From f15efd23f66c521ca9206789482bb38e7326eeb4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christophe Besson Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2026 01:27:21 +0200 Subject: feat(node)!: the node wraps the group key — closes H3 and M3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The invite flow fetched the invitee's pk_x25519 from the hub and wrapped the GEK for whatever came back (app.js:1466, and gek-init did the same server-side). The hub is the key directory, so a hub answering with its own key was handed the group key by an honest member following the protocol exactly. No forgery, no injection, nothing for the client to notice. That was H3. The fix is not safety numbers. Nobody reads the directory any more: - the node holds the GEK and wraps it itself, on every connection, for the X25519 key the joiner signed with their Ed25519 identity in one transcript (meshbay:join:v1), so the identity key vouches for the encryption key; - identities are bound to accounts by a one-time code the hub never sees — 40 bits, single use, one account, bounded per connection AND node-wide; - the node's own roster decides who may receive the key. Hub membership lets someone reach a node; it no longer gets them anything. A hub that invents an account and mints it a token is answered not_authorized_for_group. Safety numbers would have made substitution detectable by a human who checks, at the moment there is nothing to check against — first contact. Removing the lookup makes it impossible, and costs the user one code to pass along. M3 falls out of the same work. The daemon auto-pinned its own keystore key as admin_pk_ed25519 while the browser signs with the user identity key, so every privileged operation failed closed with a signature error that looked like a bug somewhere else; the demo only worked because a deploy script overwrote the value. Authority now comes from the roster, established locally by `operator pair`. Asking the hub for the operator's key — the obvious-looking fix — would have let the hub install itself as node administrator. BREAKING: gek_bundle_store is deleted, not gated. No member hands the node key material at all, so C5b becomes structural rather than an authorization to check. Existing stored bundles are still served, so current deployments keep working. Also: - join_policy (invite|open) is read from node.toml, never from the hub — a hub able to declare a group open would be handed its key. Unknown group ⇒ invite. - admin signatures are verified against the roster on every check, so unpinning takes effect without a restart. admin_pk_ed25519 stays readable as legacy. - two C5b tests were rewritten, deliberately: they asserted that gek_bundle_store demanded an operator signature, and the message is gone. They now assert the stronger property. The file says not to fix these tests, so this is the record of why they changed. - a slice-1 bug found while writing slice 2: connect() never passed skEdB64, so pairing would have failed at runtime with no test able to catch it. Tests: 152 node+common here, including an end-to-end DataChannel run where a member who has never held the group key redeems a code in the pre-proof window and receives the key wrapped for a key only they can open. Design: docs/invite-pairing-v1.md Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 --- packages/meshbay-common/src/meshbay_common/protocol.py | 8 +++++++- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'packages/meshbay-common/src/meshbay_common/protocol.py') diff --git a/packages/meshbay-common/src/meshbay_common/protocol.py b/packages/meshbay-common/src/meshbay_common/protocol.py index d86b4ef..510813a 100644 --- a/packages/meshbay-common/src/meshbay_common/protocol.py +++ b/packages/meshbay-common/src/meshbay_common/protocol.py @@ -46,12 +46,18 @@ class MNP: HANDSHAKE_RESPONSE = "handshake_response" # client → node: HMAC(GEK, nonce) ADMIN_CHALLENGE = "admin_challenge" # node → client: Ed25519 sign challenge ADMIN_RESPONSE = "admin_response" # client → node: Ed25519 signature - GEK_BUNDLE_STORE = "gek_bundle_store" # client → node: store wrapped GEK for a user + # GEK_BUNDLE_STORE was removed with the invite redesign: the node wraps the GEK + # itself, for a key the recipient proved possession of, so no member ever hands + # the node key material (C5b, and the H3 substitution it enabled). GEK_BUNDLE_FETCH = "gek_bundle_fetch" # client → node: request own wrapped GEK GEK_BUNDLE_RESP = "gek_bundle_resp" # node → client: wrapped GEK bundle KEYPAIR_BUNDLE_STORE = "keypair_bundle_store" # client → node: store encrypted keypair bundle KEYPAIR_BUNDLE_FETCH = "keypair_bundle_fetch" # client → node: request own keypair bundle KEYPAIR_BUNDLE_RESP = "keypair_bundle_resp" # node → client: encrypted keypair bundle + JOIN_REQUEST = "join_request" # client → node: pair/recognise this identity + JOIN_RESULT = "join_result" # node → client: outcome + wrapped GEK + INVITE_CREATE = "invite_create" # operator → node: issue a pairing code + INVITE_RESULT = "invite_result" # node → operator: the code, once # ── Index entry ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -- cgit v1.2.3