Re: [Cfrg] Point format endian (was: Adoption of draft-ladd-spake2 as a RG document)

["Dan Harkins" <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, January 25, 2015 12:30 am, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
>> a long-standing tradition of the on-the-wire format
>
> Just to make sure that I understand, after reviewing a ton of tcpdump
> output: You're referring to the HTTP tradition of variable-length ASCII
> decimal encodings for integers on the wire (cache times, data lengths,
> version numbers, etc.)? Does this mean that IETF pushed this HTTP
> tradition into AES-GCM's internal integer encodings before deploying
> AES-GCM, and plans to do the same for other cryptographic systems?

  No, you could not be more wrong in that assumption.

>> better looking and more maintainable code
>
> You're absolutely right: being able to reuse existing variable-length
> ASCII decimal integer encoders and decoders has always been a critical
> part, I daresay the most important part, of implementing, reading,
> auditing, and maintaining cryptographic software. RFC 1321 (MD5) got
> this totally wrong---the integers are _backwards_ and _non-decimal_ and
> _non-ASCII_---and we all know what happened to MD5 as a result.
>
> Now that you've reminded me of what really matters for cryptographic
> code complexity and security, I would love to put together an ASCII
> decimal version of Curve25519, but I have to admit that I'm not
> _completely_ clear on the details of the HTTP tradition that you're
> talking about. For example, are leading zeros allowed? This would allow
> simpler integer encoding for some embedded systems, but it would cause
> trouble for existing parsers that switch to octal for a leading 0, such
> as base-0 strtol(). Also, can the integers exceed 2147483647?

  Do you want to be taken seriously when you respond like this?

  Dan.