Re: [CFRG] [Cfrg] I-D Action: draft-irtf-cfrg-pairing-friendly-curves-08.txt

Rene Struik <rstruik.ext@gmail.com> Thu, 12 November 2020 01:12 UTC

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From: Rene Struik <rstruik.ext@gmail.com>
To: "cfrg@irtf.org" <cfrg@irtf.org>
References: <160146973405.15802.8734665033319781394@ietfa.amsl.com> <CAA4D8KbtBOFb=ampqBVH+3xRr9oR6ieV7feRhPpMqvyhWjYdFg@mail.gmail.com> <CAMr0u6kpdjyHeCGBT-Y27RH_4wqX-DmSn5rDm0kd0w9kp4h4iQ@mail.gmail.com> <CAMr0u6==PGwKZOQv52YfiAKPNA+U4Z7v=sT597pwzMzo2E=jNg@mail.gmail.com> <b2846f5a-c000-e185-62d0-b1912d1f27dd@gmail.com> <CAMr0u6nnkk0FQguafmjT5DBXEHDJJw=jfbxsSojC4vkaJ4ZEVg@mail.gmail.com> <CAMr0u6n3PLNJ6w7M4RKfQ4g-2_acFqzJOTTY+oKEddtsYq7KLg@mail.gmail.com> <CAMr0u6kLE5OFJjs4FVxP=NORFQ=S5xj7GQds6cFYuj4gJ7saag@mail.gmail.com> <c37b509f-f8ed-e4f1-02a5-d414cbd618b7@gmail.com> <13cdff98-c615-e640-53c3-05e1ee20a4f6@gmail.com> <c9cc5bf6-e08f-9beb-d883-da96680a1d1a@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [CFRG] [Cfrg] I-D Action: draft-irtf-cfrg-pairing-friendly-curves-08.txt
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One more note: except for RFC 2119 and RFC 8174, none of the normative 
references are, in fact, normative (since, e.g., referring to a 
conference paper).  Whether all 7 pages of informative references are 
informative is in the eye of the beholder (it does hike up quotation 
numbers, though).


On 2020-11-11 5:10 p.m., Rene Struik wrote:
> Dear Yumi et al:
>
> Please find below my review of 
> draft-irtf-cfrg-pairing-friendly-curves-08. My apologies for the 
> getting back to you this late.
>
> Best regards, Rene
>
> ==
>
> Review of draft-irtf-cfrg-pairing-friendly-curves-08
> Reviewer: Rene Struik
> Assessment: again, not ready (perhaps, ditch?)
> Note: page numbers in this review refer to rev-08
>
> General comments:
> 1) It seems that at least half of my main technical comments (apart 
> from editorials) with my review of the rev-07 draft have not been 
> addressed. Moreover, it is somewhat hard to get back to the authors on 
> the mailing list, since they buried their comment resolutions in a 
> somewhat nebulous github structure. This makes it a little bit hard to 
> get enthusiastic about doing yet another review.
> 2) It seems that the authors have not done any effort to disentangle 
> technical specification, availability of libraries, and actual 
> deployment (see my comment #01 of my rev07 review), where there still 
> is a somewhat misleading tilt due to equating all these disparate 
> things and where there is still an unusual prominence of company 
> names, etc. Perhaps, some of this can be taken care of by including a 
> section with "implementation status" (which disappears once this 
> becomes an RFC), as other IETF drafts have done. Nevertheless, this 
> would fly in the face of selection policies for pairing-based curves 
> which are based on conflated notions. This begs the question what the 
> purpose of this draft is.
> 3) The draft, as it stands, still contains lots of material that is in 
> a state with much to be desired for. As an example, Appendix A 
> contains quite a few errors (Ate pairing) and lacks sufficient 
> explanatory context and Appendix C is such an adhoc hack that (I feel) 
> this should never be endorsed by CFRG. For details, see some of my 
> comments on rev08 (where I did focus on the appendices).
> 4) It may be best if CFRG ditches this document, since it still seems 
> far off from being a useful document, written clearly so as to educate 
> the CFRG and the wider IETF community. (Given the lack of feedback on 
> this document over time, perhaps nobody would care.). Should CFRG 
> still wish to give this draft a chance to become a CFRG-issued RFC, I 
> believe it needs a major rewrite to get rid of nontechnical spin 
> material. I also think it would be beneficial not to have yet more 
> specifications come up with their own representations and procedures 
> where there is no real technical justification for this. Should the 
> authors wish to push this "as is", they could always pursue the 
> "independent stream" for this (where one could argue that nothing can 
> be changed). If this should be pushed furthr, I can imagine a slim 
> draft, without umpteen tables and zillions of references, where one 
> simply provides domain parameters and explains how mappings work 
> without all the ads for libraries and start-up companies with 
> non-empty github pages.
>
> For some detailed technical and editorial comments, see below. (I have 
> more comments, but I think the below suffices to show this is far from 
> ready.)
>
> I know this is not what authors want to hear and does not make me 
> popular, but so be it.
>
> Detailed comments:
> 1) Appendix A: the description of the so-called line function is very 
> unclear for non-pairing people (which I presume is most of the CFRG), 
> where expressing this in a style resembling elliptic curve notation 
> more would certainly help. Some suggestions: express the line function 
> as Line_function(P1,P2,Q), where P1:=(x1,y1) and P2:=(x2,y2) are 
> affine points of G2 (curve defined over GF(p^2)) and where Q:=(X,Y) is 
> an affine point of G1 (curve defined over GF(p)), mapping to subgroup 
> G_T of GF(p^k)^*. This allows expressing the number l if P1=P2 as 
> l:=lambda:=(3*x1^2+a)/(2*y1), which is familiar in point doubling 
> formulas for short-Weierstrass curves (where, here, domain parm a is 
> zero) and, similarly, if P1<> (+/-) P2, as l:=lambda:=(y2-y1)/(x2-x1) 
> (see, e.g., [3]). Here, it would also help explaining what happens in 
> case of non-affine inputs (point-at-infinity) and why the output would 
> be an element of the prime-order multiplicative subgroup G_T of 
> GF(p^k)^*.
> 2) Appendix A, last para before A.1: one should mentions the image of 
> the point-at-infinity under this Frobenius map.
> 3) Appendix A.1: this section seems to be full of ambiguities and 
> errors: (a) should one assume the parameter t is the same as the one 
> definining the prime p, etc.? (if so, please say so); (b) write 
> c:=c0+c1*2+ ... + c_{L}*2^{L} and explain that c_L is nonzero and that 
> the Ate pairing procedure works no matter the choice of the 
> coefficients in the range {-1,0,1} (if not, much explanation is 
> needed, since, e.g., c=0+1=2-1 may have different results; (c) fix the 
> loop to "for i:=L-1 downto 0"; (d) replace the silly "|" language in 
> the if condition "c_i=1 | c_i=-1" by "c_i nonzero" (you are writing 
> this for humans, not for parsers); (d) the Line_function has three 
> arguments, but in the call Line_function(T, ci*Q) it only has two: 
> should this include P as third argument?; (e) how does one know the 
> line function never receives non-affine points as input?; (f) the line 
> with frobenius maps seems to compute Q1:=frob(Q); Q2:=frob(Q1) and, if 
> so, doesn't one get Q2=frob(frob(Q))=Q since Q is a point of G2 and, 
> thereby a point of a curve defined over GF(p^2)?
> 4) Appendix A.1: how does one know that f is never the zero element 0 
> (if so, it is not in GF(p^k)*)?
> 5) Appendix A.1: the Ate pairing seems to use integer c written in 
> NAF-notation. If so, shouldn't one at least say something about side 
> channels, in case the inputs or outputs of the Ate pairing are 
> non-public parameters? What about the huge final exponentiation in 
> GF(p^k)^*, where the exponent h:=(p^k-1)/r has an enormous size (~ 
> p^{k-1})? (Note RS: I did ask about side-channels in my review of the 
> rev07-draft [rev07-comment #10], but that comment was never addressed.)
> 6) Appendix A.2: the beginning of that section is virtually the same 
> as Appendix A.1's, but misses some language (e.g., on "sum of 
> (i=0,1,...,L)" --> equals c, order r --> of G1, etc. Remarks on some 
> of the steps of the listed procedure similar to those with Appendix 
> A.1 apply.
> 7) Appendix A would benefit from a much better explanation of the role 
> of the Ate pairing in pairing-based crypto. Otherwise, this seems just 
> loose sand, without context. (If the goal is to educate the CFRG 
> audience about coolness of pairing-based crypto, why not provide 
> sufficient detail to raise interest?; otherwise, why pursuing this 
> draft?)
> 8) Appendix B: the relationship between elements of GF(p^k) and the 
> output sequences (e_0,...,e_{11}), resp. (e_0,...,e_{47}) is not 
> described in sufficient detail.
> 9) Appendix C: this appendix is so poorly written and the construction 
> so adhoc that this should be abandoned right away (see also my 
> previous comment in my rev-07 draft review (rev07-comments#21/#22). 
> Here, simply observe that this point encoding only works for BLS12-381 
> and not for, e.g., BN462, purely because of poor design choices made. 
> Please also see Note 2 of Appendix I.8 of 
> draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13 (which describes SEC1 
> representations, but now for any field of odd characteristic). Simply 
> using the SEC1-encoding, where one squeezes-in the 1-octet identifier 
> for affine points (0x04), point-at-infinity (0x00), and compressed 
> y-coordinate (0x02 or 0x03) in the leftmost 2 bits of the tight 
> MSB/msb-order representation of elements of GF(p), where the 
> bit-length of p has two fixed bit positions for BLS12-381 and BN462 
> case does the job.
> 10) Appendix C: while I think this appendix should be ditched right 
> away and replaced by a more systematic approach that, in principle, 
> applies to all pairing-based curve domain parameters (see prevous 
> comment), there are also some problems with the text itself, including 
> (a) the high-level remarks are confusing and do not seem to contain 
> any useful information, so might easily be removed; (b) The I2OSP and 
> OS2IP functions in RFC 8017 do describe integer-to-octet-string and 
> octet-string-to-integer conversions, but do not specify the 
> bit-ordering (which is needed to describe the encoding of integers as 
> bit-strings and vice-versa);  (c) Step 2 (in Appendix C.1) seems to 
> confuse specification and implementation (since seemingly aimed at 
> machines rather than humans); (d) Step 3 (in Appendix C.1) seems to 
> suggest that an element x=x0 + u*x1 of GF(p^2) is represented in the 
> order "highest coefficient first", whereas in Section 2.5 this seems 
> to be in the order "lowest coefficient first" (although this is hard 
> to figure out due to the recursive definition in terms of towers of 
> fields) - it is hard to figure out what "see discussion of vector 
> representation above" refers to, since there does not seem to have 
> been one; (e) Step 8 (in Appendix C.2) may result in output P:=(x,-y), 
> where the second coordinate is a negative integer (and, thereby, not 
> in the interval [0,p)).
>
>
> Editorial comments:
> 1) Appendix A, last para before A.1: this para refers to 
> Barreto-Naehrig curves and should be moved to the beginning of 
> Appendix A.1.
> 2) Appendix A, last para before A.1: why not expressing the Frobenius 
> map in a more human-friendly way, e.g., frob(x,y):=(x^p,y^p), where 
> one leaves the parameter p implicit?
> 3) Appendix B, l. 8: in "where u is a indeterminate", change "a" to "an".
> 4) Appendix B, l. 8: check for consistent naming of BLS48-581, etc. 
> (underscore vs. dash language). Also elsewhere. BTW - it would help to 
> add the curve name to section headings to make these easier to find, 
> e.g., adding BLS12_381 to the title of Section 4.2.1, etc.
> 5) Appendix C, p. 49: replace "sign_F_p" by "sign_GF(p)", etc.
> 6) Section 4.2.1, last para: I am not sure what adding the new (in 
> rev08) advertisement for another cfrg draft (hash-to-curve) adds to 
> this document, since it seems to be just PR, without any context. 
> Shouldn't one shy away from cross-marketing?
>
> Ref:
> [3] D. Hankerson, A. Menezes, S. Vanstone, Guide to ECC, Springer, 2003.
>
>
> [review posted to CFRG mailing list: Sun July 12, 2020, 7.07pm EDT]
> Review of draft-irtf-cfrg-pairing-friendly-curves-07
> Reviewer: Rene Struik
> Assessment: not ready
>
> Summary:
> The draft provides domain parameters for a few curves used with 
> pairing-based cryptography and provides some test vectors.
>
> General remarks:
> a) While the draft suggests multiple times that the exTNFS attack 
> (2016) negatively impacted the bit-security level of various proposed 
> domain parameter sets for pairing-based curves, it does not provide 
> any detail on this attack itself, nor any reassurances that potential 
> extensions of these (only 4-yr old!) attacks on the general discrete 
> logarithm problem of composite degree extension fields GF(p^t) for 
> small composite t>1 would not be in the cards. This diminishes trust 
> in the claimed security of these curves and their "fitness for use" in 
> practice. the only use of these attacks is simply providing lengthy 
> tables with claimed revised security levels. Why should one have 
> confidence in this, do advances in solving the DLP in small degree 
> extension fields provide the kiss of death for pairings (or if not: 
> why not?), etc?
> b) The draft has 6 1/2 pages of references and 3 1/2 pages of tables 
> of "adopted parameters" on a total of 27 pages of main body text. It 
> seems one should be able to considerably prune both tables and 
> references (which now come across as unwieldy). A good starting point 
> may be to consider that availability of a library or standardization 
> does not necessarily imply that schemes are actually deployed.
> c) It is unclear what motivated change in co-authorship of this draft, 
> e.g., when considering changes between rev04 and rev07 of this draft. 
> It seems more customary to credit minor contributions in the 
> acknowledgement section than by change of authorship.
> d) Lots of specification details seems adhoc and even motivated by a 
> particular company's conventions. For CFRG, it may be more appopriate 
> to specify curves, finite fields, and objects that live herein, in a 
> more systematic way, rather than reinventing the wheel, thereby 
> fostering reuse and maintainability.
> e) I am curious why this draft's intended status is "experimental" 
> (vs. "informational", as is far more common for IRTF documents).
>
> Detailed comments:
> 1) Section 1.2 (and also elsewhere) seems to conflate standardization 
> of parameters, availability of libraries, and actual deployment, where 
> there is an unusual prominence (for an IRTF document) of company 
> names. Wouldn't it make more sense to describe potential applications 
> of pairing based cryptography in more technical terms, e.g., in terms 
> of facilitating aggregate signatures, remote attestation, etc., and 
> provide a brief description (and a technical reference)?
> 2) Section 1.3: the main point of the extTNFS attack is that it tries 
> and solve the DLP in low-degree extension field GF(p^t) for small 
> composite t>1 faster. To bring this point accross, I suggest changing 
> reference to "by the attack" (l. 5 of Section 1.3) by something more 
> closely reflecting this.
> 3) Section 2.3, 4th para (top of p. 8): elaborate on the "BN curves 
> always have order 6 twists" remark (this seemed to have been copied ad 
> verbatim from the [BD18] paper).
> 4) Section 2.4, 4th para: it would be good to mention that parameter t 
> must be 1 (mod 3), since otherwise p is not an integer.
> 5) Section 2.5: the representation conventions are highly confusing, 
> esp. for extension fields. Why not define everything in terms of a 
> prime field GF(p) and extension field GF(p^t), with fixed irreducible 
> polynomial f(z) of degree t over GF(p)? This has been successfully 
> used with elliptic curve specifications (NIST, ISO, ANSI, BSI) not 
> tailored to pairing based crypto. This would also avoids questions 
> that now immediately come up (such as whether defining GF(p^{d'}) in 
> terms of GF(p^{d}) and "inductively applying the above convention" 
> does yield an unambigous definition. Since all finite fields of fixed 
> size are isomorphic, it would be much easier to stick to the standard 
> way of doing this. This would also avoid messy tower of extension 
> field arguments and messy representations of elements hereof (e.g., in 
> Section 4.4). See also Appendix J on data conversions of the lwig 
> draft referenced in this draft. As final  note, the data conversions 
> in that lwig draft require specifying bit/octet encodings (which, in 
> the pairing case, seem to be most-significant-byte-first (MSB) and 
> most-significant-bit-first (msb).
> 6) Section 3.1, 4th para: it is unclear what the meaning of "best 
> known" is: is this "best-known" (i.e., most well-known) or "simply the 
> best"? Given the description, the first meaning should be the correct 
> one...
> 7) Section 3.2: what is missing is a section that actually describes 
> the attack, rather than simply plugging in some implied numbers based 
> on a paper (presumably [BD18]). Why not add some verbiage that 
> explains this in simple but roughly accurate terms ("The exTNFS 
> Attack", or, better, "Attacks on DLP over Low-Degree Extension 
> Fields", or even better, "Solving the DLP in Finite Fields" (there has 
> been lots of progress there for mid-size base fields too)). This is a 
> CFRG document, so one would expect something that provides insight, 
> rather than simply a bombardment of tables, some selection criteria, 
> and a filtered list. Wouldn't the objective of this whole effort be to 
> educate the CFRG audience on pairing-based crypto, rather than (say, 
> obtaining an RFC number from an SDO and marketing this as an implied 
> "authoritative" approval stamp)?
> 8) Section 3.2: I remember that Francisco Rodriguez-Henriquez (fix 
> name in references) presented attacks at the CHES 2013 rump sessions, 
> where question was whether this spelled trouble for pairing-based 
> crypto. While I do not have his presentation then on file, it may be 
> good to dig this up or ask him, and contemplate on wider implications 
> of DLP progress in general (see also first general review remark).
> 9) Section 3.2, 2nd para: A natural question is what one could say 
> about DLP complexity for GF(p^k), in terms of dependency on p and k. 
> Unfortunately, this section does not provide any insight on this (it 
> only provides a single numerical value for BLS48 curves, without any 
> context). I would suspect the reader audience would appreciate such 
> insight, without need to wed through a whole forest (6 1/2 pages: far 
> too much reference stuffing!) of references by himself without any 
> guidance as to whether this would be time well-spent or lost.
> 10) Section 4: as stated before, the selection criteria seem somewhat 
> arbitrary, since conflate specification text, libraries, with actual 
> deployment. Moreover, the most important criteria should probably be 
> security and speed given particular security strength, and potential 
> support for finite field arithmetic on platforms (speaking of which: 
> why not devote a section on whether one can actually implement GF(p^k) 
> securely using finite field libraries, including modular reductions, 
> side channels, etc.?). The term "adoption status" seems, in any event, 
> misleading.
> 11) Section 4.1, Table on pp. 12-15: if one strikes out domain parms 
> rendered immediately suspect by the exTNFS paper on DLP, this kills 
> off 8 out of 10 entries on p. 12 (and far more if one stikes out 
> suspect values accross the entire table). This makes me wonder what 
> the technical reason is for including this entire table. To the casual 
> reader it now suggests that there are huge numbers of implementations 
> out there, whereas - perhaps - most of those should be switched off 
> immediately...
> 12) Section 4.1.2: once again, I am wondering why there is so much 
> emphasis on libraries here. Isn't this an IRTF/CFRG document?
> 13) Section 4.2.1: The extension field GF(p^{12}) can also be 
> described via GF(p) and degree-12 polynomial f(w):=(w^6-1)^2+1. This 
> would allow using simple conventions used in Lidl et al's finite field 
> book [2]. It also allows description of an element x of GF(p^{12}) as 
> vector (x_{11}, ..., x_1, x_0) of coefficients of GF(p) with this 
> irreducible polynomial. Note here that u+1:=w^6 and v:=w^2, so one can 
> easily internally use the more complex tower field stuff in the draft, 
> while sticking to simple and easy to maintain standard constructions 
> (known for 2 centuries) for specifications (so, nobody looses out if 
> one has a slim interface that does this conversion back and forth, if 
> necessary).
> 14) Section 4.2.1, bottom of p. 18: shouldn't the cofactor h be such 
> that h*r= # E'(GF(p^2))? {please also fix Et and use E' notation as 
> elsewhere in the draft}
> 15) Section 4.2.1, parameter b' (bottom of p. 19): if one uses the 
> complicated tower construction, why then not also mention the value of 
> u in the enumeration? Is one actually sure this value is uniquely 
> defined (e.g., I did not check but wondered what would happen if one 
> replaces u by -u in the tower construction)? Same with end of Section 
> 4.2.2...
> 16) Section 4.2.2, 5th para: the statement "CP8_544 is more efficient" 
> is hard to interpret without context (e.g., half the cost, cost-1, 
> cost - o(log log log n)).
> 17) Section 4.2.2, bottom of p. 20: with parms BN462, why not simply 
> introduce base point G, parameter n, h, etc., once and for all in 
> Section 2.1, without trying to repeat their definition in Section 
> 4.2.2 (and later sections)?
> 18) Section 4.2.2, top of p. 21: the formula for h seems incorrect (G2 
> is defined over GF(p^2), whereas the formula refers to a curve defined 
> over GF(p^8).
> 19) The security consideration section (Section 5) is rather slim: 
> (speculation on my side) is the reason to label this draft as 
> "experimental" that design strength vs. actual strength is somewhat in 
> limbo due to progress on DLP problem? Why suddenly squeeze in a point 
> validation routine if no context is given at all of where and how 
> pairing based crypto is used? Wit point validation, what if an octet 
> representation is outside GF(p) boundary? (while the forelast para 
> seems to imply an attack one is completely left in the dark what is at 
> stake here). Not sure whether it is the role of CFRG documents to 
> legitimize "BN254 use ... to keep interoperability". The end of the 
> first para ("as of 2020, as far as we know, there are no fatal attacks 
> that significantly reduce the security of pairing-friendly curves 
> after exTNFS") is entirely non-reassuring to me: it is only four years 
> after the DLP attack that necessitated to strike out half of the 
> entries in the table earlier on in the paper, not that many people 
> work on pairing-based algorithmic cryptanalysis in the first place, 
> etc., etc. Where does this confidence come from (shouldn't one be more 
> modest here, technically speaking???). The Cheon attack is not 
> explained and cannot be evaluated at all, since no context on elliptic 
> arithmetic is given at all in the draft.
> 20) Secion 5, 3rd-last para: Why would the Montgomery ladder suddenly 
> come to the rescue to salvage side channel resistance? Why refer to 
> RFC 7748: whereas pairing-friendly curves are all Weierstrass curves, 
> the curves in RFC 7748 are all Montgomery curves with completely 
> different underlying detail on differential-addition chains). It seems 
> that an entire section should be devoted to how implementations coul 
> avoid SCA attacks, esp. since some operations take place in huge 
> extension fields GF(p^t)...
> 21) Appendix C seems to convey a particular encoding used by ZCash. I 
> don't think it is the role of CFRG to make those the standard way of 
> doing things. This being said, technically that representation is a 
> tiny tweak of what the SECG1 specification already stipulated in 2001 
> (with SEC1, one can extract the affine/compressed encoding of an 
> affine point and whether this relates to the point at infinity from 
> the leftmost octet (0x04, 0x02 or 0x03, vs. 0x00), which more or less 
> 1-1 corresponds to the (C_bit, I_bit, S_bit) combinations. If so, 
> reinventing yet another representation is hard to defend.
> 22) The parity bit notation for finite fields is highly non-standard, 
> compared to, e.g., what has been standard usage with compressed points 
> for curves over prime fields or binary extension fields. Even if this 
> would have some uses, why not defining things once and for all for all 
> extension fields of an odd prime field, so that this is a simple 
> extension. See also Appendix H (parity function for any field GF(p^k), 
> where p odd). This should also help in limiting side channel leakage 
> from the first-half vs. last-half of [0,p-1] test.
>
> Editorial comments:
>
> 1) Section 2.1, first para: replace "F_q" by GF(q), stipulate that 
> extension degree n>0.
> 2) Section 2.1, first para: with defining equation, use more common 
> domain parameters a and b (i.e., lowercase instead of upper case). 
> Elsewhere, do use common nomenclature used with NIST, ANSI, SECG, ISO 
> for 2 decades, including n for prime-order subgroup, h for co-factor, 
> mention irreducible polynomial f(z) with extension field, denote fixed 
> base point by P (instead of BP), etc. If one wishes, refer to Appendix 
> B.1 of [1].
> 3) Section 2.1, 2nd para: "point on" should be "point of".
> 4) Section 2.1, first/3rd para: isn't it simpler to define curve over 
> GF(q) and then introduce curve with same domain parms, but then 
> defined over extension field GF(q^k)?
> 5) Section 2.1, 3rd para: "group law which" should be "group law 
> that", "reflection about x-axis" should be "reflection around x-axis", 
> with "unique third point of intersection [R]" (i.e., give this a name, 
> here R), with [a]P, stipulate that [0]P is the identity element and 
> that [-a]P=-([a]P), etc.
> 6) Section 2.1, terminology: fix E(F_{q^k}) (i.e., add paranthesis), 
> fix that this refers to GF(q^k)-rational points (rather than 
> GF(q)-rational points, same with cardinalities.
> 7) Section 2.1, terminology: with co-factor h, doesn't one need 
> gcd(h,n)=1 (so, as to ensure unique order-n subgroup)?
> 8) Sectioon 2.2, 2nd para "is called embedding degree of E over GF(q)" 
> (i.e., add curve and field over which this is defined)
> 9) Section 2.2, 2nd para: the term "twist" is not defined (but often 
> used elsewhere in the draft), neither is the term GF(p^k)* (nonzero 
> elements of GF(p^k).
> 10) Section 2.3, 2nd para: replace "prime p" by "prime number p (where 
> p at least five)".
> 11) Section 2.3, 3rd para (top of p. 8): write "the multiplicative 
> group..." or, better still, simply state that b is a primitive element 
> of GF(p) (and add this to terminology).
> 12) Section 2.4, 4th para: "parameterized" should read "parameters".
> 13) Section 3.1, 3rd para: "paiting-based" should be "pairing-based" 
> (i.e., fix the typo "t" --> "r").
> 14) Section 3.1, 4th para: "to solve" should read "for solving".
> 15) Section 3.2, 1st para: "the security level(s)" (i.e., make 
> plural), "... correspond" (i.e., use corresponding verb conjugation).
> 16) Section 4.2, 2nd para: reword "more prudent option" as "more 
> conservative option".
> 17) Section 4.2.1, 4th para: "categorized as M-type" ("as" instead of 
> "into").
>
>
>
> Ref:
> [1] draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-10
> [2] R. Lidl, Niederreiter, "Finite Fields", Cambridge University 
> Press, ...
>
>

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