IESG telechat Gen-ART review of draft-harkins-salted-eap-pwd-06

worley@ariadne.com (Dale R. Worley) Sat, 15 October 2016 01:45 UTC

From: worley@ariadne.com
To: gen-art@ietf.org, ietf@ietf.org, draft-harkins-salted-eap-pwd.all@ietf.org
Subject: IESG telechat Gen-ART review of draft-harkins-salted-eap-pwd-06
Sender: worley@ariadne.com
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 21:45:00 -0400
Message-ID: <878ttq4c83.fsf@hobgoblin.ariadne.com>
Archived-At: <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/O8HsREgcPVChTTjaw7diH22Phns>
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Document: draft-harkins-salted-eap-pwd-06
Reviewer: Dale R. Worley
Review Date: 2016-09-05
IESG Telechat date: 2016-10-27

I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft.  The General Area
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Summary:  This draft is basically ready for publication, but has
possible nits that should be considered for fixing before publication.

Minor issues:

2.5.  Payload Modifications

The construction of the EAP-pwd-Commit/Request message limits the salt
to 255 octets, or 2040 bits.  This probably ought to be mentioned in
section 2.1 where the length of the salt is discussed.

Is there any reason to be concerned that 2040 bits will be inadequate
in the near-to-medium future?

Nits/editorial comments:

Abstract

   It included support for raw keys and RFC2751-style double
   hashing of a password but did not include support for salted
   passwords.

I believe that the reference to RFC 2751 is incorrect.  Probably what
is meant is RFC 2759 (see the reference thereto in RFC 5931).  In any
case, the referenced RFC should be listed as a reference.

1.1.  Background

   Databases of stored passwords present an attractive target for
   attack-- get access to the database, learn the passwords.

Normally, the spacing before and after "--" is the same.  There are
also examples of this in sections 2.1 and 5.  Perhaps discuss this
with the RFC Editor concerning the meaning the authors want to
associate with this punctuation.

2.1.  Password Pre-Processing

   o  TBD8: OpaqueString and a UNIX crypt() ([CRY])

Probably change "a UNIX crypt" to "UNIX crypt".

   o  TBD5: OpaqueString and a random salt with SHA-1 ([SHS])

For TBD5-TBD8, it might be clearer to say "OpaqueString and then ...",
as all of them have a two-phase structure.

5.  Security Considerations

   there is no dictionary attack needed to recover the plaintext
   password.

This is correct but doesn't emphasize the important point.  Perhaps

   since the plaintext password need not be recovered, no dictionary
   attack is needed

--

   While the immediate effect of such a compromise would be the
   compromised server,

I think changing "would be the compromised server" to "would be the
compromise of the server" would make this clearer.

Dale

IESG telechat Gen-ART review of draft-harkins-sal… Dale R. Worley
Re: IESG telechat Gen-ART review of draft-harkins… Daniel Harkins