Re: [saag] [Cfrg] Re: TCP-AO MAC algorithms

On Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:01:03 +0800
Sean Shuo Shen <sshen@huawei.com> wrote:

> Hi Stephen,
> Can you talk more details about the FIPS evaluation problem?
> 
The issue is what the assurance boundary is.  If the TCP sequence
number is cryptographically significant, the entire process by which
it's set (including original generation and anything else in the stack
or kernel that could touch it) has to be part of the evaluation, too.

It is, I think, less of an issue for TCP-AO, since I suspect that
that's not very likely to be done by a dedicated hardware module.
Still, as a matter of design principle one should keep
security-critical matters separate.

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: saag-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:saag-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of
> Stephen Kent
> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:37 PM
> To: mcgrew
> Cc: saag@mit.edu; Sean Shuo Shen; cfrg@ietf.org
> Subject: Re: [saag] [Cfrg] Re: TCP-AO MAC algorithms
> 
> Anoher issue to keep in mind is that a nonce-less MAC avoids the FIPS 
> evaluation problems that would arise from attempts to make use of the 
> TCP sequence number as an input to the nonce generation process.
> 
> Steve
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> 
> 
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		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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