Aries RFC 0017: Attachments

• Authors: Daniel Hardman, Sam Curren, Andrew Whitehead
• Status: ADOPTED
• Since: 2024-05-01
• Status Note: Used in a number of other RFCs.
• Start Date: 2018-12-24
• Tags: concept

Summary

Explains the three canonical ways to attach data to an agent message.

Motivation

DIDComm messages use a structured format with a defined schema and a small inventory of scalar data types (string, number, date, etc). However, it will be quite common for messages to supplement formalized exchange with arbitrary data--images, documents, or types of media not yet invented.

We need a way to "attach" such content to DIDComm messages. This method must be flexible, powerful, and usable without requiring new schema updates for every dynamic variation.

Tutorial

Messages versus Data

Before explaining how to associate data with a message, it is worth pondering exactly how these two categories of information differ. It is common for newcomers to DIDComm to argue that messages are just data, and vice versa. After all, any data can be transmitted over DIDComm; doesn't that turn it into a message? And any message can be saved; doesn't that make it data?

While it is true that messages and data are highly related, some semantic differences matter:

• Messages are primarily about communication. Their meaning is tied to a communication context. Messages are a mechanism whereby state evolves in a protocol. Protocols are versioned according to the structure and semantics of messages. Messages are usually small, consisting of a modest number of fields with a structure that's focused on furthering the goals of their protocol.

• Data has meaning at rest, in many different DIDComm protocols, or in important contexts beyond DIDComm. Data may be very large and very complex. It may come in formats that are quite independent from DIDComm, versioned independently from the protocols that share it. Data may be produced, consumed or handled as part of a protocol, but the actual content of the data is usually not where processing at the protocol level focuses. In agent codebases, it would be common for data handling to be implemented in different classes or libraries from the handlers for messages.

Some examples:

• A protocol to negotiate the release of medical records might cause X-Rays, genomes, and many other artifacts to be transmitted. These artifacts are data, whereas the information packets that arrange the transmission and provide a carrying mechanism for the artifacts are messages.

• A DIDComm message can be used to report an error. Descriptive parameters that change how the error is processed are probably part of the message, whereas a log file that provides supporting information should be thought of as data rather than the message.

• The protocol for issuing credentials consists of messages that flow through certain steps. One of the steps eventually delivers a credential. The credential is data; it has meaning even when the protocol is complete, and the protocol version may evolve independent of the data format of the credential itself. The fact that the credential is transmitted through a message does not change the credential's primary status as data.

• A protocol to schedule a venue for an event might produce a confirmation message when it finishes. This message might include a map of the venue, instructions about how to unlock the gate, pictures of certain resources, and so forth. This collateral is data, whereas the messages that signal progression through the steps of scheduling are not.

• The DID Exchange Protocol exchanges messages to establish a connection between two parties. Part of what's exchanged is a DID Doc. The DID Doc is more like data than it is like an ordinary message, since it has meaning at rest and outside the protocol.

The line between these two ../../concepts may not be perfectly crisp in all cases, and that is okay. It is clear enough, most of the time, to provide context for the central question of this RFC, which is:

How do we send data along with messages?

3 Ways

Data can be "attached" to DIDComm messages in 3 ways:

1. Inlining
2. Embedding
3. Appending

Inlining

In inlining, data is directly assigned as the value paired with a JSON key in a DIDComm message. For example, a message about arranging a rendezvous may inline data about a location:

This inlined data is in Google Maps pinning format. It has a meaning at rest, outside the message that conveys it, and the versioning of its structure may evolve independently of the versioning of the rendezvous protocol.

Only JSON data can be inlined, since any other data format would break JSON format rules.

Embedding

In embedding, a JSON data structure called an attachment descriptor is assigned as the value paired with a JSON key in a DIDComm message. (Or, an array of attachment descriptors could be assigned.) By convention, the key name for such attachment fields ends with ~attach, making it a field-level decorator that can share common handling logic in agent code. The attachment descriptor structure describes the MIME type and other properties of the data, in much the same way that MIME headers and body describe and contain an attachment in an email message. Given an imaginary protocol that photographers could use to share their favorite photo with friends, the embedded data might manifest like this:

Embedding is a less direct mechanism than inlining, because the data is no longer readable by a human inspecting the message; it is base64url-encoded instead. A benefit of this approach is that the data can be any MIME type instead of just JSON, and that the data comes with useful metadata that can facilitate saving it as a separate file.

Appending

Appending is accomplished using the ~attach decorator, which can be added to any message to include arbitrary data. The decorator is an array of attachment descriptor structures (the same structure used for embedding). For example, a message that conveys evidence found at a crime scene might include the following decorator:

Choosing the right approach

These methods for attaching sit along a continuum that is somewhat like the continuum between strong, statically typed languages versus dynamic, duck-typed languages in programming. The more strongly typed the attachments are, the more strongly bound the attachments are to the protocol that conveys them. Each choice has advantages and disadvantages.

Inlined data is strongly typed; the schema for its associated message must specify the name of the data field, plus what type of data it contains. Its format is always some kind of JSON--often JSON-LD with a @type and/or @context field to provide greater clarity and some independence of versioning. Simple and small data is the best fit for inlining. As mentioned earlier, the Connection Protocol inlines a DID Doc in its connection_request and connection_response messages.

Embedded data is still associated with a known field in the message schema, but it can have a broader set of possible formats. A credential exchange protocol might embed a credential in the final message that does credential issuance.

Appended attachments are the most flexible but also the hardest to run through semantically sophisticated processing. They do not require any specific declaration in the schema of a message, although they can be referenced in fields defined by the schema via their nickname (see below). A protocol that needs to pass an arbitrary collection of artifacts without strong knowledge of their semantics might find this helpful, as in the example mentioned above, where scheduling a venue causes various human-usable payloads to be delivered.

IDs for attachments

The @id field within an attachment descriptor is used to refer unambiguously to an appended (or less ideally, embedded) attachment, and works like an HTML anchor. It is resolved relative to the root @id of the message and only has to be unique within a message. For example, imagine a fictional message type that's used to apply for an art scholarship, that requires photos of art demonstrating techniques A, B, and C. We could have 3 different attachment descriptors--but what if the same work of art demonstrates both technique A and technique B? We don't want to attach the same photo twice...

What we can do is stipulate that the datatype of A_pic, B_pic, and C_pic is an attachment reference, and that the references will point to appended attachments. A fragment of the result might look like this:

Another example of nickname use appeared in the first example of appended attachments above, where the notes field refered to the @ids of the various attachments.

This indirection offers several benefits:

• The same attachment may be referenced at more than one place in the schema, without duplicating the content.
• The message may now include any number of attachments besides the 3 that are required, and mingle them freely with the others. (In our example, perhaps the student wants to add side and overhead shots of each work of art, not just front views).
• Attachments may now have formal semantics, instead of requiring human intelligence to handle. (How many times have we written emails with multiple attachments, and added verbiage like, "My photo of the door is attached as image1.jpeg; my photo of the damaged trunk is attached as image2.jpeg"?)

We could use this same technique with embedded attachments (that is, assign a nickname to an embedded attachment, and refer to that nickname in another field where attached data could be embedded), but this is not considered best practice. The reason is that it requires a field in the schema to have two possible data types--one a string that's a nickname reference, and one an attachment descriptor. Generally, we like fields to have a single datatype in a schema.

Content Formats

There are multiple ways to include content in an attachment. Only one method should be used per attachment.

base64url

This content encoding is an obvious choice for any content different than JSON. You can embed content of any type using this method. Examples are plentiful throughout the document. Note that this encoding is always base64url encoding, not plain base64, and that padding is not required. Code that reads this encoding SHOULD tolerate the presence or absence of padding and base64 versus base64url encodings equally well, but code that writes this encoding SHOULD omit the padding to guarantee alignment with encoding rules in the JOSE (JW*) family of specs.

json

If you are embedding an attachment that is JSON, you can embed it directly in JSON format to make access easier, by replacing data.base64 with data.json, where the value assigned to data.json is the attached content:

This is an overly trivial example of GeoJSON, but hopefully it illustrates the technique. In cases where there is no mime type to declare, it may be helpful to use JSON-LD's @type construct to clarify the specific flavor of JSON in the embedded attachment.

links

All examples discussed so far include an attachment by value--that is, the attachment's bytes are directly inlined in the message in some way. This is a useful mode of data delivery, but it is not the only mode.

Another way that attachment data can be incorporated is by reference. For example, you can link to the content on a web server by replacing data.base64 or data.json with data.links in an attachment descriptor:

When you provide such a link, you are creating a logical association between the message and an attachment that can be fetched separately. This makes it possible to send brief descriptors of attachments and to make the downloading of the heavy content optional (or parallelizable) for the recipient.

The links field is plural (an array) to allow multiple locations to be offered for the same content. This allows an agent to fetch attachments using whichever mechanism(s) are best suited to its individual needs and capabilities.

Supported URI Types

The set of supported URI types in an attachment link is limited to:

• HTTP
• HTTPS

Additional URI types may be added via updates to this RFC.

If an attachment link with an unsupported URI is received, the agent SHOULD respond with a Problem Report indicated the problem.

An ecosystem (coordinating set of agents working in a specific business area) may agree to support other URI types within that ecosystem. As such, implementing a mechanism to easily add support for other attachment link URI types might be useful, but is not required.

Signing Attachments

In some cases it may be desirable to sign an attachment in addition to or instead of signing the message as a whole. Consider a home-buying protocol; the home inspection needs to be signed even when it is removed from a messaging flow. Attachments may also be signed by a party separate from the sender of the message, or using a different signing key when the sender is performing key rotation.

Embedded and appended attachments support signatures by the addition of a data.jws field containing a signature in JWS (RFC 7515) format with Detached Content. The payload of the JWS is the raw bytes of the attachment, appropriately base64url-encoded per JWS rules. If these raw bytes are incorporated by value in the DIDComm message, they are already base64url-encoded in data.base64 and are thus directly substitutable for the suppressed data.jws.payload field; if they are externally referenced, then the bytes must be fetched via the URI in data.links and base64url-encoded before the JWS can be fully reconstituted. Signatures over inlined JSON attachments are not currently defined as this depends upon a canonical serialization for the data.

Sample JWS-signed attachment:

{
  "@type": "https://didcomm.org/xhomebuy/1.0/home_insp",
  "inspection_date": "2020-03-25",
  "inspection_address": "123 Villa de Las Fuentes, Toledo, Spain",
  "comment": "Here's that report you asked for.",
  "report~attach": {
    "mime-type": "application/pdf",
    "filename": "Garcia-inspection-March-25.pdf",
    "data": {
      "base64": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLA0KICJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ... (bytes omitted to shorten)",
      "jws": {
        // payload: ...,  <-- omitted: refer to base64 content when validating
        "header": {
          "kid": "did:key:z6MkmjY8GnV5i9YTDtPETC2uUAW6ejw3nk5mXF5yci5ab7th"
        },
        "protected": "eyJhbGciOiJFZERTQSIsImlhdCI6MTU4Mzg4... (bytes omitted)",
        "signature": "3dZWsuru7QAVFUCtTd0s7uc1peYEijx4eyt5... (bytes omitted)"
      }
    }
  }
}

Here, the JWS structure inlines a public key value in did:key format within the unprotected header's kid field. It may also use a DID URL to reference a key within a resolvable DIDDoc. Supported DID URLs should specify a timestamp and/or version for the containing document.

The JWS protected header consists of at least the following parameter indicating an Edwards curve digital signature:

{
  "alg": "EdDSA"
}

Additional protected and unprotected header parameters may be included in the JWS and must be ignored by implementations if not specifically supported. Any registered header parameters defined by the JWS RFC must be used according to the specification if present.

Multiple signatures may be included using the JWS General Serialization syntax. When a single signature is present, the Flattened Serialization syntax should be preferred. Because each JWS contains an unprotected header with the signing key information, the JWS Compact Serialization cannot be supported.

Size Considerations

DIDComm messages should be small, as a general rule. Just as it's a bad idea to send email messages with multi-GB attachments, it would be bad to send DIDComm messages with huge amounts of data inside them. Remember, a message is about advancing a protocol; usually that can be done without gigabytes or even megabytes of JSON fields. Remember as well that DIDComm messages may be sent over channels having size constraints tied to the transport--an HTTP POST or Bluetooth or NFC or AMQP payload of more than a few MB may be problematic.

Size pressures in messaging are likely to come from attached data. A good rule of thumb might be to not make DIDComm messages bigger than email or MMS messages--whenever more data needs to be attached, use the inclusion-by-reference technique to allow the data to be fetched separately.

Security Implications

Attachments are a notorious vector for malware and mischief with email. For this reason, agents that support attachments MUST perform input validation on attachments, and MUST NOT invoke risky actions on attachments until such validation has been performed. The status of input validation with respect to attachment data MUST be reflected in the Message Trust Context associated with the data's message.

Privacy Implications

When attachments are inlined, they enjoy the same security and transmission guarantees as all agent communication. However, given the right context, a large inlined attachment may be recognizable by its size, even if it is carefully encrypted.

If attachment content is fetched from an external source, then new complications arise. The security guarantees may change. Data streamed from a CDN may be observable in flight. URIs may be correlating. Content may not be immutable or tamper-resistant.

However, these issues are not necessarily a problem. If a DIDComm message wants to attach a 4 GB ISO file of a linux distribution, it may be perfectly fine to do so in the clear. Downloading it is unlikely to introduce strong correlation, encryption is unnecessary, and the torrent itself prevents malicious modification.

Code that handles attachments will need to use wise policy to decide whether attachments are presented in a form that meets its needs.

Reference

Attachment Descriptor structure

• @id: A JSON-LD construct that uniquely identifies attached content within the scope of a given message. Recommended on appended attachment descriptors. Possible but generally unused on embedded attachment descriptors. Never required if no references to the attachment exist; if omitted, then there is no way to refer to the attachment later in the thread, in error messages, and so forth. Because @id is used to compose URIs, it is recommended that this name be brief and avoid spaces and other characters that require URI escaping.

• description: An optional human-readable description of the content.

• filename: A hint about the name that might be used if this attachment is persisted as a file. It is not required, and need not be unique. If this field is present and mime-type is not, the extension on the filename may be used to infer a MIME type.

• mime-type: Describes the MIME type of the attached content. Optional but recommended.

• lastmod_time: A hint about when the content in this attachment was last modified.

• byte_count: Optional, and mostly relevant when content is included by reference instead of by value. Lets the receiver guess how expensive it will be, in time, bandwidth, and storage, to fully fetch the attachment.

• data: A JSON object that gives access to the actual content of the attachment. Contains the following subfields:

• jws: A JSON Web Signature over the content of the attachment. Optional.

• sha256: The hash of the content. Optional. Used as an integrity check if content is inlined. if content is only referenced, then including this field makes the content tamper-evident. This may be redundant, if the content is stored in an inherently immutable container like content-addressable storage. This may also be undesirable, if dynamic content at a specified link is beneficial. Including a hash without including a way to fetch the content via link is a form of proof of existence.

• links: A list of zero or more locations at which the content may be fetched. Optional.

• base64: Base64url-encoded data, when representing arbitrary content inline instead of via links. Optional.

• json: Directly embedded JSON data, when representing content inline instead of via links, and when the content is natively conveyable as JSON. Optional.

Drawbacks

By providing 3 different choices, we impose additional complexity on agents that will receive messages. They have to handle attachments in 3 different modes.

Rationale and alternatives

Originally, we only proposed the most flexible method of attaching--appending. However, feedback from the community suggested that stronger binding to schema was desirable. Inlining was independently invented, and is suggested by JSON-LD anyway. Embedding without appending eliminates some valuable ../../features such as unnamed and undeclared ad-hoc attachments. So we ended up wanting to support all 3 modes.

Prior art

Multipart MIME (see RFCs 822, 1341, and 2045) defines a mechanism somewhat like this. Since we are using JSON instead of email messages as the core model, we can't use these mechanisms directly. However, they are an inspiration for what we are showing here.

Unresolved questions

• N/A

Implementations

The following lists the implementations (if any) of this RFC. Please do a pull request to add your implementation. If the implementation is open source, include a link to the repo or to the implementation within the repo. Please be consistent in the "Name" field so that a mechanical processing of the RFCs can generate a list of all RFCs supported by an Aries implementation.

Name / Link	Implementation Notes
Aries Cloud Agent - Python	in credential exchange
Streetcred.id	Commercial mobile and web app built using Aries Framework - .NET