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Adding note on handling online guessing attacks (#456)
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kevinlewi authored May 29, 2024
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Expand Up @@ -1893,7 +1893,9 @@ password as input to the OPRF. Furthermore, it is RECOMMENDED to incorporate
additions provide domain separation for clients and servers; see
{{security-analysis}}.

Finally, note that online guessing attacks (against any aPAKE) can be done from
## Handling Online Guessing Attacks

Online guessing attacks (against any aPAKE) can be done from
both the client side and the server side. In particular, a malicious server can
attempt to simulate honest responses to learn the client's password.
While this constitutes an exhaustive online attack, hence as expensive as an
Expand All @@ -1903,6 +1905,14 @@ In such cases, these online attacks are limited to clients and the authenticated
itself. Moreover, such a channel provides privacy of user information, including identity
and envelope values.

Additionally, note that a client participating in the online login stage
will learn whether or not authentication is successful after receiving the
`KE2` message. This means that the server should treat any client which fails to
send a subsequent `KE3` message as an authentication failure. This can be handled
in applications that wish to track authentication failures by, for example,
assuming by default that any client authentication attempt is a failure unless a `KE3`
message is received by the server and passes `ServerFinish` without error.

## Error Considerations

Some functions included in this specification are fallible. For example, the
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