Signatures

Versia uses cryptographic signatures to ensure the integrity and authenticity of data. Signatures are used to verify that the data has not been tampered with and that it was created by the expected user.

Signature Definition

A signature consists of a series of headers in an HTTP request. The following headers are used:

• X-Signature: The signature itself, encoded in base64.
• X-Signed-By: URI of the user who signed the request, or the string instance $1, to represent the instance, where $1 is the instance's host.
• X-Nonce: A random string generated by the client. This is used to prevent replay attacks.

Signatures are required on ALL federation traffic. If a request does not have a signature, it MUST be rejected. Specifically, signatures must be put on:

• All POST requests.
• All responses to GET requests (for example, when fetching a user's profile). In this case, the HTTP method used in the signature string must be GET.

If a signature fails, is missing or is invalid, the instance MUST return a 401 Unauthorized HTTP status code.

Calculating the Signature

Create a string containing the following (including newlines):

$0 $1 $2 $3

Where:

• $0 is the HTTP method (e.g. GET, POST) in lowercase.
• $1 is the path of the request, in standard URI format (don't forget to URL-encode it).
• $2 is the nonce, a random string generated by the client.
• $3 is the SHA-256 hash of the request body, encoded in base64. (if it's a GET request, this should be the hash of an empty string)

Sign this string using the user's private key. The resulting signature should be encoded in base64.

Example:

post /notes a2ebc29eb6762a9164fbcffc9271e8a53562a5e725e7187ea7d88d03cbe59341 n4bQgYhMfWWaL+qgxVrQFaO/TxsrC4Is0V1sFbDwCgg=

Verifying the Signature

To verify a signature, the instance must:

• Recreate the string as described above.
• Extract the signature provided in the X-Signature header.
• Decode the signature from base64.
• Perform a signature verification using the user's public key.

Example

The following example is written in TypeScript using the WebCrypto API.

@bob, from bob.com, wants to sign a request to alice.com. The request is a POST to /notes, with the following body:

{
    "content": "Hello, world!"
}

Bob can be found at https://bob.com/users/bf44e6ad-7c0a-4560-9938-cf3fd4066511. His ed25519 private key, encoded in Base64 PKCS8, is MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VwBCIEILrNXhbWxC/MhKQDsJOAAF1FH/R+Am5G/eZKnqNum5ro.

Here's how Bob would sign the request:

/**
 * Using Node.js's Buffer API for brevity
 * If using another runtime, you may need to use a different method to convert to/from Base64
 */

const content = JSON.stringify({
    content: "Hello, world!",
});

const base64PrivateKey = "MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VwBCIEILrNXhbWxC/MhKQDsJOAAF1FH/R+Am5G/eZKnqNum5ro";
const privateKey = await crypto.subtle.importKey(
    "pkcs8",
    Buffer.from(base64PrivateKey, "base64"),
    "Ed25519",
    false,
    ["sign"],
);

const nonce = crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(32))
const digest = await crypto.subtle.digest(
    "SHA-256",
    new TextEncoder().encode(content)
);

const stringToSign =
    `post /notes ${Buffer.from(nonce).toString("hex")} ${Buffer.from(digest).toString("base64")}`;

const signature = await crypto.subtle.sign(
    "Ed25519",
    privateKey,
    new TextEncoder().encode(stringToSign)
);

const base64Signature = Buffer.from(signature).toString("base64");

To send the request, Bob would use the following code:

const headers = new Headers();

headers.set("X-Signed-By", "https://bob.com/users/bf44e6ad-7c0a-4560-9938-cf3fd4066511");
headers.set("X-Nonce", Buffer.from(nonce).toString("hex"));
headers.set("X-Signature", base64Signature);
headers.set("Content-Type", "application/json");

const response = await fetch("https://alice.com/notes", {
    method: "POST",
    headers,
    body: content,
});

On Alice's side, she would verify the signature using Bob's public key. Here, we assume that Alice has Bob's public key stored in a variable called publicKey (during real federation, this would be fetched from Bob's profile).

const method = request.method.toLowerCase();
const path = new URL(request.url).pathname;
const signature = request.headers.get("X-Signature");
const nonce = request.headers.get("X-Nonce");

const digest = await crypto.subtle.digest(
    "SHA-256",
    new TextEncoder().encode(await request.text())
);

const stringToVerify =
    `${method} ${path} ${nonce} ${Buffer.from(digest).toString("base64")}`;

const isVerified = await crypto.subtle.verify(
    "Ed25519",
    publicKey,
    Buffer.from(signature, "base64"),
    new TextEncoder().encode(stringToVerify)
);

if (!isVerified) {
    return new Response("Signature verification failed", { status: 401 });
}