTS+ key pair.
The n-byte value S_ots can then be used to compute the
respective WOTS+ secret key using the method described in <xref target="prg_kg"/>.
The seeds for the WOTS+ key pairs are computed as S_ots[i] = G(S,i). The second parameter of G is
the index i of the WOTS+ key pair, represented as 16-byte string in the common way.
An advantage of this method is that a WOTS+ key can be computed using only len + 1 evaluations of G when S is given.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="idx_handling" title="Free Index Handling and Partial Secret Keys">
<t>
Some applications might require to work with partial secret keys or copies of secret keys.
Examples include delegation of signing rights / proxy signatures, and load balancing.
Such applications MAY use their own key format and MAY use a signing algorithm different from the
one described above. The index in partial secret keys or copies of a secret key MAY be manipulated
as required by the applications. However, applications MUST establish means that guarantee that
each index and thereby each WOTS+ key pair is used to sign only a single message.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<!-- ########################################################################### XMSS MT ##########################################################################-->
<section anchor="xmssmt"
title="XMSS^MT: Multi-Tree XMSS">
<t>
XMSS^MT is a method for signing a large but fixed number of messages. It was first described in <xref target='HRB13'/>. It builds on XMSS.
XMSS^MT uses a tree of several layers of XMSS trees. The trees on
top and intermediate layers are used to sign the root nodes of the
trees on the respective layer below. Trees on the lowest layer are used to sign the actual
messages. All XMSS trees have equal height.
</t>
<t>
Consider an XMSS^MT tree of total height h that has d layers of XMSS trees of height h / d. Then layer d - 1 contains
one XMSS tree, layer d - 2 contains 2^(h / d) XMSS trees, and so on. Finally, layer 0 contains 2^(h - h / d) XMSS trees.
</t>
<section title='XMSS^MT Parameters' anchor='xmssmt_params'>
<t>
In addition to all XMSS parameters, an XMSS^MT system requires
the number of tree layers d, specified as an integer value that divides h without remainder. The same
tree height h / d and the same Winternitz parameter w are used for all
tree layers.
</t>
<t>
All the trees on higher layers sign root nodes of other trees which are n-byte strings. Hence, no message
compression is needed and WOTS+ is used to sign the root nodes themselves instead of their hash values.
Hence the WOTS+ message length for these layers is n not m. Accordingly, the values of len_1, len_2 and len change for these layers.
The parameters len_1_n, len_2_n, and len_n denote the respective values computed using n as message length for WOTS+.
</t>
</section>
<section title='XMSS Algorithms Without Message Hash' anchor='wo_hash'>
<t>
As all XMSS trees besides those on layer 0 are used to sign short fixed length messages, the initial message hash can be omitted.
In the description below XMSS_sign_wo_hash and XMSS_rootFromSig_wo_hash are versions of XMSS_sign and XMSS_rootFromSig, respectively, that omit the
initial message hash. They are obtained by setting M' = M in the above algorithms. Accordingly, the evaluations of H_m and PRF_m MUST be omitted.
This also means that no randomization element r for the message hash is required.
XMSS signatures generated by XMSS_sign_wo_hash and verified by XMSS_rootFromSig_wo_hash MUST NOT contain a value r.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssmt_priv_mt" title="XMSS^MT Private Key">
<t>
An XMSS^MT private key SK_MT consists of one reduced XMSS private key for each XMSS tree. These reduced XMSS
private keys contain no pseudorandom function key and no index.
Instead, SK_MT contains a single m-byte pseudorandom function key SK_PRF and a single (ceil(h / 8))-byte index idx_MT.
The index is a global index over all WOTS+ key pairs of all XMSS trees on layer 0. It is initialized with 0. It stores the index of the last used WOTS+ key pair on the bottom
layer, i.e. a number between 0 and 2^h - 1.
</t>
<t>
The algorithm descriptions below uses a function getXMSS_SK(SK, x, y) that outputs the reduced secret key of
the x^th XMSS tree on the y^th layer.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssmt_alg_mt" title="XMSS^MT Public Key">
<t>
The XMSS^MT public key PK_MT contains the root of the single XMSS tree on layer d-1 and the seed SEED.
The pseudorandom generator G is used with SEED to generate the bitmasks and keys for all XMSS trees.
Algorithm 14 shows pseudocode to generate PK_MT. First,
the n-byte SEED is chosen uniformly at random. The n-byte root node of the top layer tree is computed using
treeHash. The algorithm XMSSMT_genPK takes the XMSS^MT secret key SK_MT as an input and outputs an XMSS^MT public
key PK_MT.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>Algorithm 14: XMSSMT_genPK - Generate an XMSS^MT public key
from an XMSS^MT private key</preamble>
<artwork>
set SEED to a uniformly random n-byte string;
ADRS = toByte(0,16);
ADRS.setLayerAddress(d-1);
root = treeHash(getXMSS_SK(SK_MT, 0, d - 1), 0, h / d, SEED, ADRS);
PK_MT = root || SEED;
return PK_MT;
</artwork>
<postamble>
</postamble>
</figure>
<t>
The format of an XMSS^MT public key is given below.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>XMSS^MT Public Key</preamble>
<artwork>
+---------------------------------+
| algorithm OID |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| root node | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| SEED | n bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssmt_sig" title="XMSS^MT Signature">
<t>
An XMSS^MT signature Sig_MT is a byte string of length (ceil(h / 8) + m + (h + len + (d - 1) * len_n) * n).
It consists of
<list>
<t>
the index idx_sig of the used WOTS+ key pair on the bottom layer (ceil(h / 8) bytes),
</t>
<t>
a byte string r used for randomized message hashing (m bytes),
</t>
<t>
one reduced XMSS signature ((h + len) * n bytes),
</t>
<t>
d-1 reduced XMSS signatures with message length n ((h + len_n) * n bytes).
</t>
</list>
The reduced XMSS signatures contain no index idx and no byte string r. They only contain a WOTS+ signature sig_ots and
an authentication path auth. The first reduced XMSS signature contains a WOTS+ signature that consists of len n-byte elements. The remaining
reduced XMSS signatures contain a WOTS+ signature on an n-byte message that consists of len_n n-byte elements.
</t>
<t>
The data format for a signature is given below.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>XMSS^MT signature</preamble>
<artwork>
+---------------------------------+
| |
| index idx_sig | ceil(h / 8) bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| randomness r | m bytes
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| (reduced) XMSS signature Sig | (h + len) * n bytes
| (bottom layer 0) |
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| (reduced) XMSS signature Sig | (h + len_n) * n bytes
| (layer 1) |
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
~ .... ~
| |
+---------------------------------+
| |
| (reduced) XMSS signature Sig | (h + len_n) * n bytes
| (layer d-1) |
| |
+---------------------------------+
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssmt_sig_gen" title="XMSS^MT Signature Generation">
<t>
To compute the XMSS^MT signature Sig_MT of a message M using an XMSS^MT private
key SK_MT and seed SEED, XMSSMT_sign (Algorithm 15) described below uses XMSS_sign and XMSS_sign_wo_hash as defined in <xref target="wo_hash"/>.
First, the signature index is set to idx. Next, PRF_m is used to compute a pseudorandom m-byte string r.
This m-byte string is then used to compute a randomized message digest of length m.
The message digest is signed using the WOTS+ key pair on the bottom layer with absolute index idx.
The authentication path for the WOTS+ key pair is computed as well as the root of the containing XMSS tree.
The root is signed by the parent XMSS tree. This is repeated until the top tree is reached.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
Algorithm 15: XMSSMT_sign - Generate an XMSS^MT signature and update
the XMSS^MT secret key
</preamble>
<artwork>
ADRS = toByte(0,16);
SK_PRF = getSK_PRF(SK_MT);
idx_sig = getIdx(SK_MT);
setIdx(SK_MT, idx_sig + 1);
Sig_MT = idx_sig;
unsigned int idx_tree = (h - h / d) most significant bits of idx_sig;
unsigned int idx_leaf = (h / d) least significant bits of idx_sig;
SK = idx_leaf || SK_PRF || getXMSS_SK(SK_MT, idx_tree, 0);
ADRS.setLayerAddress(0);
ADRS.setTreeAddress(idx_tree);
Sig_tmp = XMSS_sign(M, SK, SEED, ADRS);
Sig_tmp = Sig_tmp without idx;
Sig_MT = Sig_MT || Sig_tmp;
for ( j = 1; j < d; j = j + 1 ) {
root = treeHash(SK, 0, h / d, SEED, ADRS);
idx_leaf = (h / d) least significant bits of idx_tree;
idx_tree = (h - j * (h / d)) most significant bits of idx_tree;
SK = idx_leaf || SK_PRF || getXMSS_SK(SK_MT, idx_tree, j);
ADRS.setLayerAddress(j);
ADRS.setTreeAddress(idx_tree);
Sig_tmp = XMSS_sign_wo_hash(root, SK, SEED, ADRS)
with idx removed;
Sig_MT = Sig_MT || Sig_tmp;
}
return SK_MT || Sig_MT;
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
Algorithm 15 is only one method to compute XMSS^MT signatures. Especially, there exist time-memory trade-offs that
allow to reduce the signing time to less than the signing time of an XMSS scheme with tree height h / d. These trade-offs
prevent certain values from being recomputed several times by keeping a state and
distribute all computations over all signature generations. Details can be found in <xref target="Huelsing13a"/>.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssmt_sig_vrf"
title="XMSS^MT Signature Verification">
<t>
XMSS^MT signature verification (Algorithm 16) can be summarized as
d XMSS signature verifications with small changes. First, only the message is hashed.
The remaining XMSS signatures are on the root nodes of trees which have a fixed length. Second,
instead of comparing the computed root node to a given value, a signature on the root is verified.
Only the root node of the top tree is compared to the value in the XMSS^MT public key.
XMSSMT_verify uses XMSS_rootFromSig and XMSS_rootFromSig_wo_hash. XMSSMT_verify
takes as inputs an XMSS^MT signature Sig^MT, a message M and a public
key PK_MT. It outputs a boolean.
</t>
<figure>
<preamble>
Algorithm 16: XMSSMT_verify - Verify an XMSS^MT signature Sig_MT on a message M using an XMSS^MT
public key PK_MT
</preamble>
<artwork>
idx = getIdx(Sig_MT);
SEED = getSEED(PK_MT);
ADRS = toByte(0,16);
unsigned int idx_leaf = (h / d) least significant bits of idx;
unsigned int idx_tree = (h - h / d) most significant bits of idx;
Sig' = leaf || setR(Sig_MT) || getXMSSSignature(Sig, 0);
ADRS.setLayerAddress(0);
ADRS.setTreeAddress(idx_tree);
byte[n] node = XMSS_rootFromSig(Sig', M, SEED, ADRS);
for ( j = 1; j < d; j = j + 1 ) {
idx_leaf = (h / d) least significant bytes of idx_tree;
idx_tree = (h - j * h / d) most significant bytes of idx_tree;
Sig' = idx_leaf || getXMSSSignature(Sig, j);
ADRS.setLayerAddress(j);
ADRS.setTreeAddress(idx_tree);
node = XMSS_rootFromSig_wo_hash(Sig', node, SEED, ADRS);
}
if ( node is equal to getRoot(PK_MT) ) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
</artwork>
</figure>
</section>
<section title='Pseudorandom Key Generation' anchor='prg_kg_xmssmt'>
<t>
Like for XMSS, an implementation MAY use a cryptographically secure pseudorandom method to
generate the XMSS^MT secret key from a single n-byte value. For example, the method
explained below MAY be used. Other methods MAY be used, too. The choice of a
pseudorandom method does not affect interoperability, but the
cryptographic strength MUST match that of the used XMSS parameters.
</t>
<t>
For XMSS^MT a method similar to that for XMSS and WOTS+ can be used. The method uses
a G as pseudorandom generator. During key generation
a uniformly random n-byte string S_MT is sampled from a secure source of randomness. This seed S_MT is used
to generate one n-byte value S for each XMSS key pair. This n-byte value can be used to compute the
respective XMSS secret key using the method described in <xref target="prg_kg_xmss"/>.
Let S[x][y] be the seed for the x^th XMSS secret key on layer y. The seeds are computed as S[x][y] = G(G(S, y), x). The second parameter of G is
the index x (resp. level y), represented as 16-byte string in the common way.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="idx_handling_xmssmt" title="Free Index Handling and Partial Secret Keys">
<t>
The content of <xref target="idx_handling"/> also applies to XMSS^MT.
</t>
</section>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="param" title="Parameter Sets">
<t>
This note provides a first basic set of parameter sets which are assumed to cover most relevant applicants.
Parameter sets for two classical security levels are defined:
256 and 512 bits. Function output sizes are n = m = 32 and 64 bytes.
Considering quantum-computer-aided attacks, these output sizes yield post-quantum
security of 128 and 256 bits, respectively.
</t>
<t>
For the n = m = 32 and n = m = 64 settings, we give parameters that use
SHA2-256 and SHA2-512 as defined in <xref target="FIPS180"/>, respectively, and ChaCha20 as defined in <xref target="RFC7539"/>.
SHA2 does not provide a keyed-mode itself.
To implement a keyed hash-function, SHA2-256(toByte(0,32) || KEY || M) and SHA2-512(toByte(0,64) || KEY || M) are used.
This construction is used for the functions F, H, and H_m.
To implement PRF_m, HMAC-SHA2-256 and HMAC-SHA2-512 are used, respectively.
The pseudorandom generator G for n=32 is implemented as ChaCha20 using
SEED as key, the most significant 12 bytes of the address input as nonce and the least significant 4 bytes as counter.
The output consists of the first 32 bytes of the key stream.
The pseudorandom generator G for n=64 is implemented as HMAC-SHA2-512.
</t>
<section anchor="wotsparams" title="WOTS+ Parameters">
<t>
To fully describe a WOTS+ signature method, the parameters m, n, and w,
as well as the functions F and G MUST be specified. This section defines
several WOTS+ signature systems, each of which is identified by a name.
Values for len are provided for convenience.
</t>
<texttable anchor='wots_sig_table'>
<ttcol align='left'>Name</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>F</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>G</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>m</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>n</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>w</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>len</ttcol>
<c>WOTSP_SHA2-256_M32_W16</c><c>SHA-2</c><c>ChaCha20</c><c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c>
<c>WOTSP_SHA2-512_M64_W16</c><c>SHA-2</c><c>SHA-2</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c>
</texttable>
<t>
The implementation of the single functions is done as described above.
XDR formats for WOTS+ are listed in <xref target="wotsxdr"/>.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmsssparams" title="XMSS Parameters">
<t>
To fully describe an XMSS signature method, the parameters m, n, w, and h,
as well as the functions F, H, H_m, PRF_m, and G MUST be specified. This section defines
different XMSS signature systems, each of which is identified by a name.
We define parameter sets that implement the functions using
SHA2 and ChaCha20 for n = 32 and only SHA2 for n=64 as described above.
</t>
<texttable anchor='xmss_param_table_bm_sha'>
<ttcol align='left'>Name</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>m</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>n</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>w</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>len</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>h</ttcol>
<c>XMSS_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H10</c><c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>10</c>
<c>XMSS_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H16</c><c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>16</c>
<c>XMSS_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H20</c><c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>20</c>
<c>XMSS_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H10</c><c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>10</c>
<c>XMSS_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H16</c><c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>16</c>
<c>XMSS_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H20</c><c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>20</c>
</texttable>
<t>
The XDR formats for XMSS are listed in <xref target="xmssxdr"/>.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssmtparams" title="XMSS^MT Parameters">
<t>
To fully describe an XMSS^MT signature method, the parameters m, n, w, h, and d,
as well as the functions F, H, H_m, PRF_m, and G MUST be specified. This section defines
several XMSS^MT signature systems, each of which is identified by a name.
We define parameter sets that implement the functions using
SHA2 and ChaCha20 for n = 32 and only SHA2 for n=64 as described above.
</t>
<texttable anchor='xmssmt_param_table_sha'>
<ttcol align='left'>Name</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>m</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>n</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>w</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>len</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>h</ttcol>
<ttcol align='left'>d</ttcol>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H20_D2</c> <c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>20</c><c>2</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H20_D4</c> <c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>20</c><c>4</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H40_D2</c> <c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>40</c><c>2</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H40_D4</c> <c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>40</c><c>4</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H40_D8</c> <c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>40</c><c>8</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H60_D3</c> <c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>60</c><c>3</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H60_D6</c> <c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>60</c><c>6</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H60_D12</c><c>32</c><c>32</c><c>16</c><c>67</c> <c>60</c><c>12</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H20_D2</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>20</c><c>2</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H20_D4</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>20</c><c>4</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H40_D2</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>40</c><c>2</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H40_D4</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>40</c><c>4</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H40_D8</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>40</c><c>8</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H60_D3</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>60</c><c>3</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H60_D6</c> <c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>60</c><c>6</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H60_D12</c><c>64</c><c>64</c><c>16</c><c>131</c><c>60</c><c>12</c>
</texttable>
<t>
XDR formats for XMSS^MT are listed in <xref target="xmssmtxdr"/>.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="rationale" title="Rationale">
<t>
The goal of this note is to describe the WOTS+, XMSS and XMSS^MT algorithms
following the scientific literature. Other signature methods are out of
scope and may be an interesting follow-on work. The description is done in a modular way
that allows to base a description of stateless hash-based signature algorithms like
SPHINCS <xref target='BHH15'/> on it.
</t>
<t>
The draft slightly deviates from the scientific literature using a tweak that prevents
multi-target attacks against the underlying hash-function. The security assumptions for
this tweak are discussed in <xref target='Security'/>. The main difference to literature
is that security now relies either on the random oracle model or some other seemingly natural heuristic assumptions.
</t>
<t>
We suggest the value w = 16 for the Winternitz parameter.
No bigger values are included since the decrease in signature size then becomes less significant.
Furthermore, the value w = 16 considerably simplifies the implementations
of some of the algorithms. Please note that we do allow w = 4, but
limit the specified parameter sets to
w = 16 for efficiency reasons.
</t>
<t>
The signature and public key formats are designed so that they are
easy to parse. Each format starts with a 32-bit enumeration value
that indicates all of the details of the signature algorithm and
hence defines all of the information that is needed in order to parse the
format.
</t>
<t>
The enumeration values used in this note are palindromes, which have
the same byte representation in either host order or network order.
This fact allows an implementation to omit the conversion between
byte order for those enumerations. Note however that the idx field
used in XMSS and XMSS^MT signatures and secret keys must be properly
converted to and from network byte order; this is the only field
that requires such conversion. There are 2^32 XDR enumeration
values, 2^16 of which are palindromes, which is adequate for
the foreseeable future. If there is a need for more assignments,
non-palindromes can be assigned.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="IANA" title="IANA Considerations">
<t>
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is requested to create
three registries: one for WOTS+
signatures as defined in <xref target="primitives"/>, one for XMSS signatures and
one for XMSS^MT signatures; the latter two being
defined in <xref target="schemes"/>. For the sake of clarity and convenience,
the first sets of WOTS+, XMSS, and XMSS^MT parameter sets
are defined in <xref target="param"/>. Additions to these registries
require that a specification be documented in an RFC or another
permanent and readily available reference in sufficient details to make
interoperability between independent implementations possible.
Each entry in the registry contains the following elements:
<list>
<t>a short name, such as "XMSS_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H20", </t>
<t>a positive number, and</t>
<t>a reference to a specification that completely defines the
signature method test cases that can be used to verify the
correctness of an implementation.</t>
</list>
Requests to add an entry to the registry MUST include the name and the
reference. The number is assigned by IANA. These number assignments
SHOULD use the smallest available palindromic number. Submitters
SHOULD have their requests reviewed by the IRTF Crypto Forum Research
Group (CFRG) at cfrg@ietf.org. Interested applicants that are
unfamiliar with IANA processes should visit http://www.iana.org.
</t>
<t>
The numbers between 0xDDDDDDDD (decimal 3,722,304,989) and
0xFFFFFFFF (decimal 4,294,967,295) inclusive, will not be
assigned by IANA, and are reserved for private use; no attempt
will be made to prevent multiple sites from using the same
value in different (and incompatible) ways
<xref target="RFC2434"/>.
</t>
<t>
The WOTS+ registry is as follows.
</t>
<texttable anchor="iana_reg_wotsp">
<ttcol align="left">Name</ttcol>
<ttcol align="center">Reference</ttcol>
<ttcol align="center">Numeric Identifier</ttcol>
<c> WOTSP_SHA2-256_M32_W16 </c><c> <xref target="wotsparams"/></c><c> 0x01000001 </c>
<c> WOTSP_SHA2-512_M64_W16 </c><c> <xref target="wotsparams"/></c><c> 0x02000002 </c>
</texttable>
<t>
The XMSS registry is as follows.
</t>
<texttable anchor="iana_reg_xmss">
<ttcol align="left">Name</ttcol>
<ttcol align="center">Reference</ttcol>
<ttcol align="center">Numeric Identifier</ttcol>
<c> XMSS_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H10 </c><c> <xref target="xmsssparams"/></c><c> 0x01000001 </c>
<c> XMSS_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H16 </c><c> <xref target="xmsssparams"/></c><c> 0x02000002 </c>
<c> XMSS_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H20 </c><c> <xref target="xmsssparams"/></c><c> 0x03000003 </c>
<c> XMSS_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H10 </c><c> <xref target="xmsssparams"/></c><c> 0x04000004 </c>
<c> XMSS_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H16 </c><c> <xref target="xmsssparams"/></c><c> 0x05000005 </c>
<c> XMSS_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H20 </c><c> <xref target="xmsssparams"/></c><c> 0x06000006 </c>
</texttable>
<t>
The XMSS^MT registry is as follows.
</t>
<texttable anchor="iana_reg_xmssmt">
<ttcol align="left">Name</ttcol>
<ttcol align="center">Reference</ttcol>
<ttcol align="center">Numeric Identifier</ttcol>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H20_D2</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x01000001</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H20_D4</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x02000002</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H40_D2</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x03000003</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H40_D4</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x04000004</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H40_D8</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x05000005</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H60_D3</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x06000006</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H60_D6</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x07000007</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-256_M32_W16_H60_D12</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x08000008</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H20_D2</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x09000009</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H20_D4</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x0a00000a</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H40_D2</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x0b00000b</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H40_D4</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x0c00000c</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H40_D8</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x0d00000d</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H60_D3</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x0e00000e</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H60_D6</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x0f00000f</c>
<c>XMSSMT_SHA2-512_M64_W16_H60_D12</c><c> <xref target="xmssmtparams"/></c> <c>0x01010101</c>
</texttable>
<t>
An IANA registration of a signature system does not constitute an
endorsement of that system or its security.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="Security" title="Security Considerations">
<t>
A signature system is considered secure if it prevents an attacker
from forging a valid signature. More specifically, consider a setting
in which an attacker gets a public key and can learn signatures
on arbitrary messages of his choice. A signature system is secure if,
even in this setting, the attacker can not produce a message signature
pair of his choosing such that the verification algorithm accepts.
</t>
<t>
Preventing an attacker from mounting an attack means that the attack is computationally
too expensive to be carried out. There exist various estimates when
a computation is too expensive to be done. For that reason, this note only
describes how expensive it is for an attacker to generate a forgery.
Parameters are accompanied by a bit security value. The meaning of bit security is as follows.
A parameter set grants b bits of security if the best attack takes at least 2^(b-1)
bit operations to achieve a success probability of 1/2. Hence, to mount a successful attack,
an attacker needs to perform 2^b bit operations on average. How the given values for bit security
were estimated is described below.
</t>
<section title="Security Proofs">
<t>
There exist formal security proofs for schemes very similar to those described here in the literature <xref target='Huelsing13a'/>. These proofs
show that an attacker has to break at least one out of certain security properties
of the used hash functions and PRFs to forge a signature. The proofs in <xref target='Huelsing13a'/> do not consider
the initial message compression and the extended randomized hashing used here.
For the original schemes, these proofs show that
an attacker has to break certain minimal security properties. In particular, it is not
sufficient to break the collision resistance of the hash functions to generate a forgery.
</t>
<t>
It is folklore that one can securely combine a secure signature scheme for fixed length messages with an
initial message digest. It is easy to prove that an attacker either must break the security of the
fixed-input-length signature scheme or the collision resistance of the used hash function. The descriptions of XMSS and XMSS^MT in this note use
a known trick to prevent the applicability of collision attacks. Namely, the schemes use a randomized message hash.
For technical reasons, it is not possible to formally prove in the standard model that the resulting scheme is secure
if the hash function is not collision-resistant but fulfills some weaker security properties. However, in the random oracle model such a proof is trivial.
</t>
<t>
While the basic randomized hashing used in the original descriptions of the schemes allows to prove that it is not enough for
an adversary to break the collision resistance of the underlying hash function. However, it turns out that an attacker could launch a multi-target second-preimage attack.
The (simplified) reason is that the adversary learns in the order of 2^h hash function input-output pairs and it suffices to find a second-preimage for one out of those.
Hence, an attacker can do a brute force search until he finds an input that matches one of the given outputs.
</t>
<t>
The extended randomized hashing used here makes the hash function calls position dependent.
Hence, the above attack does not work anymore because each hash function evaluation during an attack can only target one output value.
This can also be shown formally.
</t>
<t>
The given bit security values were estimated
based on the complexity of the best known generic attacks against the required security properties of the used hash functions and PRFs.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Security Assumptions">
<t>
The security assumptions made to argue for the security of the described schemes are minimal. Any signature algorithm
that allows arbitrary size messages relies on the security of a cryptographic hash function. For the schemes described here
this is already sufficient to be secure. In contrast, common signature schemes like RSA, DSA, and ECDSA additionally rely on
the conjectured hardness of certain mathematical problems.
</t>
</section>
<section title="Post-Quantum Security" anchor="pq">
<t>
A post-quantum cryptosystem is a system that is secure against attackers with
access to a reasonably sized quantum computer. At the time of writing this note,
whether or not it is feasible to build such machine is an open conjecture. However, significant progress was
made over the last few years in this regard.
</t>
<t>
In contrast to RSA, DSA, and ECDSA, the described signature systems are post-quantum-secure if they
are used with an appropriate cryptographic hash function. In particular, for post-quantum security,
the size of m and n must be twice the size required for classical security. This is in order to
protect against quantum square root attacks due to Grover's algorithm. It has been shown that
Grover's algorithm is optimal for finding preimages and collisions.
</t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="Acknowledgements" title="Acknowledgements">
<t>
We would like to thank Scott Fluhrer, Burt Kaliski, Adam Langley, David McGrew, and Sean Parkinson for their help and comments.
</t>
</section>
</middle>
<back>
<references title="Normative References">
&rfc2119;
&rfc2434;
&rfc4506;
&rfc7539;
<reference anchor="FIPS180">
<front>
<title>
Secure Hash Standard (SHS)
</title>
<author>
<organization>
National Institute of Standards and Technology
</organization>
</author>
<date year="2012"></date>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="FIPS" value="180-4"></seriesInfo>
</reference>
</references>
<references title="Informative References">
<reference anchor="BDS09">
<front>
<title>
Hash-based Digital Signature Schemes
</title>
<author surname="Buchmann" initials="J.">
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Dahmen" initials="E.">
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Szydlo" initials="M.">
<organization />
</author>
<date year="2009" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Book chapter" value="Post-Quantum Cryptography, Springer"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor="Kaliski15">
<front>
<title>
Panel: Shoring up the Infrastructure: A Strategy for Standardizing Hash Signatures
</title>
<author surname="Kaliski" initials="B.">
<organization />
</author>
<date year="2015" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="NIST" value="Workshop on Cybersecurity in a Post-Quantum World"/>
</reference>
<reference anchor='DC14'>
<front>
<title>Hash-based signatures</title>
<author initials='D' surname='McGrew' fullname='David McGrew'>
<organization />
</author>
<author initials='M' surname='Curcio' fullname='Michael Curcio'>
<organization />
</author>
<date month='July' day='4' year='2014' />
<abstract><t>
This note describes a digital signature system based on cryptographic
hash functions, following the seminal work in this area. It
specifies a one-time signature scheme based on the work of Lamport,
Diffie, Winternitz, and Merkle (LDWM), and a general signature
scheme, Merkle Tree Signatures (MTS). These systems provide
asymmetric authentication without using large integer mathematics and
can achieve a high security level. They are suitable for compact
implementations, are relatively simple to implement, and naturally
resist side-channel attacks. Unlike most other signature systems,
hash-based signatures would still be secure even if it proves
feasible for an attacker to build a quantum computer.
</t></abstract>
</front>
<seriesInfo name='Internet-Draft' value='draft-mcgrew-hash-sigs-02' />
<format type='TXT' target='http://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-mcgrew-hash-sigs-02.txt' />
</reference>
<reference anchor="Merkle79">
<front>
<title>
Secrecy, Authentication, and Public Key Systems
</title>
<author surname="Merkle" initials="R. C.">
<organization />
</author>
<date year="1979" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Stanford University Information Systems Laboratory"
value="Technical Report 1979-1" />
</reference>
<reference anchor="BDH11">
<front>
<title>
XMSS - A Practical Forward Secure Signature Scheme Based on Minimal
Security Assumptions
</title>
<author surname="Buchmann" initials="J." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Dahmen" initials="E." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Huelsing" initials="A." >
<organization />
</author>
<date year="2011" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume 7071."
value="Post-Quantum Cryptography" />
</reference>
<reference anchor="HRB13">
<front>
<title>
Optimal Parameters for XMSS^MT
</title>
<author surname="Huelsing" initials="A." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Rausch" initials="L." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Buchmann" initials="J." >
<organization />
</author>
<date year="2013" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume 8128." value="CD-ARES" />
</reference>
<reference anchor="Huelsing13">
<front>
<title>
W-OTS+ - Shorter Signatures for Hash-Based Signature Schemes
</title>
<author surname="Huelsing" initials="A." >
<organization />
</author>
<date year="2013" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume 7918." value="Progress in Cryptology - AFRICACRYPT" />
</reference>
<reference anchor="Huelsing13a">
<front>
<title>Practical Forward Secure Signatures using Minimal Security Assumptions</title>
<author surname="Huelsing" initials="A." >
<organization />
</author>
<date year="2013" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="PhD thesis" value="TU Darmstadt" />
</reference>
<reference anchor="BHH15">
<front>
<title>SPHINCS: Practical Stateless Hash-Based Signatures</title>
<author surname="Bernstein" initials="D. J." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Hopwood" initials="D." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Huelsing" initials="A." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Lange" initials="T." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Niederhagen" initials="R." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Papachristodoulou" initials="L." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Schneider" initials="M." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Schwabe" initials="P." >
<organization />
</author>
<author surname="Wilcox-O'Hearn" initials="Z." >
<organization />
</author>
<date year="2015" />
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume 9056." value="Advances in Cryptology - EUROCRYPT" />
</reference>
</references>
<section anchor="wotsxdr" title="WOTS+ XDR Formats">
<t>
The WOTS+ signature and public key formats are formally defined
using XDR <xref target="RFC4506" /> in order to provide an
unambiguous, machine readable definition.
Though XDR is used, these formats are simple and easy to
parse without any special tools. To avoid the need to convert
to and from network / host byte order, the enumeration values are all
palindromes.
</t>
<t>
<figure>
<preamble>
WOTS+ parameter sets are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* ots_algorithm_type identifies a particular
signature algorithm */
enum ots_algorithm_type {
wotsp_reserved = 0x00000000,
wotsp_sha2-256_m32_w16 = 0x01000001,
wotsp_sha2-512_m64_w16 = 0x02000002,
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
<figure>
<preamble>
WOTS+ signatures are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* Byte strings */
typedef opaque bytestring32[32];
typedef opaque bytestring64[64];
union ots_signature switch (ots_algorithm_type type) {
case wotsp_sha2-256_m32_w16:
bytestring32 ots_sig_m32_len67[67];
case wotsp_sha2-512_m64_w16:
bytestring64 ots_sig_m64_len18[131];
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
<figure>
<preamble>
WOTS+ public keys are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
union ots_pubkey switch (ots_algorithm_type type) {
case wotsp_sha2-256_m32_w16:
bytestring32 ots_pubk_m32_len67[67];
case wotsp_sha2-512_m64_w16:
bytestring64 ots_pubk_m64_len18[131];
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssxdr" title="XMSS XDR Formats">
<t>
<figure>
<preamble>
XMSS parameter sets are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* Byte strings */
typedef opaque bytestring4[4];
/* Definition of parameter sets */
enum xmss_algorithm_type {
xmss_reserved = 0x00000000,
/* 256 bit classical security, 128 bit post-quantum security */
xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h10 = 0x01000001,
xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h16 = 0x02000002,
xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20 = 0x03000003,
/* 512 bit classical security, 256 bit post-quantum security */
xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h10 = 0x04000004,
xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h16 = 0x05000005,
xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20 = 0x06000006,
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
<figure>
<preamble>
XMSS signatures are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* Authentication path types */
union xmss_path switch (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h10:
bytestring32 path_n32_t10[10];
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h16:
bytestring32 path_n32_t16[16];
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20:
bytestring32 path_n32_t20[20];
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h10:
bytestring64 path_n64_t10[10];
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h16:
bytestring64 path_n64_t16[16];
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20:
bytestring64 path_n64_t20[20];
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* Types for XMSS random strings */
union random_string_xmss switch (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20:
bytestring32 rand_m32;
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20:
bytestring64 rand_m64;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* Corresponding WOTS+ type for given XMSS type */
union xmss_ots_signature switch (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20:
wotsp_sha2-256_m32_w16;
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20:
wotsp_sha2-512_m64_w16;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* XMSS signature structure */
struct xmss_signature {
/* WOTS+ key pair index */
bytestring4 idx_sig;
/* Random string for randomized hashing */
random_string_xmss rand_string;
/* WOTS+ signature */
xmss_ots_signature sig_ots;
/* authentication path */
xmss_path nodes;
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
<figure>
<preamble>
XMSS public keys are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* Types for bitmask seed */
union seed switch (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20:
bytestring32 seed_n32;
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20:
bytestring64 seed_n64;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* Types for XMSS root node */
union xmss_root switch (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20:
bytestring32 root_n32;
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h10:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h16:
case xmss_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20:
bytestring64 root_n64;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* XMSS public key structure */
struct xmss_public_key {
xmss_root root; /* Root node */
seed SEED; /* Seed for bitmasks */
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="xmssmtxdr" title="XMSS^MT XDR Formats">
<t>
<figure>
<preamble>
XMSS^MT parameter sets are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* Byte strings */
typedef opaque bytestring3[3];
typedef opaque bytestring5[5];
typedef opaque bytestring8[8];
/* Definition of parameter sets */
enum xmssmt_algorithm_type {
xmssmt_reserved = 0x00000000,
/* 256 bit classical security, 128 bit post-quantum security */
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d2 = 0x01000001,
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d4 = 0x02000002,
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d2 = 0x03000003,
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d4 = 0x04000004,
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d8 = 0x05000005,
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d3 = 0x06000006,
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d6 = 0x07000007,
xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d12 = 0x08000008,
/* 512 bit classical security, 256 bit post-quantum security */
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d2 = 0x09000009,
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d4 = 0x0a00000a,
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d2 = 0x0b00000b,
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d4 = 0x0c00000c,
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d8 = 0x0d00000d,
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d3 = 0x0e00000e,
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d6 = 0x0f00000f,
xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d12 = 0x01010101,
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
<figure>
<preamble>
XMSS^MT signatures are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* Type for XMSS^MT key pair index */
/* Depends solely on h */
union idx_sig_xmssmt switch (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d4:
bytestring3 idx3;
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d8:
bytestring5 idx5;
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d12:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d12:
bytestring8 idx8;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
union random_string_xmssmt switch (xmssmt_algorithm_type type) {
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d12:
bytestring32 rand_m32;
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d12:
bytestring64 rand_m64;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
struct xmss_reduced_bottom {
xmss_ots_signature sig_ots; /* WOTS+ signature */
xmss_path nodes; /* authentication path */
};
/* Type for individual reduced XMSS signatures on higher layers */
union xmss_reduced_others (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d4:
bytestring32 xmss_reduced_n32_t87[87];
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d8:
bytestring32 xmss_reduced_n32_t107[107];
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d12:
bytestring32 xmss_reduced_n32_t127[127];
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d4:
bytestring64 xmss_reduced_n64_t151[151];
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d8:
bytestring64 xmss_reduced_n64_t171[171];
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d12:
bytestring64 xmss_reduced_n64_t191[191];
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* xmss_reduced_array depends on d */
union xmss_reduced_array (xmss_algorithm_type type) {
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d2:
xmss_reduced_others xmss_red_arr_d2[1];
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d3:
xmss_reduced_others xmss_red_arr_d3[2];
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d4:
xmss_reduced_others xmss_red_arr_d4[3];
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d6:
xmss_reduced_others xmss_red_arr_d6[5];
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d8:
xmss_reduced_others xmss_red_arr_d8[7];
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d12:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d12:
xmss_reduced_others xmss_red_arr_d12[11];
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* XMSS^MT signature structure */
struct xmssmt_signature {
/* WOTS+ key pair index */
idx_sig_xmssmt idx_sig;
/* Random string for randomized hashing */
random_string_xmssmt randomness;
/* Reduced bottom layer XMSS signature */
xmss_reduced_bottom;
/* Array of reduced XMSS signatures with message length n */
xmss_reduced_array;
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
<figure>
<preamble>
XMSS^MT public keys are defined using XDR syntax as follows:
</preamble>
<artwork>
<![CDATA[
/* Types for bitmask seed */
union seed switch (xmssmt_algorithm_type type) {
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d12:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d3:
bytestring32 seed_n32;
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d12:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d3:
bytestring64 seed_n64;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* Types for XMSS^MT root node */
union xmssmt_root switch (xmssmt_algorithm_type type) {
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-256_m32_w16_h60_d12:
bytestring32 root_n32;
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h20_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d2:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d4:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h40_d8:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d3:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d6:
case xmssmt_sha2-512_m64_w16_h60_d12:
bytestring64 root_n64;
default:
void; /* error condition */
};
/* XMSS^MT public key structure */
struct xmssmt_public_key {
xmssmt_root root; /* Root node */
seed SEED; /* Seed for bitmasks */
};
]]>
</artwork>
</figure>
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="rlsnotes" title="Changed since draft-irtf-cfrg-xmss-hash-based-signatures-00">
<t>
<list>
<t>Added keying of hash functions with pseudorandomly generated keys for all hashes but the message hash. A Hash Function Address Scheme is introduced that for. For further information please take a look at sections <xref target="address"/> and <xref target="Security"/>.</t>
<t>Replaced bitmasks by pseudorandomly generated values.</t>
<t>Removed zero bitmasks, as we now only store a small seed (n bytes) for bitmask generation, which is pretty small compared to the bitmask solution before.</t>
<t>Removed w = 8 to reduce huge number of parameter sets. Simplified algorithms (like base_w) as we don't need to support the w = 8 case now.</t>
<t>Removed w = 4 from the suggested parameter sets.</t>
<t>Changed 'l' to 'len, 'l_1' to 'len_1' and 'l_2' to 'len_2' to avoid confusion between the characters 'l' and '1'.</t>
<t>Changed appearances of "is equal" or "mod" to % operator for better readability.</t>
<t>Removed the OID in the XMSS and XMSS^MT signatures. This was redundant, since the OID
is already part of the public key in both cases.</t>
<t>Replaced SHA-3 by SHA-2 in light of more widespread usage and faster implementations for SHA-2.</t>
<t>Fixed the log notation in the Schemes section.</t>
<t>Removed AES-based parameter sets.</t>
<t>Adapted XDR according to the changes.</t>
<t>Removed definitions like max() from notation, when no longer needed in this document.</t>
</list>
</t>
</section>
</back>
</rfc>
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