path: root/man/2/security-oldauth

.TH SECURITY-OLDAUTH 2
.SH NAME
oldauth: certtostr, pktostr, sktostr, strtocert, strtopk, strtosk, sign, verify, readauthinfo, writeauthinfo \- encoding for original Inferno authentication protocol
.SH SYNOPSIS
.EX
include "ipints.m";
include "crypt.m";
include "oldauth.m";
oldauth := load Oldauth Oldauth->PATH;

Certificate: adt
{
    sa:     string;
    ha:     string;
    signer: string;
    exp:    int;
    sig:    ref Crypt->PKsig;
};

Authinfo: adt
{
    mysk:   ref Crypt->SK;
    mypk:   ref Crypt->PK;
    owner:  string;
    cert:   ref Certificate;
    spk:    ref Crypt->PK;
    alpha:  ref IPints->IPint;
    p:      ref IPints->IPint;
};

sign:   fn (sk: ref Crypt->SK, signer: string, exp: int,
          state: ref Crypt->DigestState, ha: string): ref Certificate;
verify: fn (pk: ref Crypt->PK, cert: ref Certificate,
          state: ref Crypt->DigestState): int;

strtocert: fn(s: string): ref Certificate;
certtostr: fn(c: ref Certificate): string;
strtopk:   fn(s: string): (ref Crypt->PK, string);
pktostr:   fn(pk: ref Crypt->PK, owner: string): string;
strtosk:   fn(s: string): (ref Crypt->SK, string);
sktostr:   fn(sk: ref Crypt->SK, owner: string): string;

readauthinfo:   fn(filename: string): ref Authinfo;
writeauthinfo:  fn(filename: string, info: ref Authinfo): int;
.EE
.SH DESCRIPTION
Certificates, public keys, and private keys are passed over networks and between applications using a Unicode representation.
This collection of functions provide a means to convert adts supplied by the system to and from their portable textual representation. These routines are used by
.IR login (2)
and
.IR factotum (4)
to implement the Inferno authentication protocol.
.PP
Public and private keys are represented by
.B Crypt->PK
and
.B Crypt->SK
(see
.IR keyring-intro (2)).
An authentication domain is represented by
the public key of the domain's
.IR signer ,
typically in control of a
.IR keyfs (4)
and running a
.IR logind (8).
Two adts associate a public/private key pair with a user name within a specific authentication domain:
.TP
.B Authinfo
The
.B Authinfo
adt contains an individual user's private and public key, a human-readable name for the key (eg, a user name),
the signer's certificate
and the signer's public key, and the Diffie-Hellman parameters.
The signer's certificate binds the user's public key to the given key name in the signer's domain.
.TP
.B Certificate
The
.B Certificate
adt contains a digital signature with the certification of the trusted authority (CA).
The signature covers not only the user's public key, but the key's name, the signer's name and
the expiration time of the certificate.
Both the key's name and the signer's name are local to the signer's domain.
.PP
.B Init
must be called before using any other operation in the module.
.PP
.B Sign
returns a Certificate containing the digital signature using secret key
.I sk
of a digest's
.IR state ,
which is the output of the hash algorithm named
.IR ha ,
combined with the hash of the signer's name, and the certificate's expiration time (in seconds from the Epoch).
Valid hash algorithms are
.B sha1
and
.BR md5 .
The expiry time should be zero if the certificate does not expire.
Typically the
.I state
is the result of hashing
.IP
.EX
array of byte pktostr(pk, username)
.EE
.PP
for a given public key
.I pk
that is associated with the given
.I username
by the signer.
.PP
.B Verify
checks that the given Certificate is the result of signing the given
.I state
using the secret (private) key corresponding to public key
.IR pk .
It returns true (non-zero) if the certificate is valid, including the signer's name, and the expiration time;
the caller must enforce the expiration time if desired.
It returns false (zero) if the certificate is invalid.
.	#######
.PP
.B Sign
creates a digital signature of a digest from the concatenation of: a message, the name of the signer, and an expiration time.
.I State
is the digest state after running
.BR sha1 ,
.B md4
or
.B md5
over the message.
.I Ha
is a string specifying the hash algorithm to use:
.B
"sha"\fR,
.B
"sha1"\fR,
.B
"md4"\fR
or
.B
"md5"\fR.
.B Sign
extends the digest to cover the signer's name
(taken from the private key,
.IR sk )
and the expiration time.
It returns a certificate containing the digital signature of the digest, signer name, hash algorithm and signature algorithm.
If any parameter is invalid,
.B sign
returns nil.
The signature algorithm is implied by the type of the private key.
.PP
.B Verify
uses public key
.I pk
to verify a certificate.
It returns non-zero (true) if the certificate is valid; zero (false) otherwise.
.I State
is the digest state after running the chosen digest algorithm
over the message.
.	#######
.PP
The remaining operations fetch and store those values and convert to and from text representations for use in protocols and for storage.
.PP
.B Strtocert
takes a string argument containing a varying number of newline-separated fields:
a signature algorithm, a hash algorithm, a signer's name, an expiration time, and values representing a digital signature.
It returns the corresponding
.BR Certificate .
If the string is of improper format, the result is
.IR nil .
.PP
.B Certtostr
performs the inverse operation: takes the
.B Certificate
.I c
and produces a text string suitable for communication over a network.
Note that the string will contain newline characters.
.PP
.B Strtopk
and
.B strtosk
take as their arguments a string
.I s
representing the public and private keys respectively.
.I S
contains an algorithm name, a user name and values representing the key.
Each returns a tuple
.BI ( k,\ s ),
where
.I k
is the resulting key value (ie,
.B Crypt->PK
or
.BR Crypt->SK )
and
.I s
is a string giving the name associated with the key, typically a user name.
If the format of
.I s
is invalid,
.I k
is
.IR nil ,
and
.I s
contains a diagnostic.
.PP
.B Pktostr
and
.B sktostr
perform the inverse operations:
they take a public key (secret key)
.I pk
or
.IR sk ,
the
.I owner
name to be associated with that key, and produce a printable representation as a string.
The
.I owner
names the user that owns the key; in the case of a public key,
the user is expected to possess the corresponding private key.
.PP
.B Readauthinfo
reads a representation of an
.B Authinfo
from a file.
It returns nil if there is a read error or a conversion error;
it returns a reference to the
.B Authinfo
otherwise.
.PP
.B Writeauthinfo
writes a representation of
.I info
to a file. It returns -1 if the write operation fails, 0 otherwise.
.SH SOURCE
.B /appl/lib/oldauth.b
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR crypt-intro (2),
.IR ipints (2),
.IR security-intro (2)