[Curdle] WG Action: Formed CURves, Deprecating and a Little more Encryption (curdle)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Security Area. For
additional information please contact the Area Directors or the WG
Chairs.

CURves, Deprecating and a Little more Encryption (curdle)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Proposed WG

Chairs:
  Daniel Migault <[e-mail]>
  Rich Salz <[e-mail]>

Assigned Area Director:
  Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>

Mailing list
  Address: [e-mail]
  To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/curdle
  Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/curdle/

Charter:

CURDLE - CURves, Deprecating and a Little more Encryption

The CURDLE working group is chartered to add a small set of cryptographic
mechanisms to some IETF protocols, and to make implementation
requirements including deprecation of old algorithms where there is IETF
consensus to do so. The focus with regards to adding mechanisms is for
those mechanisms that enjoy broad support from implementers.

The set of cryptographic mechanisms that can be introduced are limited to
key agreement (ECDH) and digital signatures (EdDSA) with Curve25519 and
Curve448 as defined by CFRG [1] [2], and the AEAD mode ciphers consisting
of ChaCha20 and Poly1305 also defined by CFRG [3]. Other variants of
mechanisms, such as the ChaCha20-Poly1305 construct deployed for SSH, may
also be considered as well as AES-CCM[4] and AES-GCM [5] where those are
not already defined and where there is implementer interest.  Related
specifications such as private and public key formats are also within
scope.

The protocols the WG intends to work on are Secure Shell (SSH), DNSSEC,
PKIX, CMS, XML Digital Signatures and potentially XML Encryption,
Kerberos and JSON.

Where initial drafts for this work have been produced those will be
immediately considered for adoption as working group documents.  These
include, for SSH, Curve25519/Curve448 digital signatures [6] and key
exchange [7]; for DNSSEC, Ed25519 [8] and Curve448 [9]; for PKIX,
Curve25519/448 NamedCurve [10] and EdDSA signatures [11]; for JSON curves
and signatures [12].

The CURDLE working group will be handling changes to protocols and
registries some of which include what are now considered outdated
algorithm options, and may propose deprecation of such algorithms. Such
deprecation needs to be done with care, ensuring that interoperability
and the needs of existing implementers and deployments are properly
considered. Where deprecation is practical, the working group is
encouraged to deprecate.

Where there is an IETF working group or area group with expertise in a
relevant topic the CURDLE working group will defer to the consensus of
the more specific  working group as to where work will be done. For
example, the TLS, OpenPGP and IPSECME WGs are actively considering some
of these topics.

The CURDLE working group will liaise with W3C to ensure that XML digital
signature and XML encryption work does not conflict with W3C.

The CURDLE working group is expected to be a short-lived working group
that may not need to ever meet face-to-face. Once the work on the
initially adopted set of drafts has completed the working group will
close or re-charter.

The CURDLE working group is not chartered to consider allocating new
codepoints for any algorithms or modes other than those mentioned above. 
Should someone wish to propose such work, a re-charter will be required.
At this time, there is no expectation that such a re-charter  will be
requested.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-cfrg-curves
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-cfrg-eddsa-00
[3] RFC 7539
[4] RFC 3610
[5] RFC5288
[6] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bjh21-ssh-ed25519-02
[7] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-ssh-curves-00
[8] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sury-dnskey-ed25519-03
[9] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sury-dnskey-ed448-00
[10] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-pkix-newcurves-01
[11] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-pkix-eddsa-04
[12] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/jose/current/msg05357.html


Milestones:
  Jan 2016 - Decision on which drafts to adopt
  Jun 2016 - Send last draft to IESG