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Re: Post-quantum secure hierachical deterministic key derivation


From: Jeff Burdges
Subject: Re: Post-quantum secure hierachical deterministic key derivation
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2020 12:14:01 +0100

> On 23 Dec 2020, at 11:03, Martin Schanzenbach <mschanzenbach@posteo.de> wrote:
> From what I understood this is not the problem they are concerned with
> specifically. They propose that there is initially a master secret
> "msk" and master public key (mpk).
> This master secret is used to derive a single "hot" sk (and pk) once.
> After that, the msk (and mpk) becomes "cold" and cannot be used to
> futher deterministically derive wallets.
> (See the third paragraph in 1.2.)

You can derive an unlimited number of secret keys from some randomness using a 
stream cipher, so no that’s not what’s happens.

You only need the commutative diagram of compatible public and private 
derivation paths if you give someone else the power to derive your new public 
key for you, and then you later derive its secret key.  This means the 
randomness cannot be trusted, well unless you use fancy zk proofs like MuSig-DN 
does.

> So in my interpretation, the constraint is that every future derivation
> of a wallet key pair sk'/pk' is not done using the msk/mpk, but the
> already derived sks (hence "rerandomization" without the "cold" msk).
> In GNS, however, we do not have this problem. We could always derive
> from msk unless we want to support cold storage of the zone keys.

The point is someone else controls the derivation in GNS too.

In tor, only the directory authority control this, but mostly they’re honest.

>> I think linkability is a concern for Tor, maybe not GNS not sure.
>> Also enough blockchain folk believe in unlinkability that being
>> linkable arguably makes things worse, not sure really though.  I’d
>> expect linkability to be harder.
> 
> I think it could be a problem if you could determine that a derived
> public key pk' which you do not know the root master key is linkable to
> another pk'' from which you do know the root master key.
> The would compromise zone confidentiality (to some degree). Not sure if
> it would be a real problem, though as you still would not know HOW it
> was derived or what the record set contains.

It’s a problem for Tor.  It’s also problem for the false sense of security that 
crypto currency people attribute to derivation.

Jeff


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