Re: [Cfrg] Do we need a selection contest for AEAD?

I understand the appeal of tuning algorithms to particular purposes, and the possibility that there are applications with constraints that dictate the use of an common primitive.

The effort of identifying these important characteristics and classifying functions using those characteristics is good.  But I don't want this to lead to a multitude of options.  Though it may be inevitable, anything more than one option is not good.  Keep in mind that we already have a number of AEADs we have to carry.  There are likely good reasons to add more, any addition comes with significant costs.  We've come a long way to making this stuff cheap and available, and especially when it comes to availability of crypto in hardware, I don't want to see that progress broken down.

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020, at 03:32, Jim Schaad wrote:
> +1 
> 
> Having a document that I can point to that gives what the properties 
> are and do I care about them when deciding on an algorithm would be 
> very useful.  In the past I have completely ignored this and made 
> assumptions about what it means.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Cfrg <cfrg-bounces@irtf.org> On Behalf Of David McGrew (mcgrew)
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 4:33 PM
> > To: Stanislav V. Smyshlyaev <smyshsv@gmail.com>
> > Cc: CFRG <cfrg@irtf.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Cfrg] Do we need a selection contest for AEAD?
> > 
> > Hi Stanislav, Alexey, and Nick,
> > 
> > It would be great for CFRG to review modern AEAD modes and their properties,
> > but instead of holding a contest at this time, I suggest focusing on the
> > applicability of these properties to IETF protocols.  It would be valuable for the
> > community to get to a better understanding of which properties have the most
> > applications, and which are niceties and which are nececessities. In the same
> > vein, having a deeper understanding about the scenarios that have led to
> > security failures in the field would help to motivate properties like robustness
> > and leakage resilience.  So I suggest having a call for presentations and
> > documents that includes these broader topics around AEAD.  If nothing else, it
> > could be a prelude to a contest.
> > 
> > The list of properties below is a great start; nonce hiding and resistance to
> > multiple forgery attacks are also worth considering (and have been raised by
> > others I believe).
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > David
> > 
> > > On Jun 19, 2020, at 1:32 PM, Stanislav V. Smyshlyaev <smyshsv@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Dear CFRG,
> > >
> > > The chairs would like to ask for opinions whether it seems reasonable to
> > initiate an AEAD mode selection contest in CFRG, to review modern AEAD
> > modes and recommend a mode (or several modes) for the IETF.
> > >
> > > We’ve recently had a CAESAR contest, and, of course, its results have to be
> > taken into account very seriously. In addition to the properties that were
> > primarily addressed during the CAESAR contest (like protection against side-
> > channel attacks, authenticity/limited privacy damage in case of nonce misuse
> > or release of unverified plaintexts, robustness in such scenarios as huge
> > amounts of data), the following properties may be especially important for the
> > usage of AEAD mechanisms in IETF protocols:
> > > 1) Leakage resistance.
> > > 2) Incremental AEAD.
> > > 3) Commitment AEAD (we've had a discussion in the list a while ago).
> > > 4) RUP-security (it was discussed in the CAESAR contest, but the finalists may
> > have some issues with it, as far as I understand).
> > > 5) Ability to safely encrypt a larger maximum number of bytes per key
> > (discussed in QUIC WG)..
> > >
> > > Does this look reasonable?
> > > Any thoughts about the possible aims of the contest?
> > > Any other requirements for the mode?
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Stanislav, Alexey, Nick
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > Cfrg@irtf.org
> > > https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/cfrg
> > 
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