[cap-talk] Alice Frames Carol (was: horton questions)

[Mark S. Miller]

Peter Amstutz wrote:
> A couple other questions:
>  * One aspect of the Horton paper I don't quite understand is the need
> for an extra interaction between Bob and Carol to fetch the actual
> capability.  As you can see I omitted it in my description above in
> favor of encrypting the capability directly, but I would like to know
> why that was considered necessary.

An excellent question. Others have been puzzled by this as well. On the page
"Alice Frames Carol"
<http://erights.org/elib/capability/horton/framing-carol.html>
I have simplified the Horton code in the way you suggest, and demonstrate the
attack that this simplification enables. For continuity, you should read it in
the sequence

http://erights.org/elib/capability/horton/base.html
http://erights.org/elib/capability/horton/nary.html
http://erights.org/elib/capability/horton/framing-bob.html
http://erights.org/elib/capability/horton/framing-carol.html

The code on each page is a minor variation on the previous, with the changes
marked. It illustrates the following brief explanation in the Horton paper:

    Carol's S2 should at least gift-wrap S3 so only Bob
    can unwrap it. Could we simply use the seal/unseal
    operations of Bob's who/be pair as the wrap/unwrap
    functions? Unfortunately, this would still enable Alice
    to give Bob a gift allegedly from Carol, but which
    Bob unwraps to obtain a faux S3 created by Alice.

Does this page help clarify this explanation?

Thanks for raising this!

-- 
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

     Cheers,
     --MarkM