.\" Man page generated from reStructuredText. . .TH "SYNCTHING-DEVICE-IDS" "7" "July 25, 2015" "v0.11" "Syncthing" .SH NAME syncthing-device-ids \- Understanding Device IDs . .nr rst2man-indent-level 0 . .de1 rstReportMargin \\$1 \\n[an-margin] level \\n[rst2man-indent-level] level margin: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]] - \\n[rst2man-indent0] \\n[rst2man-indent1] \\n[rst2man-indent2] .. .de1 INDENT .\" .rstReportMargin pre: . RS \\$1 . nr rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level] \\n[an-margin] . nr rst2man-indent-level +1 .\" .rstReportMargin post: .. .de UNINDENT . RE .\" indent \\n[an-margin] .\" old: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]] .nr rst2man-indent-level -1 .\" new: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]] .in \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]u .. .SH DESCRIPTION .sp Every device is identified by a device ID. The device ID is used for address resolution, authentication and authorization. The term "device ID" could interchangably have been "key ID" since the device ID is a direct properties of the public key in use. .SH KEYS .sp To understand device IDs we need to look at the underlying mechanisms. At first startup, Syncthing will create an public/private key pair. .sp Currently this is a 3072 bit RSA key. The keys are saved in the form of the private key (\fBkey.pem\fP) and a self signed certificate (\fBcert.pem\fP). The self signing part doesn\(aqt actually add any security or functionality as far as Syncthing is concerned but it enables the use of the keys in a standard TLS exchange. .sp The typical certificate will look something like this, inspected with \fBopenssl x509\fP: .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 .sp .nf .ft C Certificate: Data: Version: 3 (0x2) Serial Number: 0 (0x0) Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption Issuer: CN=syncthing Validity Not Before: Mar 30 21:10:52 2014 GMT Not After : Dec 31 23:59:59 2049 GMT Subject: CN=syncthing Subject Public Key Info: Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption RSA Public Key: (3072 bit) Modulus (3072 bit): 00:da:83:8a:c0:95:af:0a:42:af:43:74:65:29:f2: 30:e3:b9:12:d2:6b:70:93:da:0b:7b:8a:1e:e5:79: ... 99:09:4c:a9:7b:ba:4a:6a:8b:3b:e6:e7:c7:2c:00: 90:aa:bc:ad:94:e7:80:95:d2:1b Exponent: 65537 (0x10001) X509v3 extensions: X509v3 Key Usage: critical Digital Signature, Key Encipherment X509v3 Extended Key Usage: TLS Web Server Authentication, TLS Web Client Authentication X509v3 Basic Constraints: critical CA:FALSE Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption 68:72:43:8b:83:61:09:68:f0:ef:f0:43:b7:30:a6:73:1e:a8: d9:24:6c:2d:b4:bc:c9:e8:3e:0b:1e:3c:cc:7a:b2:c8:f1:1d: ... 88:7e:e2:61:aa:4c:02:e3:64:b0:da:70:3a:cd:1c:3d:86:db: df:54:b9:4e:be:1b .ft P .fi .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .sp We can see here that the certificate is little more than a container for the public key; the serial number is zero and the Issuer and Subject are both "syncthing" where a qualified name might otherwise be expected. .sp An advanced user could replace the \fBkey.pem\fP and \fBcert.pem\fP files with a keypair generated directly by the \fBopenssl\fP utility or other mechanism. .SH DEVICE IDS .sp To form a device ID the SHA\-256 hash of the certificate data in DER form is calculated. This means the hash covers all information under the \fBCertificate:\fP section above. .sp The hashing results in a 256 bit hash, which we encode using base32. Base32 encodes five bits per character, so we need 256 / 5 = 51.2 characters to encode the device ID. This becomes 52 characters in practice, but 52 characters of base32 would decode to 260 bits which is not an whole number of bytes. The base32 encoding adds padding to 280 bits (the next multiple of both 5 and 8 bits) so the resulting ID looks something like: .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 .sp .nf .ft C MFZWI3DBONSGYYLTMRWGC43ENRQXGZDMMFZWI3DBONSGYYLTMRWA==== .ft P .fi .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .sp The padding (\fB====\fP) is stripped away, the device ID split in four groups, and \fI\%check digits\fP <\fBhttps://forum.syncthing.net/t/v0-9-0-new-device-id-format/478\fP> are added for each group. For presentation purposes the device ID is grouped with dashes, resulting in the final value: .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 .sp .nf .ft C MFZWI3D\-BONSGYC\-YLTMRWG\-C43ENR5\-QXGZDMM\-FZWI3DP\-BONSGYY\-LTMRWAD .ft P .fi .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .SS Connection Establishment .sp So now we know what device IDs are, here\(aqs how they are used in Syncthing. When you add a device ID to the syncthing configuration, Syncthing will attempt to connect to that device. The first thing we need to do is figure out the IP and port to connect to. There\(aqs three possibilities here; .INDENT 0.0 .IP \(bu 2 The IP and port can be set statically in the configuration. The IP can equally well be a hostname, so if you have a static IP or a dynamic DNS setup this might be a good option. .IP \(bu 2 Using local discovery, if enabled. Every Syncthing instance on a LAN periodically broadcasts information about itself (device ID, address, port number). If we\(aqve seen one of these broadcasts for a given device ID that\(aqs where we try to connect. .IP \(bu 2 Using global discovery, if enabled. Every Syncthing instance announces itself to the global discovery service (device ID and external port number \- the internal address is not announced to the global server). If we don\(aqt have a static address and haven\(aqt seen any local announcements the global discovery server will be queried for an address. .UNINDENT .sp Once we have and address and port a TCP connection is established and a TLS handshake performed. As part of the handshake both devices present their certificates. Once the handshake has completed and the peer certificate is known, the following steps are performed. .INDENT 0.0 .IP 1. 3 Calculate the remote device ID by using the process above on the received certificate. .IP 2. 3 Weed out a few possible misconfigurations \- i.e. if the device ID is that of the local device or of a device we already have an active connection to. Drop the connection in these cases. .IP 3. 3 Verify the remote device ID against the configuration. If it is not a device ID we are expecting to talk to, drop the connection. .IP 4. 3 Verify the certificate \fBCommonName\fP against the configuration. By default, we expect it to be \fBsyncthing\fP, but when using custom certificates this can be changed. .IP 5. 3 If everything checks out so far, accept the connection. .UNINDENT .SH AN ASIDE ABOUT COLLISIONS .sp The SHA\-256 hash is cryptographically collision resistant. This means that there is no way that we know of to create two different messages with the same hash. .sp You can argue that of course there are collisions \- there\(aqs an infinite amount of inputs and a finite amount of outputs, so per definition there are infinitely many messages that result in the same hash. .sp I\(aqm going to quote \fI\%stack overflow\fP <\fBhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/4014090/is-it-safe-to-ignore-the-possibility-of-sha-collisions-in-practice\fP> here: .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 The usual answer goes thus: what is the probability that a rogue asteroid crashes on Earth within the next second, obliterating civilization\-as\-we\- know\-it, and killing off a few billion people ? It can be argued that any unlucky event with a probability lower than that is not actually very important. .sp If we have a "perfect" hash function with output size n, and we have p messages to hash (individual message length is not important), then probability of collision is about p2/2n+1 (this is an approximation which is valid for "small" p, i.e. substantially smaller than 2n/2). For instance, with SHA\-256 (n=256) and one billion messages (p=10^9) then the probability is about 4.3*10^\-60. .sp A mass\-murderer space rock happens about once every 30 million years on average. This leads to a probability of such an event occurring in the next second to about 10^\-15. That\(aqs 45 orders of magnitude more probable than the SHA\-256 collision. Briefly stated, if you find SHA\-256 collisions scary then your priorities are wrong. .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .sp It\(aqs also worth noting that the property of SHA\-256 that we are using is not simply collision resistance but resistance to a preimage attack. I.e. even if you can find two messages that result in a hash collision that doesn\(aqt help you attack Syncthing (or TLS in general). You need to create a message that hashes to exactly the hash that my certificate already has or you won\(aqt get in. .sp Note also that it\(aqs not good enough to find a random blob of bits that happen to have the same hash as my certificate. You need to create a valid DER\- encoded, signed certificate that has the same hash as mine. The difficulty of this is staggeringly far beyond the already staggering difficulty of finding a SHA\-256 collision. .SH PROBLEMS AND VULNERABILITIES .sp As far as I know, these are the issues or potential issues with the above mechanism. .SS Discovery Spoofing .sp Currently, neither the local nor global discovery mechanism is protected by crypto. This means that any device can in theory announce itself for any device ID and potentially receive connections for that device. .sp This could be a denial of service attack (we can\(aqt find the real device for a given device ID, so can\(aqt connect to it and sync). It could also be an intelligence gathering attack; if I spoof a given ID, I can see which devices try to connect to it. .sp It could be mitigated in several ways; .INDENT 0.0 .IP \(bu 2 Announcements could be signed by the device private key. This requires already having the public key to verify. .IP \(bu 2 Announcements to the global announce server could be done using TLS, so the server calculates the device ID based on the certificate instead of trusting to the device to tell the truth. .IP \(bu 2 The user could statically configure IP or hostname for the devices. .IP \(bu 2 The user could run a trusted global server. .UNINDENT .sp It\(aqs something we might want to look at at some point, but not a huge problem as I see it. .SS Long Device IDs are Painful .sp It\(aqs a mouthful to read over the phone, annoying to type into an SMS or even into a computer. And it needs to be done twice, once for each side. .sp This isn\(aqt a vulnerability as such, but a user experience problem. There are various possible solutions: .INDENT 0.0 .IP \(bu 2 Use shorter device IDs with verification based on the full ID ("You entered MFZWI3; I found and connected to a device with the ID MFZWI3\-DBONSG\-YYLTMR\-WGC43E\-NRQXGZ\-DMMFZW\-I3DBON\-SGYYLT\-MRWA, please confirm that this is correct."). .IP \(bu 2 Use shorter device IDs with an out of band authentication, a la Bluetooth pairing. You enter a one time PIN into Syncthing and give that PIN plus a short device ID to another user. On initial connect, both sides verify that the other knows the correct PIN before accepting the connection. .UNINDENT .SH AUTHOR The Syncthing Authors .SH COPYRIGHT 2015, The Syncthing Authors .\" Generated by docutils manpage writer. .