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LNURL-auth

Authorization with Bitcoin Wallet

A special linkingKey can be used to login user to a service or authorise sensitive actions. This preferrably should be done without compromising user identity so plain LN node key can not be used here. Instead of asking for user credentials a service could display a "login" QR code which contains a specialized LNURL.

Server-side generation of auth URL and signature verification:

When creating an LNURL-auth handler LN SERVICE must include in it a k1 query parameter consisting of randomly generated 32 bytes of data as well as optional action enum, an example is https://site.com?tag=login&k1=hex(32 bytes of random data)&action=login.

Later, once LN SERVICE receives a call at the specified LNURL-auth handler, it should take k1, key and a DER-encoded sig and verify the signature using secp256k1. Once signature is successfully verified a user provided key can be used as identifier and may be stored in a session, database or however LN SERVICE sees fit.

LN SERVICE must make sure that unexpected k1s are not accepted: it is strongly advised for LN SERVICE to have a cache of unused k1s, only proceed with verification of k1s present in that cache and remove used k1s on successful auth attempts.

Server-side choice of subdomain:

LN SERVICE should carefully choose which subdomain (if any) will be used as LNURL-auth endpoint and stick to chosen subdomain in future. For example, if auth.site.com was initially chosen then changing it to, say, login.site.com will result in different account for each user because full domain name is used by wallets as material for key derivation.

LN SERVICE should consider giving meaningful names to chosen subdomains since LN WALLET may show a full domain name to users on login attempt. For example, auth.site.com is less confusing than ksf03.site.com.

Wallet to service interaction flow:

Diagram showing interaction

  1. LN WALLET scans a QR code and decodes an URL which is expected to have the following query parameters:

    • tag with value set to login which means no GET should be made yet.
    • k1 (hex encoded 32 bytes of challenge) which is going to be signed by user's linkingPrivKey.
    • optional action enum which can be one of four strings: register | login | link | auth.

  2. LN WALLET displays a "Login" dialog which must include a domain name extracted from LNURL query string and action enum translated into human readable text if action query parameter was present.

  3. Once accepted by user, LN WALLET signs k1 on secp256k1 using linkingPrivKey and DER-encodes the signature. LN WALLET Then issues a GET to LN SERVICE using <LNURL_hostname_and_path>?<LNURL_existing_query_parameters>&sig=<hex(sign(utf8ToBytes(k1), linkingPrivKey))>&key=<hex(linkingKey)>

  4. LN SERVICE responds with the following JSON once client signature is verified:

    {
    status: "OK"
}

    or

    {"status": "ERROR", "reason": "error details..."}

action enums meaning:

  • register: service will create a new account linked to user's linkingKey.
  • login: service will login user to an existing account linked to user's linkingKey.
  • link service will link a user provided linkingKey to user's existing account (if account was not originally created using lnurl-auth).
  • auth: some stateless action which does not require logging in (or possibly even prior registration) will be granted.

linkingKey derivation

LNURL-auth works by deriving domain-specific linkingKeys from user seed. This approach has two goals: first one is simplicity (user only needs to keep mnemonic to preserve both funds and identity), second one is portability (user should be able to switch a wallet by entering the same mnemonic and get the same identity).

However, second goal is not reachable in practice because there exist different formats of seeds which can't be transferred across all existing wallets. As such a practical approach is to have a recommended ways to derive linkingKey for different wallet types.

linkingKey derivation for BIP-32 based wallets:

  1. There exists a private hashingKey which is derived by user LN WALLET using m/138'/0 path.
  2. LN SERVICE full domain name is extracted from login LNURL and then hashed using hmacSha256(hashingKey, full service domain name). Full domain name here means FQDN with last comma omitted (Example: for https://x.y.z.com/... it would be x.y.z.com).
  3. First 16 bytes are taken from resulting hash and then turned into a sequence of 4 Long values which are in turn used to derive a service-specific linkingKey using m/138'/<long1>/<long2>/<long3>/<long4> path, a Scala example:
import fr.acinq.bitcoin.crypto
import fr.acinq.bitcoin.Protocol
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream
import fr.acinq.bitcoin.DeterministicWallet._
val domainName = "site.com"
val hashingPrivKey = derivePrivateKey(walletMasterKey, hardened(138L) :: 0L :: Nil)
val derivationMaterial = hmac256(key = hashingPrivKey.toBin, message = domainName)
val stream = new ByteArrayInputStream(derivationMaterial.slice(0, 16).toArray)
val pathSuffix = Vector.fill(4)(Protocol.uint32(stream, ByteOrder.BIG_ENDIAN)) // each uint32 call consumes next 4 bytes
val linkingPrivKey = derivePrivateKey(walletMasterKey, hardened(138L) +: pathSuffix)
val linkingPubKey = linkingPrivKey.publicKey

linkingKey derivation for wallets which don't have an access to master privKey:

In this case neither hashingKey nor domain-specific linkingKeys can be derived by path. To overcome this limitation a different scheme is used for this class of wallets:

  1. The following canonical phrase is defined: DO NOT EVER SIGN THIS TEXT WITH YOUR PRIVATE KEYS! IT IS ONLY USED FOR DERIVATION OF LNURL-AUTH HASHING-KEY, DISCLOSING ITS SIGNATURE WILL COMPROMISE YOUR LNURL-AUTH IDENTITY AND MAY LEAD TO LOSS OF FUNDS!.
  2. LN WALLET obtains an RFC6979 deterministic signature of sha256(utf8ToBytes(canonical phrase)) using secp256k1 with node private key.
  3. LN WALLET defines hashingKey as PrivateKey(sha256(obtained signature)).
  4. SERVICE domain name is extracted from auth LNURL and then service-specific linkingPrivKey is defined as PrivateKey(hmacSha256(hashingKey, service domain name)).

LN WALLET must make sure it is not possible to accidentally or automatically sign and hand out a signature of canonical phrase.