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HTTPsec Authentication Protocol

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Preamble

1. Introduction
1.1. Editorial Conventions
1.2. Terms
1.3. Identifiers
2. Summary
2.1. Authentication Model
2.2. Peer Identifiers
2.3. Protocol Operation
2.3.1. Initialization
2.3.2. Continuation
3. Protocol Messages
3.1. Initialization Messages
3.1.1. Initialization Request
3.1.2. Initialization Response
3.2. Continuation Messages
3.2.1. Continuation Request
3.2.2. Continuation Response
3.3. Challenge Messages
3.3.1. Challenge Response
3.4. Message Flow
4. Protocol Directives
4.1. id
4.2. dh
4.3. certificate
4.4. url
4.5. group
4.6. nonce
4.7. auth
4.8. token
4.9. signature
4.10. count
4.11. mac
4.12. digest
5. Other Headers
5.1. Content-Encoding
5.2. Cache-Control
5.3. Expires
6. Protocol Computations
6.1. Algorithms
6.1.1. Hash Algorithm
6.1.2. Public Key Algorithm
6.1.3. Encryption Scheme
6.1.4. Signature Scheme
6.1.5. Block Cipher
6.1.6. Block Cipher Mode
6.2. Header Canonicalization
6.3. Initialization Transcript
6.4. Continuation Request Transcript
6.5. Continuation Response Transcript
6.6. Shared Secret
6.7. Keys
6.7.1. MAC Keys
6.7.2. Cipher Keys
6.8. Message Body Ciphering
7. Message Validation
7.1. Initialization Request Validation
7.2. Initialization Response Validation
7.3. Continuation Request Validation
7.4. Continuation Response Validation
8. Cache Considerations
9. Security Considerations
10. References
11. Editor Address

4.6. nonce

The nonce directive in an initialization request allows the requester to send a random value to the responder. This acts as an authentication challenge to the responder, who is challenged to posses the correct private key in order to create a valid signature directive in the initialization response.

This value is a base64 encoded 256 bit cryptographic-quality random value, which MUST be generated afresh by the requester for each new initialization.
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