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Editorial changes to intro #109

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4 changes: 2 additions & 2 deletions draft-ietf-core-oscore-groupcomm.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -178,14 +178,14 @@ To this end, a CoAP message is protected by including its payload (if any), cert

This document defines Group OSCORE, a security protocol for group communication with CoAP {{I-D.ietf-core-groupcomm-bis}} and for CoAP-mappable HTTP requests and responses, providing the same end-to-end security properties as OSCORE also in the case where requests have multiple recipients. In particular, the described protocol defines how OSCORE is used in a group communication setting to provide source authentication for group requests sent by a client to multiple servers, and for protection of the corresponding responses. Group OSCORE also defines a pairwise mode where each member of the group can efficiently derive a symmetric pairwise key with any other member of the group for pairwise-protected OSCORE communication. Just like OSCORE, Group OSCORE is independent of the transport layer and works wherever CoAP does.

As with OSCORE, it is possible to combine Group OSCORE with communication security on other layers. One example is the use of transport layer security, such as DTLS {{RFC9147}}, between one client and one proxy (and vice versa), or between one proxy and one server (and vice versa). This prevents observers from accessing addressing information conveyed in CoAP options that would not be protected by Group OSCORE, but would be protected by DTLS. These options include Uri-Host, Uri-Port, and Proxy-Uri. Note that DTLS does not define how to secure messages sent over IP multicast.
As with OSCORE, it is possible to combine Group OSCORE with communication security on other layers. One example is the use of transport layer security, such as DTLS {{RFC9147}}, between one client and one proxy, or between one proxy and one server. This prevents observers from accessing addressing information conveyed in CoAP options that would not be protected by Group OSCORE, but would be protected by DTLS. These options include Uri-Host, Uri-Port, and Proxy-Uri. Note that DTLS does not define how to secure messages sent over IP multicast and cannot be used for end-to-end protection over a proxy.
Group OSCORE is also intended to work with OSCORE-capable proxies {{I-D.ietf-core-oscore-capable-proxies}} thereby enabling, for example, nested OSCORE operations with OSCORE-protected communication between a CoAP client and a proxy, carrying messages that are additionally protected with Group OSCORE between the CoAP client and the target CoAP servers.

Group OSCORE defines two modes of operation, that can be used independently or together:

* In the group mode, Group OSCORE requests and responses are digitally signed with the private key of the sender and the signature is embedded in the protected CoAP message. The group mode supports all COSE signature algorithms as well as signature verification by intermediaries. This mode is defined in {{mess-processing}}.

* In the pairwise mode, two group members exchange OSCORE requests and responses (typically) over unicast, and the messages are protected with symmetric keys. These symmetric keys are derived from Diffie-Hellman shared secrets, calculated with the asymmetric keys of the sender and recipient, allowing for shorter integrity tags and therefore lower message overhead. This mode is defined in {{sec-pairwise-protection}}.
* In the pairwise mode, two group members exchange OSCORE requests and responses (typically) over unicast, and the messages are protected with symmetric keys not known by the other group members. These symmetric keys are derived from Diffie-Hellman shared secrets, calculated with the asymmetric keys of the sender and recipient, allowing for shorter integrity tags and therefore lower message overhead. This mode is defined in {{sec-pairwise-protection}}.

Both modes provide source authentication of CoAP messages. The application decides what mode to use, potentially on a per-message basis. Such decisions can be based, for instance, on pre-configured policies or dynamic assessing of the target recipient and/or resource, among other things. One important case is when requests are protected in group mode, and responses in pairwise mode. Since such responses convey shorter integrity tags instead of bigger, full-fledged signatures, this significantly reduces the message overhead in case of many responses to one request.

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