Re: [core] Allowing non-HMAC based KDF in OSCORE

[Christian Amsüss <[e-mail]>]

Hello John,

On Fri, Apr 03, 2020 at 11:03:54AM +0000, John Mattsson wrote:
> As pointed out by Jim in the COSE virtual interim yesterday, OSCORE
> restricts the type of KDF to HMAC-based HKDF algorithms. I do not know
> (or remember) why the restriction is there.

from an implementer point of view, it would be much appreciated if an
OSCORE library would only need to ask its backend COSE library things it
can know (eg. whether an algorithm is a KDF algorithm) and not have to
ship additional knowledge about algorithms.

> I don't think there is any hurry to change this restriction but I
> think it should be changed at some point. It makes sense for OSCORE to
> allow any KDF specified in COSE. I would suggest that Group OSCORE
> (which updates OSCORE) lifts this limitation also for RFC 8613.

If we go that route (which sounds viable to me), could we have a "There
are no technical reasons why this could not be extended to (non-group)
OSCORE; updating that specification in a later document is being
considered." in there?

KR
c

-- 
I shouldn't have written all those tank programs.
  -- Kevin Flynn