Re: [Cfrg] RFC 7748 on Elliptic Curves for Security

On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 3:26 AM, Stephen Farrell
<stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie> wrote:
>
>
> On 24/01/16 08:47, Eggert, Lars wrote:
>> Excellent work, all! This is one of the more important RFCs that the
>> IRTF has published, and will have a direct impact on Internet user
>> privacy.
>
> Indeed. Good work and thanks to all including those whose fav
> curves didn't end up being part of the RFC - the debate, hard
> and gnarly though it was, was also an important part of this.

Really?

This RFC comes some 10 years after the introduction of Curve25519, and
some 5-6 years after everyone realized how simple it is to write
crypto code when you actually care about making it simple. The
existence of tools like signify and minilock was thankfully not
dependent on our blessing, which in any case, because the result is
Informational, apparently doesn't exist. (Nor for that matter was the
adoption in OpenSSH dependent, etc., etc.)

The process hasn't lead to increased support from industry, in fact
the same players are now battling it out at NIST instead. I don't know
that anyone who wasn't planning on supporting Curve25519 before this
discussion is going to introduce it now over their own prefered
alternative, or that it even matters for "Internet user privacy".
Let's Encrypt has had far more of an impact, by ending an ill-thought
out experiment in charging people money to secure their websites. The
various attacks enabled by the bugs in implementations in the NIST
curves generally require some precise targeting: they are not "let's
decrypt all the data on the Internet".

Blake2 didn't have to go through anything like this. Nor did Camelia,
nor the various national elliptic curve standards. I'm glad we are
done with this, but let's not be self-congratulatory about our impact,
which in this case has been extremely negative.

>
> S
>
>>
>> Lars
>>
>> On 2016-01-23, at 1:27, rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org wrote:
>>>
>>> A new Request for Comments is now available in online RFC
>>> libraries.
>>>
>>>
>>> RFC 7748
>>>
>>> Title:      Elliptic Curves for Security Author:     A. Langley, M.
>>> Hamburg, S. Turner Status:     Informational Stream:     IRTF Date:
>>> January 2016 Mailbox:    agl@google.com, mike@shiftleft.org,
>>> sean@sn3rd.com Pages:      22 Characters: 39298
>>> Updates/Obsoletes/SeeAlso:   None
>>>
>>> I-D Tag:    draft-irtf-cfrg-curves-11.txt
>>>
>>> URL:        https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7748
>>>
>>> DOI:        http://dx.doi.org/10.17487/RFC7748
>>>
>>> This memo specifies two elliptic curves over prime fields that
>>> offer a high level of practical security in cryptographic
>>> applications, including Transport Layer Security (TLS).  These
>>> curves are intended to operate at the ~128-bit and ~224-bit
>>> security level, respectively, and are generated deterministically
>>> based on a list of required properties.
>>>
>>> This document is a product of the Crypto Forum Research Group of
>>> the IRTF.
>>>
>>>
>>> INFORMATIONAL: This memo provides information for the Internet
>>> community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
>>> Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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