Re: [Cfrg] FourQ draft now available

[Watson Ladd <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 10:06 PM, David Jacobson
<[e-mail]> wrote:
> On 9/24/16 2:58 AM, Hanno Böck wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 23 Sep 2016 09:46:25 -0700
>> Watson Ladd <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> One of the high-profile uses of Curve25519 is in locking the disk of
>>> an iPhone (do we have a flash compatible term for that yet). This
>>> requires a public key operation on the receipt of any push message,
>>> which directly impacts battery life. With IoT many more devices will
>>> have quiescent states, until an event happens which they need to
>>> quickly process.
>>
>> I can understand the Apple use case, however I wonder if this is really
>> an issue, would like to see numbers on that (given all the things an
>> iphone does I'd assume a curve25519 operation isn't really on top of
>> the things).
>> I'm much more worried about your second idea - IoT. Given the
>> security track record of IoT I'd rather not give them something that
>> they can mess up easily. Reading the FourQ draft it explicitly says
>> that it's not twist secure and that point checks have to be
>> implemented. I'd rather give them something without such pitfalls, aka
>> curve25519 for now.
>>
>>> Realistically it could be used in TLS. Plenty of little known national
>>> curves are. But I think a lot of applications are more demanding then
>>> TLS on crypto performance.
>>
>> They are RFC'ed, but are they actually used?
>> This is actually more an example of the bloat things I'd like to avoid:
>> People put crypto in RFCs because of national pride ("we need our
>> German elliptic curves" - seriously, I heard that multiple times), not
>> because of technical arguments.
>>
>> The FourQ case is different - there is a technical argument (speed),
>> but I still wonder if that's good enough to justify an RFC.
>>
> I used to work in the mobile device industry.  For a long time most mobile
> devices used 2048 bit RSA with exponent 3 because it was the fastest thing
> available to verify a signature.   Security conscious companies adopted 2048
> bit RSA with exponent 65537 for added safety.   So I suggest that these are
> the reference points for deciding whether FourQ has a good chance of getting
> traction based on performance.
>
> I find the automotive collision avoidance case quite compelling.  It will be
> challenging to verify hundreds of messages per second.
>
> If you are worried about crypto being done in an unsafe way (for example,
> not doing necessary checks) there is a simple fix:  Supply working code that
> is safe and decently optimized.  Sometimes "reference code" has truly
> terrible performance, and is only useful as the "other party" in a
> validation setup.  (SNOW 3G is a prime example.)
>
> To facilitate adoption, make it easy for developers to get this algorithm
> approved by their legal department.
> 1.  Do whatever you can to allay fears that something might be patented.
> Just having the basic inner algorithm unencumbered is not enough.  it must
> be the case the combination of the optimized inner algorithm as actually
> implemented and all the checks required for safety, i.e. everything in that
> supplied code, is unencumbered.  I'm aware that some standards bodies are
> constrained in what the can do regarding patents.  But do what you can,
> perhaps working outside any standards body.
> 2.  Release the code under a generous minimally-constraining license (e.g.
> BSD), or put it in the public domain.

The optimizations are patented, but not by us. Point compression
patents expired in 2008. As for the question of other patents, consult
a lawyer: there is no way to know which patents may or may not apply.

>
>    --David Jacobson
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-- 
"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains".
--Rousseau.