Document Action: 'Use of ML-DSA in TLS 1.3' to Informational RFC (draft-ietf-tls-mldsa-05.txt)

The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org> Thu, 10 September 2026 21:45 UTC

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From: The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>
To: IETF-Announce <ietf-announce@ietf.org>
Subject: Document Action: 'Use of ML-DSA in TLS 1.3' to Informational RFC (draft-ietf-tls-mldsa-05.txt)
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Message-ID: <178907673638.94629.14234623226864573791@dt-datatracker-6fdf8b6b57-w7msg>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:45:36 -0700
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CC: The IESG <iesg@ietf.org>, draft-ietf-tls-mldsa@ietf.org, rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org, tls-chairs@ietf.org, tls@ietf.org
Archived-At: <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/3NCR_3oFMXYJH8jxTjBICcbEYlc>

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Use of ML-DSA in TLS 1.3'
(draft-ietf-tls-mldsa-05.txt) as Informational RFC

This document is the product of the Transport Layer Security Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Christopher Inacio and Deb Cooley.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tls-mldsa/

Technical Summary

This memo specifies how the post-quantum signature scheme ML-DSA
(FIPS 204) is used for authentication in TLS 1.3.

Working Group Summary

There is consensus to move this document forward - a ratio of 4:1. The message count
is at ~275 messages. Some of those messages were off topic, there were many repeats,
but a fair number of people expressed their views.

The controversy is related to the status of pure ML-DSA vs composite ML-DSA with ECC. The
opinions included:
- we should not publish a pure ML-DSA specification,
- we should recommend composites over pure ML-DSA,
- we should publish the composite and pure specifications concurrently.

Appeals were both submitted and threatened. The submitted appeal against publication was rejected
due to a derivative work notice. Private threats of appeal were made if the specification was not published.

IETF Last Call raised two additional opinions:
- improve the clarity of Security Considerations (done)
- publish an external guidance document explaining the issues (obviously out of scope)

Document Quality

No special reviews - MIB, Media Type, Yang, etc. are required.

Existing implementations include (but are not limited to):
- OpenSSL
- BoringSSL
- Rustls (via rustls-post-quantum)
- s2n-tls
- WolfSSL
- BouncyCastle
- GnuTLS

Currently, the I-D refers to RFC 8446, -rfc8446bis is currently in AUTH48 and
this document will be updated to refer to -rfc8446bis prior to publication.

Personnel

The Document Shepherd for this document is Sean Turner. The Responsible
Area Director is Deb Cooley.

Document Action: 'Use of ML-DSA in TLS 1.3' to In… The IESG