Last Call: IPSEC drafts -> Proposed Standards / Rogaway 1

[Phil Rogaway <[e-mail]>]

IESG: 

The Chair of the IPSEC Working Group has requested that documents:

1  Atkinson 1 - Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol   (May 1995) 
2  Atkinson 2 - IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)      (25 April 1995)
3  Atkinson 3 - IP Authentication Header                       (25 May 1995)
4  Metzger, Karn Simpson - The ESP DES-CBC Transform            (April 1995)
5  Metzger, Simpson      - IP Authentication using Keyed MD5    (April 1995)

(the "IPSEC Drafts") be considered as Proposed Standards.  This note is to 
urge the IESG that they DECLINE to take this action.  The reason is that
these Drafts have major technical flaws: pervasive problems pertaining 
to both cryptographic architecture and cryptographic mechanisms.  These five 
documents will need to be substantially reworked before one has an acceptable 
standard for securing the Internet Protocol.

My technical concerns have all been made earlier, in notes to Ran Atkinson 
and the IPSEC mailing list.  Unfortunately, none of these items has been acted
on (nor has there ever been any responsive explanation for this failure).

As justification for the first paragraph of this note I transmit technical 
comments under separate cover.

I comment that counter proposals (Internet Drafts) now exist to fix the main 
problems of [4] and [5]: draft-krawczyk-keyed-md5-00.txt is an acceptable 
counter-proposal to [5], while draft-rogaway-cbc-encrypt-00.txt is an 
acceptable counter-proposal to [4].

  
                                     Sincerely,

                                     Phillip Rogaway