Re: [Cfrg] Camellia as an Japanese national cipher

[Jon Callas <[e-mail]>]

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On Oct 21, 2012, at 4:57 PM, Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Oct 21, 2012, at 4:19 PM, Jon Callas <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> If you want to be doing things in Japan, you need to use Camellia. 
> 
> Are you sure of that? I ask because a few years ago, I had a discussion with the Camellia authors about some new work, and their slides made me question "how much of a national standard is this?" Their answer was extremely non-commital, and they never followed up.
> 
> I ask this not to poke at Camellia or the authors, but to find out if CFRG needs to group Camellia/Japan with GOST/Russia.

In the case of Japan, they're a lot softer than most countries that push their own national standards. In Russia, you *must* use GOST to work with banking, etc. There are places in Korea where you definitely need to use SEED. In Japan, they have a Cryptographic Module Verification Program (JCMVP) similar to the US/Canada CMVP we call FIPS 140. See 

<http://www.ipa.go.jp/security/jcmvp/jcmvp_e/algorithm.html>

for details. It was developed with the help of the US and Canada. It has the FIPS 140 algorithms with additions of Camellia, CIPHERUNICORN, MISTY, and others.

It's possible to get through JCMVP with only the US/Canada ones, but it's very polite to use some of the Japanese ones. Politeness scores lots of points in Japan. They feel like that means you're committed to them. They buy your stuff if you're committed to them. This is a typical issue in exporting to Japan that they're bad at saying no and you have to learn the proper level of politeness to be accepted. In crypto, that means you need to use some of their ciphers.

	Jon


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