diff --git a/42.md b/42.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..9b0c45b422 --- /dev/null +++ b/42.md @@ -0,0 +1,88 @@ +NIP-42 +====== + +Authentication of clients to relays +----------------------------------- + +`draft` `optional` `author:Semisol` `author:fiatjaf` + +This NIP defines a way for clients to authenticate to relays by signing an ephemeral event. + +## Motivation + +A relay may want to require clients to authenticate to access restricted resources. For example, + + - A relay may request payment or other forms of whitelisting to publish events -- this can naïvely be achieved by limiting publication + to events signed by the whitelisted key, but with this NIP they may choose to accept any events as long as they are published from an + authenticated user; + - A relay may limit access to `kind: 4` DMs to only the parties involved in the chat exchange, and for that it may require authentication + before clients can query for that kind. + - A relay may limit subscriptions of any kind to paying users or users whitelisted through any other means, and require authentication. + +## Definitions + +This NIP defines a new message, `AUTH`, which relays can send when they support authentication and clients can send to relays when they want +to authenticate. When sent by relays, the message is of the following form: + +``` +["AUTH", ] +``` + +And, when sent by clients, of the following form: + +``` +["AUTH", ] +``` + +The signed event is an ephemeral event not meant to be published or queried, it must be of `kind: 22242` and it should have at least two tags, +one for the relay URL and one for the challenge string as received from the relay. +Relays MUST exclude `kind: 22242` events from being broadcasted to any client. +`created_at` should be the current time. Example: + +```json +{ + "id": "...", + "pubkey": "...", + "created_at": 1669695536, + "kind": 22242, + "tags": [ + ["relay", "wss://relay.example.com/"], + ["challenge", "challengestringhere"] + ], + "content": "", + "sig": "..." +} +``` + +## Protocol flow + +At any moment the relay may send an `AUTH` message to the client containing a challenge. After receiving that the client may decide to +authenticate itself or not. The challenge is expected to be valid for the duration of the connection or until a next challenge is sent by +the relay. + +The client may send an auth message right before performing an action for which it knows authentication will be required -- for example, right +before requesting `kind: 4` chat messages --, or it may do right on connection start or at some other moment it deems best. The authentication +is expected to last for the duration of the WebSocket connection. + +Upon receiving a message from an unauthenticated user it can't fulfill without authentication, a relay may choose to notify the client. For +that it can use a `NOTICE` or `OK` message with a standard prefix `"restricted: "` that is readable both by humans and machines, for example: + +``` +["NOTICE", "restricted: we can't serve DMs to unauthenticated users, does your client implement NIP-42?"] +``` + +or it can return an `OK` message noting the reason an event was not written using the same prefix: + +``` +["OK", , false, "restricted: we do not accept events from unauthenticated users, please sign up at https://example.com/"] +``` + +## Signed Event Verification + +To verify `AUTH` messages, relays must ensure: + + - that the `kind` is `22242`; + - that the event `created_at` is close (e.g. within ~10 minutes) of the current time; + - that the `"challenge"` tag matches the challenge sent before; + - that the `"relay"` tag matches the relay URL: + - URL normalization techniques can be applied. For most cases just checking if the domain name is correct should be enough. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 10bb5ef8a3..5dec5f162f 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ NIPs stand for **Nostr Implementation Possibilities**. They exist to document wh - [NIP-33: Parameterized Replaceable Events](33.md) - [NIP-36: Sensitive Content](36.md) - [NIP-40: Expiration Timestamp](40.md) +- [NIP-42: Authentication of clients to relays](42.md) ## Event Kinds @@ -47,6 +48,7 @@ NIPs stand for **Nostr Implementation Possibilities**. They exist to document wh | 43 | Channel Hide Message | [28](28.md) | | 44 | Channel Mute User | [28](28.md) | | 45-49 | Public Chat Reserved | [28](28.md) | +| 22242 | Client Authentication | [42](42.md) | | 10000-19999 | Replaceable Events Reserved | [16](16.md) | | 20000-29999 | Ephemeral Events Reserved | [16](16.md) | @@ -54,11 +56,12 @@ NIPs stand for **Nostr Implementation Possibilities**. They exist to document wh ## Message types ### Client to Relay -| type | description | NIP | -|-------|-----------------------------------------------------|------------| -| EVENT | used to publish events | [1](01.md) | -| REQ | used to request events and subscribe to new updates | [1](01.md) | -| CLOSE | used to stop previous subscriptions | [1](01.md) | +| type | description | NIP | +|-------|-----------------------------------------------------|-------------| +| EVENT | used to publish events | [1](01.md) | +| REQ | used to request events and subscribe to new updates | [1](01.md) | +| CLOSE | used to stop previous subscriptions | [1](01.md) | +| AUTH | used to send authentication events | [42](42.md) | ### Relay to Client | type | description | NIP | @@ -67,6 +70,7 @@ NIPs stand for **Nostr Implementation Possibilities**. They exist to document wh | NOTICE | used to send human-readable messages to clients | [1](01.md) | | EOSE | used to notify clients all stored events have been sent | [15](15.md) | | OK | used to notify clients if an EVENT was successuful | [20](20.md) | +| AUTH | used to send authentication challenges | [42](42.md) | Please update these lists when proposing NIPs introducing new event kinds.