lora-irrigation/PROTOCOL.md

Protocol

The responder will be the node under control (irrigation controller), and the initiator will be the server.

The responder will always respond with one and only one packet. That is, all timeout mechanisms will be handled by the initiator. If the initiator does not receive a response to it’s query, it will resend the request until it does. It is required that the responder be able to detect this, and resend the last response.

The respondent will cache message responses after the session has been confirmed, but before that, it is unneccessary, as there is no harm to reprocess the messages. The more complicated part is dealing w/ a missed confirmed reply, as the state will need to be back tracked (saved) to decode the repeated confirm request.

Key Negotiation

Where type is to be: shared - shared secret ecdh - Results of an ECDH exchange, key = K || K_A || K_B ecdhe - Results of an ECDHE exchange, key = TBD

shared

Both sides initalize:

meta-AD('com.funkthat.lora.irrigation.shared.v0.0.1')
key(<preshared key>)

The preshared key was agreed/preloaded on both sides. They should be a minimum of 16 bytes, but longer, such as pass phrases are allowed, as the key will be properly compressed by Keccak.

The following exchange is required by protocols that are not PFS safe, that is shared and ecdh (not yet defined). This is to prevent replay attacks and ensure that both sides have integrated random data into the protocol, AND that the connection reset was requested by the initiator. This is described in the second paragraph of § C.2 in the strobe paper.

initiator:

send_enc(<16 bytes random data> + 'reqreset')	# nonce injection
send_mac(8)

respondent:

send_enc(<16 bytes random data>)	# nonce injection
send_mac(8)

both:

ratchet()	# prevent backtracking

initiator:

send_enc('confirm')
send_mac(8)

respondent:

send_enc('confirmed')
send_mac(8)

It seems odd to respond to the confirm message, BUT, as using strobe requires explicit hand off (similar to a token), in order for the initiator to send any commands it needs to be “passed back”.

The new key/session does not become active till this point.

In order to handle a reset and prevent a replay attack, the existing session, if any is maintained till the completion of a reset request. Only after that, does the old connection key get removed. This does mean that after a reset request, it is required that both sides attempt to decode each packet w/ both states.

Command Phase

Once the session has been established, the initiator will send commands of the following format:

Currently the only defined type for args, is a 4 byte integer in little endian format. Additional types may be added later.

The following commands are defined: TERMINATE: 1 -- no args: terminate the session, reply confirms WAITFOR: 2 -- args: (length): enqueues a waits for length seconds RUNFOR: 3 -- args: (chan, length): enqueues a turn on chan for length seconds PING: 4 -- args: (): No op, verify connection is functional SETUNSET: 5 -- args: (chan, val): sets chan to val ADV: 6 -- args: ([cnt]): Advances to the next cnt (default 1) command CLEAR: 7 -- args: (): Clears all future commands, but keeps current running

When the responder receives a command, it will process it, and send back a response w/ the same command byte as an acknowledgment.

Note that the commands WAITFOR and RUNFOR are enqueued on the run queue. If there is not a running enqueued command, it will be started, and only when the current enqueued command finishes will the next one be run.

The other commands are run immediately.

To clear any pending enqueued commands, and end the current command, a CLEAR command followed by an ADV command must be sent. This will clear out any scheduled commands, and then end the current command so that any future scheduled commands will be started, as opposed to waiting till the current scheduled command finishes.

Note: look at: https://monocypher.org/manual/advanced/elligator when doing ECDHE