2 @unnumbered EBlob format
4 EBlob is an encrypted blob (binary large object, in the terms of
5 databases), holding any kind of symmetrically encrypted data with the
6 passphrase used to derive the key. It is used to secure configuration
7 files, holding valuable private keys, allowing them to be transferred
10 In fact it uses two factors for securing the data:
13 @item @strong{salt}, that is kept inside @file{eblob}, something @emph{you have}
14 @item @strong{passphrase}, that is kept inside the head, something @emph{you know}
17 Whole security depends on the passphrase itself. Pay attention that this
18 is @strong{not} the password. Password is a short string of high entropy
19 (highly random) characters, but passphrase is (very) long string of
20 low-entropy characters. Low-entropy text is much more easier to
21 remember, and its length provides pretty enough entropy as a result.
23 Password strengthening function is applied to that passphrase to
24 mitigate brute-force and dictionary attacks on it. Here,
25 @url{https://crypto.stanford.edu/balloon/, Balloon} memory-hard password
26 hashing function is used, together with BLAKE2b-256 hash. It has proven
27 memory-hardness properties, very easy to implement, resistant to cache
28 attacks and seems more secure than Argon2
29 (@url{https://password-hashing.net/, Password Hashing Competition}
32 EBlob is an @url{https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4506, XDR}-encoded structure:
35 +-------+------------------+------+
36 | MAGIC | S | T | P | SALT | BLOB |
37 +-------+------------------+------+
40 @multitable @columnfractions 0.2 0.3 0.5
41 @headitem @tab XDR type @tab Value
42 @item Magic number @tab
43 8-byte, fixed length opaque data @tab
44 @verb{|N N C P B 0x00 0x00 0x03|}
47 Space cost, time cost and parallel jobs number
49 32 bytes, fixed length opaque data @tab
50 Randomly generated salt
52 variable length opaque data @tab
53 Authenticated and Encrypted data itself
57 @item generate the key using @code{balloon(BLAKE2b-256, S, T, P, salt, password)}
58 @item encrypt and authenticate blob using
59 @url{https://cr.yp.to/chacha.html, ChaCha20}-@url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly1305, Poly1305}.
60 EBlob packet itself, with empty blob field, is fed as an additional authenticated data