Re: [babel] WG adoption call for draft-do-babel-hmac (7/19 - 8/6)

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <[e-mail]>]

Denis Ovsienko <[e-mail]> writes:

>  ---- On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 13:46:37 +0100 Donald Eastlake <[e-mail]> wrote ---- 
>  > This message begins a WG adoption call for draft-do-babel-hmac. 
>  > Since this starts during an IETF meeting, it is running for a bit 
>  > longer than usual, through August 6th. Please indicate whether you 
>  > think this draft should be adopted. Comments on the draft also 
>  > welcome. 
>
> I object to the adoption of this document for the following reasons,
> which should be well-known to anybody who has been on the Babel WG
> mailing list, but if it takes to rub it in to action, I will rub it
> in.
>
> 1. Questionable attribution of authorship.

This point basically amounts to (attempted) character assassination of
the draft authors, which is totally unwarranted, has no place in an IETF
working group discussion and is, frankly, shameful. As such, I am just
going to ignore this point.

> 2. What problem does this document solve that has not been solved before?
>
> The Babel WG has already had an opportunity to adopt a HMAC-based
> solution to fulfill the requirements of its charter, and the WG
> decided not to adopt.

The working group has made no statement on whether or not an HMAC-based
security solution is appropriate for Babel (in general). The only thing
that has happened is that draft-ovsienko-babel-rfc7298bis failed to
garner sufficient support for adoption. And now a second draft has been
proposed, which the chairs have deemed to be sufficiently different from
the previous one to warrant a separate call for adoption. Just as it
would have been possible to issue a second adoption call for a revised
version of draft-ovsienko-babel-rfc7298bis, if such a version had been
proposed.

Personally, I think HMAC is an excellent security solution for Babel,
which is why I have expressed my support for adopting this draft (just
as I supported adopting draft-ovsienko-babel-rfc7298bis, as you may
recall).

> I am sorry to have to raise issues like this instead of the actual
> technical points,

Yeah, as you say, none of the points you made above are technical; as
such I fail to see how they have any relevance to the WG decision on
whether to adopt draft-do-babel-hmac.

-Toke