MSC3967: Do not require UIA when first uploading cross signing keys (#3967)

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* MSC3967: Do not require UIA when first uploading cross signing keys

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Co-authored-by: Richard van der Hoff <[email protected]>

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Co-authored-by: Denis Kasak <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: kegsay <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Travis Ralston <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Richard van der Hoff <[email protected]>

Author: 5 people

proposals/3967-device-signing-upload-uia.md

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+# MSC3967: Do not require UIA when first uploading cross signing keys
+
+When a user first sets up end-to-end encryption cross-signing, their client
+uploads their cross-signing keys to the server.
+
+This [upload operation](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#post_matrixclientv3keysdevice_signingupload)
+requires a higher level of security by applying User-Interactive Auth (UIA) to
+the endpoint.
+
+This creates a usability issue at the point of user registration where a client
+will typically want to immediately set up cross-signing for a new user.
+
+The issue is that the client will immediately need the user to re-authenticate
+even though the user just authenticated.
+
+This usability issue has given rise to workarounds such as a
+[configurable grace period](https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/v1.98/usage/configuration/config_documentation.html#ui_auth)
+(`ui_auth`.`session_timeout`) in Synapse whereby UIA will not be required for
+uploading cross-signing keys where authentication has taken place recently.
+
+This proposal aims to provide for a standard way to address this UIA usability
+issue with respect to setting up cross-signing.
+
+## Proposal
+
+For the `POST /_matrix/client/v3/keys/device_signing/upload` endpoint, the
+Homeserver MUST require User-Interactive Authentication (UIA) _unless_:
+ - there is no existing cross-signing master key uploaded to the Homeserver, OR
+ - there is an existing cross-signing master key and it exactly matches the
+   cross-signing master key provided in the request body. If there are any additional
+   keys provided in the request (self signing key, user signing key) they MUST also
+   match the existing keys stored on the server. In other words, the request contains
+   no new keys. If there are new keys, UIA MUST be performed.
+
+In these scenarios, this endpoint is not protected by UIA. This means the client does not
+need to send an `auth` JSON object with their request.
+
+This change allows clients to freely upload 1 set of keys, but not modify/overwrite keys if
+they already exist. By allowing clients to upload the same set of keys more than once, this
+makes this endpoint idempotent in the case where the response is lost over the network, which
+would otherwise cause a UIA challenge upon retry.
+
+## Potential issues
+
+See security considerations below.
+
+
+## Alternatives
+
+There has been some discussion around how to improve the usability of
+cross-signing more generally. It may be that an alternative solution is to
+provide a way to set up cross-signing in a single request.
+
+## Security considerations
+
+This change could be viewed as a degradation of security at the point of setting
+up cross-signing in that it requires less authentication to upload cross-signing
+keys on first use.
+
+However, this degradation needs to be weighed against the typical real world
+situation where a Homeserver will be applying a grace period and so allow a
+malicious actor to bypass UIA for a period of time after each authentication.
+
+### Existing users without E2EE keys
+
+Existing user accounts who do not already have cross-signing keys set up will
+now be able to upload keys without UIA. If such a user has their access token
+compromised, an attacker will be able to upload a `master_key`, `self_signing_key`
+and `user_signing_key`. This is a similar threat model to a malicious server admin
+replacing these keys in the homeserver database.
+
+This does not mean:
+ - the attacker can "take over the account". It does not allow the attacker to
+   [login](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.10/client-server-api/#login) as they need to
+   know the password to the account. Likewise, an attacker cannot [logout all devices](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.10/client-server-api/#post_matrixclientv3logoutall)
+   nor can they [logout specific devices](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.10/client-server-api/#delete_matrixclientv3devicesdeviceid)
+   as these also go through UIA prompts.
+ - the device will appear as verified to other users. Other users need to verify the
+   public key [out-of-band](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.10/client-server-api/#short-authentication-string-sas-verification).
+   As the true owner of the account is not performing this verification, if an attacker
+   physically met up with other users it would become obvious that this is not the true owner,
+   and hence no verification would be performed.
+
+The main usability issue around this endpoint is requiring UIA, so it is critical
+that we only require UIA when absolutely necessary for the security of the account.
+In practice, this means requiring UIA when keys are _replaced_. There have been
+suggestions to reintroduce a grace period (e.g after initial device login) or just
+mandate it entirely for these old existing accounts. This would negatively impact
+usability because:
+ - it introduces temporal variability which becomes difficult to debug. Not all users
+   would be subject to these timers/mandates. As a result, it needs to be possible
+   to detect in a bug report if the client is one of these special cases, and this is hard to do
+   reliably, particularly when bug reports from other servers are involved. The kinds of
+   bugs being debugged are typically around encryption, where there are complex interactions
+   between different devices and continually changing server-side state. These kinds of bugs
+   are incredibly time-sensitive as it is, and adding more temporal variability makes it even
+   harder to debug correctly.
+ - it introduces configuration variability which becomes difficult to debug. It's not
+   clear what the grace period should actually be. Anything less than 1 hour risks
+   catching initial x-signing requests from users who are on particularly awful networks.
+   However, even increasing this to 1 hour poses the risk that we incorrectly catch the
+   initial upload (e.g the client logs in on a bad GSM connection, then give up waiting
+   for it to login and close the app, only reopening it the next day). This becomes
+   difficult to debug in bug reports, as they just report HTTP 401s and it is unknown what
+   the HS configuration is for the time delay. This is seen already due to the use (or non-use)
+   of `ui_auth.session_timeout`. A spec-mandated grace period would mitigate some of these
+   concerns, which could be further improved by adding special error codes indicating that
+   the grace period had expired. However, this adds extra API surface that will likely be
+   poorly tested in clients, as it's unreasonable to wait 1+ hours in a test, hence some
+   configuration would be likely included for testing purposes anyway.
+
+For these reasons, this MSC does not specify a grace period or treat some user accounts
+without existing cross-signing keys as special.
+
+
+## Unstable prefix
+
+Not applicable as client behaviour need not change.
+
+## Dependencies
+
+None.