



Post-Quantum Use In Protocols                                 T. Wiggers
Internet-Draft                                                  PQShield
Intended status: Informational                                K. Bashiri
Expires: 8 May 2026                                                  BSI
                                                                S. Kölbl
                                                                  Google
                                                              J. Goodman
                                                   Crypto4A Technologies
                                                             S. Kousidis
                                                                     BSI
                                                         4 November 2025


           Hash-based Signatures: State and Backup Management
                     draft-ietf-pquip-hbs-state-01

Abstract

   Stateful Hash-Based Signature Schemes (Stateful HBS) such as LMS,
   HSS, XMSS and XMSS^MT combine Merkle trees with One-Time Signatures
   (OTS) to provide signatures that are resistant against attacks using
   large-scale quantum computers.  Unlike conventional stateless digital
   signature schemes, Stateful HBS have a state to keep track of which
   OTS keys have been used, as double-signing with the same OTS key
   allows forgeries.

   This document provides guidance and documents security considerations
   for the operational and technical aspects of deploying systems that
   rely on Stateful HBS.  Management of the state of the Stateful HBS,
   including any handling of redundant key material, is a sensitive
   topic, and we discuss some approaches to handle the associated
   challenges.  We also describe the challenges that need to be resolved
   before certain approaches should be considered.

About This Document

   This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

   The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://hbs-
   guidance.github.io/draft-hbs-state/draft-ietf-pquip-hbs-state.html.
   Status information for this document may be found at
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-pquip-hbs-state/.

   Discussion of this document takes place on the Post-Quantum Use In
   Protocols Working Group mailing list (mailto:pqc@ietf.org), which is
   archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/pqc/.  Subscribe
   at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/pqc/.




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   Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
   https://github.com/hbs-guidance/draft-hbs-state.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 8 May 2026.

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   Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  When are Stateful HBS Appropriate?  . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.1.  Specific Terminology in the Context of Stateful HBS . . .   5
       2.1.1.  Private Key Components  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       2.1.2.  State Management  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       2.1.3.  Backup Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
       2.1.4.  Key Export, Key Import and Key Transfer . . . . . . .   6
   3.  Operational Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  Requirements for Secure State Management  . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Potential Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.1.  Multiple Public Keys (SP-800-208) . . . . . . . . . . . .  11



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     5.2.  Distributed Multi-trees (SP-800-208)  . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.3.  Sectorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.4.  Key/State Transfer  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     5.5.  Key Rotation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     5.6.  Variable-length Signature Chains  . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     5.7.  Pre-assigning States  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     5.8.  Time-based State Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     5.9.  Interval-based Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   6.  Backup Management Beyond NIST SP-800-208  . . . . . . . . . .  18
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
   Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
   Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22

1.  Introduction

   Stateful Hash-Based Signature Schemes (Stateful HBS) such as LMS,
   HSS, XMSS and XMSS^MT combine Merkle trees with One-Time Signatures
   (OTS) in order to provide digital signature schemes that remain
   secure even when large-scale quantum computers become available.
   Their theoretic security is well understood and depends only on the
   security of the underlying hash function.  As such, they can serve as
   an important building block for quantum-resistant information and
   communication technology.  Stateful HBS are specified in [RFC8391],
   [RFC8554], and NIST [SP-800-208].

   The private key of an Stateful HBS is a finite collection of OTS keys
   and an associated data structure which keeps track of which OTS keys
   have been used.  This data structure is typically a simple counter
   and often called an index; we refer to it as the *state* of the
   private key.  Each Stateful HBS private key can be used to sign a
   finite number of messages, and the state must be updated with each
   generated signature.

   One must not reuse any OTS key that is part of an Stateful HBS
   private key.  If an attacker is able to obtain signatures for two
   different messages created using the same OTS key, it is
   computationally feasible for that attacker to create forgeries BH16
   [Fluhrer23].  As noted in [MCGREW] and [ETSI-TR-103-692], extreme
   care should be taken in order to avoid the risk that an OTS key will
   be reused accidentally.  Whereas [MCGREW] identifies the fundamental
   failure modes of stateful hash-based signatures and proposes
   architectural strategies such as a reservation approach, and
   [ETSI-TR-103-692] provides a broad analysis of state management



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   challenges and risks, this document complements both by cataloging
   concrete operational patterns in Section 5 and by addressing backup
   and recovery considerations Section 6 not covered in prior work.

   In particular, the challenges below highlight why careful state and
   backup management are essential in Stateful HBS:

   *  Implementers must ensure that each creation of a signature updates
      the state correctly.

   *  If the Stateful HBS private key is distributed to multiple signers
      at the same time, implementers must ensure that they never use the
      same OTS key.  This may require synchronization between all
      signers.

   *  Additional operational complexity arises when part of the
      available OTS signatures are allocated to different devices
      (partial state transfer), or when state from different devices
      needs merging; these introduce risks of overlap, failure, and
      require careful coordination.

   *  If key backups are required, implementers must ensure that any
      backup mechanism can not lead to re-using a previously used OTS
      key.

   The following sections present, recall, and discuss various
   strategies for a correct state and backup management for Stateful
   HBS.

1.1.  When are Stateful HBS Appropriate?

   The issues with state management described above, as well as (for
   most parameter sets) the limited number of signatures, lead to new
   requirements that most developers will not be familiar with and that
   require careful handling in practice: Stateful HBS are not general-
   purpose signature schemes.  Most applications, especially those that
   may produce unrestricted numbers of signatures, should use
   _stateless_ hash-based signature schemes like SLH-DSA [FIPS205],
   which use the same security assumptions, or schemes based on other
   assumptions, such as ML-DSA [FIPS204], instead.  However, if run
   time, implementation size, or signature or key sizes of stateless
   alternatives are prohibitive, and the specific use case allows a very
   tight control of the signing environment, using Stateful HBS may be
   an appropriate solution.  It seems likely that in many scenarios,
   this will only be possible when using purpose-designed hardware, such
   as hardware-security modules.





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2.  Conventions and Definitions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

2.1.  Specific Terminology in the Context of Stateful HBS

   In this subsection we specify certain notions which are important in
   the context of Stateful HBS.

2.1.1.  Private Key Components

   private key  the static, long-lived secret(s) from which OTS private
      keys are derived.  This material is stateless: given the scheme
      parameters, it deterministically defines the set of OTS private
      keys but does not change over time.

   state  the dynamically updated data structure that records which OTS
      key indices have been consumed (often a monotone counter).  This
      material is mutable and must change on every successful signature.

   Conceptually, the private key and the state are distinct and should
   be handled accordingly: the private key is a static secret, while the
   state is mutable, evolves with each signature, and must be maintained
   with integrity and correctness.  In some implementations, these two
   components may be packaged together and not directly separable; in
   such cases, this document’s guidance applies to the combined
   artifact.

2.1.2.  State Management

   In this document _state management_ refers to the handling and
   implementation of the state of the private key.

   This includes mechanisms, which aim:

   *  to securely update the state after each signature,

   *  to set up Stateful HBS with a split state and/or private key, so
      that signatures can be generated from either part without risk of
      state reuse,

   *  to enable partial transfer of unused signature capacity between
      devices, and optionally merging state fragments without overlap,




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   *  to enable effective but secure handling of private key and state
      backup material,

   *  to guarantee the availability of both the private key and its
      state across the lifetime of the key.

   Note that in particular implementations of Stateful HBS, or in
   alternative signature mechanisms such as, e.g., puncturable schemes
   [BSW16], the state and private key might be inseparable.  However,
   even in these scenarios, this document's guidance should still apply.

2.1.3.  Backup Management

   In order to mitigate failure of, e.g., devices storing key material
   and to facilitate other types of disaster recovery, backups of
   private keys and their associated states SHOULD be considered as part
   of a security architecture.

   In this document, _backup management_ refers to all mechanisms
   surrounding the goal to guarantee the availability of the private key
   and state, but with special care to avoid state reuse by rolling back
   to a state in which already-used OTS keys are still available.

   These mechanisms include procedures and protocols, which aim:

   *  to securely store this private key and state material outside the
      in-use signing device,

   *  to import an externally stored private key and state to a newly
      initiated signing device,

   *  allow practicing with backup recovery and to ensure backups are
      valid.

   Backup management can be viewed as a more specific type of state
   management; we make this distinction to clarify the aims of our
   recommendations.

2.1.4.  Key Export, Key Import and Key Transfer

   As part of state and backup management, we will discuss mechanisms to
   export, import or transfer private key and state material.  In order
   to avoid misunderstandings we now specify these notions more
   precisely.

   key export  mechanism of exporting secret data, which yields





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      (partial) private key and state material, from the signing device
      to external storage.  This external storage may be given in
      digital or non-digital form.

   key import  mechanism of importing secret data, which loads (partial)
      private key and state material, from external storage to the
      signing device.

   key transfer  a cryptographically protected transfer of ownership of
      private key and state material from one signing device to another.

   Systems and architectures relying on key transfer are generally
   expected to require fewer operational and manually-executed steps and
   checks to avoid state reuse.

   Note that, at times, secure variants of the aforementioned primitives
   may be required (e.g., securely importing/exporting the key).  In
   these situations cryptographic mechanisms SHOULD be utilized to
   provide assurances related to the confidentiality (e.g., utilizing
   symmetric/asymmetric encryption mechanisms) and/or integrity/
   authenticity (e.g., utilizing digital signatures, hash functions, and
   keyed message authentication codes) of the associated operations.

3.  Operational Considerations

   An important aspect of the evaluation of various hash-based signature
   state and backup management options is to consider the operational
   costs associated with the option(s) being evaluated.  In the past, a
   traditional trust infrastructure solution could utilize
   straightforward archival procedures to make copies of the keys, which
   could then be distributed geographically to ensure their availability
   and deliver a sufficiently resilient solution, all the while
   enforcing whatever security protocols and procedures were required.
   Unfortunately, stateful hash-based signatures introduce an additional
   constraint in that they need to ensure the state is never re-used.
   Hence, archival procedures used for traditional trust infrastructures
   have to be amended/redesigned to be used as viable options.

   One of the most problematic aspects of providing a long-lived
   resilient solution is simply managing the physical media on which the
   keys/state are stored externally (i.e., outside of the signing
   device) throughout the course of their lifetime.  Physical media/
   devices degrade over time, and the more complex the media/device, the
   more likely it is to fail at some point in time (e.g., data stored on
   a CD vs. data stored on a USB drive vs. data stored in a Hardware
   Security Module).  Combine that fact with the long lifetimes
   associated with stateful hash-based signature keys (e.g., 10-20+
   years) and the difficulties associated with transferring keys between



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   devices, and one finds them self with a perplexing set of challenges
   that needs to be accounted for in any state selection process of a
   proper state and backup management solution.  Compounding these
   complexities is the fact any resilient state management system SHOULD
   also provide some means to verify the integrity of these long-lived
   backups to ensure they will be valid when they are required, and to
   ensure the operators know how to execute the necessary recovery
   procedure(s).

   Similarly, many of the prescribed state management options require a
   high degree of operator involvement which means one SHOULD consider
   the costs associated with training the operator element to ensure
   processes and procedures are adhered to and failures caught early and
   corrected before a catastrophic loss of security can occur (e.g.,
   accidentally instantiating multiple instances of a stateful hash-
   based signature key/state).  Note that training is not a fixed one-
   time cost either as long lifetimes will necessitate succession
   planning amongst the operator element, and training of each
   successive generation of participants.  Mechanisms also SHOULD be put
   in place to mitigate the ever-present insider threat via mechanisms
   such as M-of-N controls, ensuring least-privileges amongst
   participants, and enforcing a segregation of duties to ensure
   multiple parties are required to collude to undermine a solution's
   security.  Note that the segregation of duties MUST persist across
   successive generations to ensure participants do not acquire multiple
   roles over time, thereby undermining the intended segregation.

   In addition to the state management, implementers MAY consider to
   implement mechanisms to prevent abrupt signature exhaustion.
   Implementations MAY consider providing a configurable warning
   threshold, M, which is triggered when M signatures remain.  When the
   number of available signatures reaches this threshold, the system
   should return a signatures nearing exhaustion warning.  This warning
   condition SHOULD require explicit acknowledgment from the user
   through a mechanism that cannot be trivially skipped.

   Another important consideration in deploying stateful hash-based
   signatures is the selection of an appropriate parameter set.  Given
   the flexibility of these schemes — such as adjustable tree heights or
   Winternitz parameters — there exists a large variety of possible
   configurations.  The availability of these different configurations
   offers many trade-offs between signature generation/verification
   time, signature size, and key generation time.  Hence, careful
   attention during the design phase is essential to ensure that the
   chosen parameter set aligns optimally with the specific requirements
   of the intended use case.





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   Lastly, costs associated with any external dependencies required by a
   particular solution (e.g., access to a public ledger or transparency
   log, providing accurate time references and synchronization
   mechanisms, access to attestation facilities, etc.)  MUST be
   accounted for as well, particularly if a system is operating in an
   offline mode that makes delivering these additional capabilities all
   the more complicated and expensive.

4.  Requirements for Secure State Management

   A system deploying Stateful HBS SHOULD fulfill certain requirements
   to allow securely handling the state.  The system MUST ensure that no
   two signing operations can ever be issued from the same state.  In
   addition, the generation of a signature and update of the state
   SHOULD appear to be an _atomic transaction_. This means that the
   system MUST NOT release a signature without irrevocably and correctly
   updating the state.

   State management systems SHOULD satisfy all _ACID_ properties:

   *  _Atomicity_: each operation must be indivisible — either the
      signature is generated and the state is updated together, or
      neither occurs.

   *  _Consistency_: the state before and after each update must reflect
      a valid progression of available OTS indices, and no invalid or
      conflicting state is ever observable.

   *  _Isolation_: concurrent or overlapping operations (e.g., from
      separate processes or devices) must not interfere in ways that
      could lead to state reuse.

   *  _Durability_: once a state transition (e.g., after issuing a
      signature) is committed, that transition must survive crashes,
      power loss, or device failure.

   These requirements impose significant restrictions on the underlying
   technical approach and a careful implementation of how the state will
   be updated or synchronized.  The abstraction layers of modern systems
   can make it particularly difficult to guarantee that no two versions
   of the same state are present.  The main concerns here are

   *  how the actual storage for the state is implemented,

   *  how it is modified,

   *  how an accidental/intentional failure/glitch might affect the
      state security, and



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   *  cloning.

   A system may have a version of the private key stored in non-volatile
   memory (e.g. a disk) and will load it into volatile memory (e.g. RAM)
   while processing.  Here, an implementer MUST ensure that these are
   always perfectly synchronized [MCGREW], meaning that no parts of the
   system are allowed to read any version of the key during procedures
   which load, write or modify keys.  This can be particularly
   challenging if there are additional abstraction layers present in the
   system, like additional caches which may affect reading/writing the
   state and its potential existence in multiple locations.

   Cloning is another concern, as it can easily lead to re-using the
   same state.  This can happen for instance if a process which issues a
   signing operation is forked, and no proper synchronization is
   enforced in the implementation to guarantee correct state update.
   Virtual machine (VM) cloning is another potential security risk here,
   as both backing up a VM into non-volatile memory or live cloning of a
   VM can easily lead to a state re-use [MCGREW].  With users shifting
   workloads to cloud service providers, the issue of VM cloning may
   become more prevalent.

   Using dedicated cryptographic hardware is RECOMMENDED to enforce
   these requirements, ensure correct behavior and handle the complexity
   of state management.  In particular, this enables implementing
   rollback resistant counters which can be difficult to achieve in a
   software-only fashion.

   On the verifier side, no state management is required.  However, the
   verifier needs to trust the signer to not have re-used the state.  A
   verifier MAY want to check that no state re-use happened in the past
   by a signer, before accepting a signature.

   In practice, this can be done if the verifier has access to all
   signatures issued by the signer.  As the signatures contain the index
   of the OTS key used, detecting if an index was used more than once
   becomes trivial.  In practice, such a (public) data structure which
   contains all signatures MAY already be present in some use cases
   (e.g. certificate transparency [RFC9162]) or could be built.  It is
   worth noting that while trusting the signer to not re-use the state
   is a strong assumption, other signature schemes like ECDSA introduce
   similar assumptions for the verifier, by requiring the signer to
   never re-use the nonce.








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5.  Potential Solutions

   A variety of potential solutions have been proposed both within the
   [SP-800-208] specification, as well as from external sources.  This
   section describes a number of approaches and their potential
   advantages/disadvantages.

5.1.  Multiple Public Keys (SP-800-208)

   The [SP-800-208] proposes generating multiple Stateful HBS keypairs
   and configuring devices and clients to accept signatures created by
   any of these keys.

   This negatively impacts one of the advantages of using Stateful HBS
   by increasing the public key footprint within the client, which can
   be problematic if it has limited public key storage capacity.
   (Though public keys are typically equivalently sized to ECDSA rather
   than larger classical RSA keys often currently found.)  [SP-800-208]
   addresses storage capacity concerns by suggesting using a mechanism
   such as that proposed in [RFC8649] to update the stored public key by
   having the current key endorse the next key that is to be installed.
   Unfortunately, for many constrained devices the public key is
   embedded in immutable ROM or fuses due to security reasons, so it
   cannot be updated in this manner.

   The proposal of using multiple Stateful HBS keypairs for a single
   instance also generates questions as to how to establish that
   approach in existing public key infrastructures.  For example,
   issuing multiple certificates adds the storage needs of the
   certificate material to the public key footprint.  In order to
   alternatively issue multiple public keys encoded inside a single
   certificate one would need a standardized format if interoperability
   is a concern.

5.2.  Distributed Multi-trees (SP-800-208)

   The [SP-800-208] also proposes creating multiple Stateful HBS keys
   across multiple cryptographic modules using a distributed multi-tree
   approach that is a variant of the standard hyper-tree based Stateful
   HBS schemes HSS and XMSS^MT.  In this approach trees are instantiated
   on a root device (HSM_root), as well as one or more subordinate
   devices (HSM_(sub[i])), and the root tree is used to sign the root
   nodes of the subordinate trees to synthesize a multi-level Stateful
   HBS key.  The root device is only ever used to sign subordinate
   device root nodes, while the subordinate device(s) is(are) used to
   sign messages.  This is relatively straightforward to do using HSS,
   and [SP-800-208] describes the necessary algorithmic modifications
   when using XMSS^MT.



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   One drawback of this approach is the increased signature size as an
   additional OTS needs to be generated, effectively doubling the
   overall signature size.  Another concern is the single point of
   failure nature of relying on the root tree module to sign all of the
   subordinate trees; if the root tree device fails then no new
   subordinate trees can be signed.  [SP-800-208] suggested that as many
   subordinate trees as possible be generated during the initial root
   key generation and subordinate-signing procedure.  Unfortunately,
   this can incur a large capital expenditure to procure all of the
   necessary devices, many of which may not be used for a long period of
   time, if at all.  The subordinate tree root node signing process MUST
   also be carefully managed to ensure top level trees are only ever
   used to sign the root nodes of trusted/approved subordinate trees to
   ensure that no malicious signing request is accepted, which would
   effectively give a rogue entity the ability to generate valid
   signatures, thereby undermining the security of the entire system.

   The [SP-800-208] also suggests combining distributed multi-trees with
   multiple root public keys as a means to mitigate some of the concerns
   regarding having a single point of failure in the root tree.
   However, even if a system operator does everything right, use cases
   with exceptionally long lifetimes of 10-20+ years (e.g., automotive
   and aerospace/satellite applications) will require system operators
   to rely on devices well beyond their expected lifetimes of 5-10
   years, which may constitute an unacceptable business risk.

5.3.  Sectorization

   Distributed multi-trees attempt to partition a Stateful HBS signing
   space amongst multiple cryptographic modules by breaking up the
   signing space along the boundaries of the subordinate trees generated
   during the multi-tree key generation process.  An alternative
   approach would be to use only a single tree, and partition its
   signature space along some power-of-2 less than the total number of
   leaves in the tree (e.g., 2^s for a tree of height h > s), creating N
   = 2^(h-s) partitions or sectors, which are instantiated as N height-s
   Merkle trees whose root nodes are considered interior nodes of the
   overall height-h Merkle tree.  Hence, there is no additional OTS
   required to sign their root nodes; their values are used as-is in the
   underlying Stateful HBS scheme's tree ascent mechanism, yielding a
   common public key (i.e., root node) for all sectors.  Care MUST be
   taken to ensure that each sector uses the same root tree identifier
   (i.e., the "I" value for HSS/LMS and "root" value for XMSS/XMSS^MT).

   Each of the N sectors' OTS private key values can be generated
   pseudo-randomly from a unique seed value generated from an
   appropriate source of randomness.  The private keys from different
   sectors are independent when generated by this process.  This



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   requires that the path information for each sector's root node (i.e.,
   all off-path nodes between the sector root node and the top level
   node value) be stored with each sector's private key at key
   generation time since a sector will not know the seed information
   required to compute any of the other sectors' root nodes during the
   tree ascent phase of a signature generation operation.  During
   signature generation the signer appends the stored path information
   to the path information it computes to ascend from the leaf OTS to
   the sector's root node (which it can compute given that it knows its
   own seed value).

   Hence, sectorized key generation results in a single public key value
   and 2^(h-s) private key values, each capable of generating 2^s
   signatures, after which the sectorized key is exhausted.

   In addition to avoiding an increased signature size; when unique
   seeds are utilized sectorization breaks a given Stateful HBS key/
   state into multiple independent fragments that can be managed as
   independent objects.  As a result, system operators MAY distribute
   sectors to multiple cryptographic devices, providing scalability
   through parallelization and improved resiliency/availability.  This
   approach offers isolation between sectors, ensuring that a compromise
   in one does not extend to others, thereby supporting damage
   containment.  At the same time, it simplifies operational robustness
   by removing the need for cross-device state coordination, since each
   sector is restricted to its own signature space.

5.4.  Key/State Transfer

   Stateful HBS key/state transfer between cryptographic modules entails
   having a means to migrate one instance of a Stateful HBS key/state on
   a source device to a separate destination device, while ensuring that
   any copy of the key/state is deleted from the source device.

   This capability may help alleviate the aforementioned concern
   regarding operating devices beyond their expected lifetimes by
   allowing operators to migrate Stateful HBS key/state to a newer
   device when the original device begins to approach its end-of-life.
   However, it still leaves the operator vulnerable to having the source
   device fail before the key/state can be transferred, effectively
   causing the loss of the key/state.  Hence, it will not be of much
   help addressing the single point of failure issue identified for root
   trees, but may be useful for managing subordinate trees.

   In addition to complete key/state transfer, a device holding part of
   the total available OTS signatures may transfer some unused capacity
   to another device (partial state transfer).  In more advanced
   deployments, state fragments from two devices may be merged to



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   reconstruct or continue signature operations.  These operations carry
   risk: ensuring no overlap in used indices, ensuring atomicity of
   transfer/merge operations, managing consistency, possible conflicts,
   and durability of state across devices.  Such approaches require
   strong synchronization, auditability, and appropriate backup
   mechanisms to avoid double-signing or loss of capacity.

   A more elaborate variant of key transfer, going beyond what
   [SP-800-208] allows, can be found described in Section 6 where key
   transfer is accomplished using a two-step export and import process
   with hash-based transfer validation to yield a more robust transfer
   mechanism.

5.5.  Key Rotation

   Key rotation, such as that defined in [RFC8649], would generate new
   Stateful HBS keys on an as-needed basis, and provide a means to
   transition the system on to using this new Stateful HBS key, while
   generating the next key in the chain in preparation of a future
   rotation/update.  However, this just shifts the problem to the PKI
   and certificate handling.

   Key rotation is not foolproof since in most use cases it will require
   redundancy to ensure there is at least one Stateful HBS signing key
   available to attest to newly generated keys.  In addition, for many
   applications the device keys cannot be updated due to engineering
   constraints or security reasons.

5.6.  Variable-length Signature Chains

   A variant of the key rotation approach is to simply have an available
   signing tree endorse a new subordinate tree when it is about to
   become exhausted (e.g., use its final OTS to sign the root node of a
   new subordinate tree, creating a {n+1}-layer multi-tree from an {n}-
   layer multi-tree).  This process can in theory be repeated as many
   times as necessary.  However, this entails having a multi-tree scheme
   with a variable number of levels, and hence, variable length
   signatures.

   In addition to departing quite significantly from the current
   Stateful HBS specifications and [SP-800-208], this approach has a
   number of significant challenges on both the engineering and
   operational fronts.  Firstly, the variable length nature of the
   signature can lead to variable length verification of signatures,
   which may cause significant issues for use cases with strict time
   constraints (e.g., secure booting of a semiconductor device).  From
   an operational perspective, the ability of a subordinate tree to sign
   either messages or new subordinate trees leads to severe security



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   implications as the rigor around authorizing those two types of
   operations will vary dramatically, leading to either a much more
   onerous message signing operation, or a much more risky subordinate
   tree signing operation.  This may put the system operator in an
   untenable situation where no users are satisfied with the resulting
   solution, and hence, SHOULD NOT be considered as a viable solution.

5.7.  Pre-assigning States

   In some applications, individual one-time signatures (or states) can
   be pre-assigned to the to-be-signed objects.  This may for example be
   possible if the signed objects are monotonically increasingly
   numbered.  One example of such a use case may be software signing.
   This solution basically externalizes the state management to the to-
   be signed messages.

   Expanding on the given example, for software that is released with
   strictly increasing, simple single-position version numbers (i.e.,
   versions 1, 2, 3...), this can be trivially implemented.  As versions
   have a one-to-one correspondence to a Stateful HBS signing state,
   operators MUST ensure that versions can only be minted a single time.
   This MAY require skipping version numbers if a release process
   failed, to avoid double-signing.

   This scheme can be adapted to more complicated release schemes: for
   example, minor update-releases 1.0 to 1.99 can be accommodated by
   assigning signatures 1-100 for these version numbers, while release
   2.0-2.99 would get signatures 101-200.  The assignments MUST be fixed
   as the scheme is set up, and operators SHOULD take into account that
   they are strictly limiting the number of update releases.  In the
   described solution to state management, one MUST move up a major
   release number after 99 minor releases, even if this would break,
   e.g., semantic versioning conventions.

   A variant of pre-assigning signatures is doing this on the basis of
   time, which we describe in the next section.

5.8.  Time-based State Management

   As a variant of pre-assigning one-time signatures based on external
   counters, it is in theory possible to base the selection of one-time
   signature indexes on the current date and time.  For example, if a
   given Stateful HBS instance offers 1024 total signatures, they could
   be broken up into 8 groups of 128 OTS instances each, with the first
   128 allowed to be used in the first time window, the second 128 in
   the second time window, and so on, until the signature space is
   effectively exhausted after 8 time windows.  Note that a time-based
   approach to state management will "waste" any OTS keys that are



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   unused in past time windows.  One MUST NOT attempt to use these keys
   after the time window has gone by.

   Any time-based approach has a very strict reliance on accurate time-
   keeping and synchronization of clocks.  In particular, we identify
   that at least the following engineering-related challenges need to be
   considered:

   *  Signing devices MUST have accurate timekeeping (which is a very
      challenging engineering problem [XKCD1883], [XKCD2867],
      [TIMEFALSEHOODS]).

   *  Time on signing devices MUST NOT be allowed to ever move
      backwards, as this can cause double-signing.

   *  Within time windows, signers MUST track the number of signatures
      produced to ensure it does not exceed the number allowed within
      the window.

   *  Signing devices MUST still operate consistently with the
      requirements of state keeping for Stateful HBS: the signature
      index within a time window SHOULD still appear to be updated
      atomically, and signatures MUST NOT be released before state
      changes have been recorded.

   *  A system SHOULD be robust against exhaustion of the number of
      signatures available in a time window, as in this case it is
      REQUIRED to wait until the next time window starts before new
      messages can be signed.

   *  Time on signing devices SHOULD NOT be allowed to be moved forward
      maliciously or accidentally, which would allow for a simple
      denial-of-service attack by skipping over portions of the
      signature space.

   *  If a signing device needs to be replaced, the replacement device
      MUST be set up with its time in sync with or ahead of the device
      it is to replace.  This implies the current time on signing
      devices SHOULD be continuously recorded.

   *  Rate limiting MAY need to be considered, as exhausting the
      available signatures in a given time window may otherwise be easy.

   *  It MAY be necessary for signers to keep a separate clock for time-
      based state management, and one for not necessarily monotonically
      increasing "wall-time", e.g., if signed artifacts are expected to
      be time-stamped with real-world time.




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   If these concerns can not be sufficiently addressed, time-based state
   management as described in this paragraph SHOULD NOT be used.  Note
   that this list of concerns is not exhaustive, and other, unmentioned,
   concerns may also be relevant to the security of a time-based
   solution.

   Time-based systems can be backed up by simply recording the private
   keys and the configuration of the time windows.  In case of loss of a
   signing device, a time-based state management system can be recovered
   by using this information to bring online a new device in the next
   time window.  This approach MAY also be used as a recovery mechanism
   in the case of (suspected) state consistency problems during a time
   window.  However, the operator MUST NOT allow new signatures to be
   produced before the new time window starts, unless they know the
   exact state at which the previous device became unavailable and are
   able to set up the new device accordingly.  Waiting until the start
   of the next time window avoids double signing, as the OTS keys
   assigned to future time windows are guaranteed to have not yet been
   used.  However, this might incur significant downtime of the signing
   systems.  Downtime MAY be avoided by forcibly moving the signing
   device to the next time window by incrementing its clock; however,
   this induced clock drift will then need to be accounted for in the
   future.  If clock drift is to be avoided, this approach SHOULD
   account for availability considerations.

5.9.  Interval-based Approaches

   The State Reservation Strategy described in section 5 of [MCGREW]
   provides another means of managing the state by allowing users to
   reserve intervals of the signing space, marking the interval's
   associated OTS keys as being used in the overall HBS state, which is
   then written back to non-volatile memory prior to their usage.  The
   OTS keys within the reservation interval are then consumed as-needed,
   without having to update the state again until they have all been
   consumed and additional OTS keys are required.  Note that the
   reserved OTS keys are kept in dynamic memory so they will be lost if
   the signing device loses power or is reset, resulting in a reduction
   in the number of usable signatures for a given HBS instantiation.

   Over provisioning can be used to ensure a sufficient number of
   signatures can be provided in the presence of unexpected losses due
   to power loss or resets.  Over provisioning will cause a minor
   increase between 2% and 12% on signature length as the MTS validation
   paths increase to accommodate the increased Merkle tree height.
   However, reservation eliminates the need to update the state after
   each OTS key is used, minimizing the likelihood of state reuse due to
   state update failures and coherency issues.




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   Multiple signing devices can in theory utilize reservation intervals
   to carve out portions of signing space so that a single S-HBS key can
   be shared amongst multiple devices, leading to potential performance
   and disaster-recovery benefits.  However, great care must be taken to
   manage the reservations to ensure there is no overlap or repeated
   reservation of a given interval, either in part or in whole.

6.  Backup Management Beyond NIST SP-800-208

   In this section, an alternative backup mechanism for Stateful HBS is
   presented in a generic form, which makes the strategy applicable for
   both multi-tree instances XMSS^MT and HSS.  However, following the
   same arguments as in Section 5.3, with minor modifications, the
   presented strategy is also applicable for single-tree instances such
   as XMSS and LMS.

   The strategy presented in this section builds upon the multi-tree
   variant approach from [SP-800-208], and aims to mitigate its
   limitations described in Section 5.2.  Thus, it is assumed that
   already a top-level Merkle tree (for signing the root-nodes of sub-
   trees) and several bottom-level Merkle trees (for signing messages)
   are initiated.  These bottom-level trees MAY be implemented on
   different hardware modules in order to obtain redundancy and improve
   availability.  Let R be the number of these already initiated bottom-
   level trees.  Let h_0 be the height of the top-level-tree.  It is
   assumed that R + 1 is strictly smaller than 2^(h_0), the number of
   leaves of the top-level tree.

   In this new strategy, after the completed key generation procedure
   from the multi-tree variant approach from [SP-800-208], further
   bottom-level trees are generated, one by one, in one of the hardware
   modules.  These new bottom-level trees are each generated from a
   different seed, which is chosen uniformly at random.  For the sake of
   clarity, let us introduce some notation:

   *  S denotes the number of these newly generated bottom-level trees.
      Note that at most 2^(h_0) - R new bottom-level trees can be
      generated, i.e. S is lower or equal to 2^(h_0) - R.  In the
      following we suppose that S is _strictly smaller_ than 2^(h_0) -
      R.

   *  I_new denotes the set of indices that belong to these newly
      generated bottom-level trees, i.e. I_new = {R, R+1, ..., R+S-1}.
      I_new is zero-indexed here.

   For each new bottom-level tree, after it has been generated, the
   following steps MUST be performed:




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   *  sign the corresponding root node with an unused OTS key from the
      top-level tree,

   *  securely _key export_ (as described in Section 2.1.4) the seed,
      which was used to generate the bottom-level tree,

   *  export the signature of the root node, the corresponding OTS key
      index and finally the hash of the seed, using appropriate domain
      separation (i.e. ensuring there is no domain overlap with the
      hashes in the Stateful HBS scheme, and the hash of the seed
      includes the public key and leaf index to mitigate multi-target
      attacks),

   *  irreversibly delete the seed and the bottom-level tree from the
      hardware module.

   The newly generated bottom-level trees (i.e. those bottom-level
   trees, whose indices belong to I_new) are only used in order to
   guarantee availability in the _worst-case scenario_, where at the
   same time both

   *  none of the R bottom-level Merkle trees (which were generated
      according to the multi-tree variant approach from [SP-800-208])
      are available for signing messages and

   *  the top-level Merkle tree (which is used for signing the root-
      nodes of sub-trees) is also not available anymore.

   This scenario may, for example, happen if all hardware modules are
   broken at the same time.

   As soon as this worst-case scenario occurs, the newly generated
   bottom-level trees (i.e. those bottom-level trees, whose indices
   belong to I_new) need to be initiated in order to ensure
   availability.  In order to do this the following steps MUST be
   performed:

   *  initiate a new hardware module

   *  securely _key import_ (as decribed in Section 2.1.4) the first
      unused seed into this hardware module

   *  generate the bottom-level tree corresponding to the seed

   *  irreversibly delete the seed from the backup medium

   *  perform a correctness check by letting the hardware module output
      the hash of the seed



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   Now this bottom-level tree can be used to sign messages.  As soon as
   no more OTS on the bottom-level tree are available or as soon as the
   hardware module is broken, the above steps with a new seed from the
   backup medium can be repeated.

   Note that the resulting signatures generated from these backed up
   seeds do not require any special processing on the verifier side.
   The signature stored alongside the backed up seed, and the signature
   generated from the bottom-level trees created from the backed up seed
   can be combined to match the format of a signature over the complete
   tree.

7.  Security Considerations

   Further security considerations, which are not already covered in
   this document, are given in [SP-800-208], [MCGREW], [FIPS205],
   [RFC8391] and [RFC8554].

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [BH16]     Bruinderink, L. and A. Hülsing, "Oops, I did it again –
              Security of One-Time Signatures under Two-Message
              Attacks.", 2016, <https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1042.pdf>.

   [BSW16]    Bellare, M., Stepanovss, I., and B. Waters, "New Negative
              Results on Differing-Inputs Obfuscation", n.d.,
              <https://link.springer.com/
              chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-49896-5_28>.






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   [ETSI-TR-103-692]
              European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI),
              "State management for stateful authentication mechanisms",
              November 2021, <https://www.etsi.org/deliver/
              etsi_tr/103600_103699/103692/01.01.01_60/
              tr_103692v010101p.pdf>.

   [FIPS204]  National Institute of Standards and Technology, "FIPS 204:
              Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard", Federal
              Information Processing Standards , 13 August 2024,
              <https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.FIPS.204>.

   [FIPS205]  National Institute of Standards and Technology, "FIPS 205:
              Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Standard", Federal
              Information Processing Standards , 13 August 2024,
              <https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.FIPS.205>.

   [Fluhrer23]
              Fluhrer, S., "Oops, I did it again revisited; another look
              at reusing one-time signatures", 2023.

   [HBSX509]  Bashiri, K., Fluhrer, S., Gazdag, S., Van Geest, D., and
              S. Kousidis, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure:
              Algorithm Identifiers for Hash-based Signatures", n.d.,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-gazdag-x509-hash-
              sigs-02.html>.

   [MCGREW]   McGrew, D., Kampanakis, P., Fluhrer, S., Gazdag, S.,
              Butin, D., and J. Buchmann, "State Management for Hash-
              Based Signatures", Security Standardization Research
              2016 , 2 November 2016,
              <https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/357.pdf>.

   [RFC8391]  Huelsing, A., Butin, D., Gazdag, S., Rijneveld, J., and A.
              Mohaisen, "XMSS: eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme",
              RFC 8391, DOI 10.17487/RFC8391, May 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8391>.

   [RFC8411]  Schaad, J. and R. Andrews, "IANA Registration for the
              Cryptographic Algorithm Object Identifier Range",
              RFC 8411, DOI 10.17487/RFC8411, August 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8411>.

   [RFC8554]  McGrew, D., Curcio, M., and S. Fluhrer, "Leighton-Micali
              Hash-Based Signatures", RFC 8554, DOI 10.17487/RFC8554,
              April 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8554>.





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   [RFC8649]  Housley, R., "Hash Of Root Key Certificate Extension",
              RFC 8649, DOI 10.17487/RFC8649, August 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8649>.

   [RFC9162]  Laurie, B., Messeri, E., and R. Stradling, "Certificate
              Transparency Version 2.0", RFC 9162, DOI 10.17487/RFC9162,
              December 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9162>.

   [SP-800-208]
              Cooper, D., Apon, D., Dang, Q., Davidson, M., Dworkin, M.,
              and C. Miller, "NIST SP 800-208: Recommendation for
              Stateful Hash-Based Signature Schemes", NIST Special
              Publication , October 2020,
              <https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-208>.

   [TIMEFALSEHOODS]
              Visée, T., "Falsehoods programmers believe about time",
              n.d., <https://gist.github.com/timvisee/
              fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca>.

   [XKCD1883] Munroe, R., "xkcd: Timezones", n.d.,
              <https://xkcd.com/1883/>.

   [XKCD2867] Munroe, R., "xkcd: DateTime", n.d.,
              <https://xkcd.com/2867/>.

Acknowledgments

   This document was inspired by discussions at the 2nd Oxford Post-
   Quantum Cryptography Summit 2023.

   We gratefully acknowledge Melissa Azouaoui for her input to this
   document.

   The abstract and the introduction are based on the introduction in
   [HBSX509].  Thanks go to the authors of this document.  "Copying
   always makes things easier and less error-prone" - [RFC8411].

Contributors

   *  Jeff Andersen (Google)

   *  Bruno Couillard (Crypto4A Technologies)

   *  Stefan-Lukas Gazdag (genua GmbH)

Authors' Addresses




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   Thom Wiggers
   PQShield
   Email: thom@thomwiggers.nl


   Kaveh Bashiri
   BSI
   Germany
   Email: kaveh.bashiri.ietf@gmail.com


   Stefan Kölbl
   Google
   Switzerland
   Email: kste@google.com


   Jim Goodman
   Crypto4A Technologies
   Canada
   Email: jimg@crypto4a.com


   Stavros Kousidis
   BSI
   Germany
   Email: kousidis.ietf@gmail.com
























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