Tags API (3) , Conference (8) , Dispatcher (2) , Geneva (1) , Go (6) , Guardian (1) , I2P (1) , IETF (7) , IPC (3) , Localization (1) , MASQUE (1) , Minecruft (1) , Multipath (1) , Obfs4 (1) , Obfuscation (2) , Operator (3) , PTIM (2) , PTIM2020 (7) , PTSpec (2) , Rhizome (1) , Shapeshifter (1) , Spec (2) , Specification (3) , Swift (1) , TCP (1) , UMD (1) , Virtual (8) , conference (1) , create (2) , developer (41) , grants (12) , implement (32) , implementation (9) , library (2) , marionette (1) , meeting (18) , minecruft (1) , repository (1) , research (3) , shapeshifter (1) , software (1) , specification (1) , transport (14) , video (1) , virtual (19) , Archives by Date
September 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
August 2021
July 2021
March 2021
December 2020
October 2020
September 2020
January 2020
December 2019
March 2019
February 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017

subscribe via RSS

IETF May 2022 Monthly Report

Created:

In our IETF series, we have contributions from David Oliver of Guardian Project. David has attended several IETF meetings, learning about new protocols that can help advance Pluggable Transports work and benefit censorship circumvention developers.

May 2022 Monthly Report

By David Oliver of Guardian Project - [email protected]

MASQUE

In April, the MASQUE Working Group reached consensus on both HTTP/3 Datagrams and Connect-UDP, allowing higher-level review of these drafts before publication as Proposed Standards. In May, two of those reviews are nearing completion, three more are requested. Barring major issues - unexpected - these will close in June. As we suggested in April, this is a major milestone since these two protocols represent the core of the modern MASQUE ideas (together, allow proxying of both QUIC and IP datagrams over HTTP connections). Connect-IP - which will complete the vision - remains in its initial draft state while the work above completes.

Here’s one I’ve missed: the second draft of HTTP Datagram PING and TIMESTAMP was posted at the end of May. This draft defines new mechanisms for measuring the functionality and performance of an HTTP Datagram path, matching protocol artifacts already available for TCP measurement. These mechanisms can be used with CONNECT-UDP, CONNECT-IP, or any other instantiation of the Capsule Protocol from the HTTP/3 Datagrams design.

Messaging Layer Security (MLS)

As mentioned last month, draft #14 of the MLS protocol document was submitted for Working Group Last Call on May 3, 2022. A virtual interim meeting on the protocol draft was held on May 26, 2022 and a number of issues were raised and submitted as Github issues and pull requests. Many have now been resolved. During that meeting the protocol’s AppAck extension was scheduled to be removed, in favor of a new generalized extensions draft. This now exists as The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) Extensions.

Federation is back on the menu! Given popular demand, a slightly modernized version of the original federation draft has been submitted, removing parts that have become outdated in the intervening 2 years, and fleshed out existing parts where more clarity now exists in the protocol draft itself. The author states that this document merely gives a high-level overview and serves as a starting point for discussion. It’s (currently) not a normative document so, like the architecture document that kicked off the MLS protocol work, this document could act as an umbrella document, referencing more other more-concrete specifications. Here’s the new draft.

The Working Group agreed to update its milestones as well, putting some pressure on themselves to finalize this work. The WG has decided to submit the now-expired MLS Architecture document as an Informational document (rather than a Proposed Standard) with milestone of September 2022. The milestone for final submission of the MLS Protocol document was also set at September 2022. This leaves one more IETF in-person meeting to hash out the final details before submission for higher review.

Privacy Pass

The core drafts were not updated in May, and there was limited discussion on GitHub. Rate-Limited Token Issuance Protocol was refreshed with a draft #2. Good thing! The latest change fixes a replay attack in the issuance protocol. From the authors:

The rate-limited issuance protocol is a three-party protocol between Client, Attester, and Issuer. The input is a challenge from the Origin and the output is a token bound to that Origin. We found an issue that would allow a malicious Attester (or an attacker who compromises the Attester<>Issuer channel) to replay a Client token request and receive a valid token response for a different Origin.

Oblivious HTTP (now Oblivious HTTP Application Intermediation, OHAI)

Two drafts have been updated by the Working Group: Discovery of Oblivious Services via Service Binding Records (well-named!) and Oblivious Proxy Feedback (feedback on rate-limiting, at least initially). These drafts flesh out the original proposal to handle situations already arising in interop testing and development.

The core OHAI draft has not advanced further this month. Frankly, I’m not sure why this seems to have stalled.

Privacy Preserving Measurement (PPM)

Distributed Aggregation Protocol for Privacy Preserving Measurement was made an official working group document in early May. There are eleven new issues and nine pull requests on this version of the document to date. Mailing list discussion still centers on understanding the key ideas (as opposed to debating the details).

STAR: Distributed Secret Sharing for Private Threshold Aggregation Reporting, initially submitted in March, offers a different approach to solving the same problem.