Re: [Cfrg] PAKEs in general (was; Re: draft-irtf-cfrg-dragonfly document status)

[Yoav Nir <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 9, 2014, at 7:55 PM, Paul Lambert <[e-mail]> wrote:

>> 
>> I'll just note that there were also voices (incl. mine) saying:
>> "I really don't care about work on PAKEs. Seems like a waste of
>> time to me. But go ahead and spend time on that if you wish."
> 
> +1 mostly.
> 
> Shared passwords are architecturally problematic.  They are
> more useable ways to authenticate.

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said that in the last 20 years…

> The Œmostly' is that the Dragonfly draft should be published
> so it can be used a little better in a couple of specific
> environments where it is already being wired into systems.
> Specifically, IEEE 802.11 has the SAE protocol which uses
> the Dragonfly exchange for mesh networks.

That’s the part I don’t understand. Since the first revision of this document, the group made some suggestions for improvement that have been incorporated into the draft. 

We also have Dan’t message ([1]) describing differences between the 802.11 version and this draft, including attacks that work on earlier versions of this draft that don’t work on the 802.11 version.

Given all that, I don’t think this is a document that describes existing practice, in the same vein as an SSLv3 document or a PKCS#12 document. This is a document describing an entirely new PAKE, so it should be judged as such.

Yoav
[1] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/cfrg/current/msg05210.html