Re: [IPsec] Last Call: <draft-kivinen-ipsecme-secure-password-framework-01.txt> (Secure Password Framework for IKEv2) to Informational RFC

["Dan Harkins" <[e-mail]>]

  Hi Yaron,

On Fri, July 29, 2011 2:47 pm, Yaron Sheffer wrote:
> Hi Dan,
>
> there are three drafts on the table, and they are NOT identical. Crypto
> protocols, as you know well, are a mixture of cryptography and
> engineering. While the engineering on all three is very similar, the
> cryptography is not.

  I didn't say the cryptography was identical, nor did I say the drafts
are identical (if they were then this "controversy" would be even more
contrived!).

  What I meant was that if your original opposition to my draft was
technical (or non-political, as you say) then we would've seen some
demonstrable technical difference in 1 of the 3 new drafts. We didn't.
They all do a zero knowledge proof in about the same number of rounds
(adding one to IKE_AUTH) with about the same amount of work (+- a modular
exponentiation). They all achieve the same goal in approximately the
same amount of messages with approximately the same amount of work.

  If there was a obvious demonstrable technical difference between the
drafts then the WG would've picked a winner or the AD would've picked
a winner or his designated expert would've picked a winner. But we have
no winner so, as I said, they are "effectively _identical_ from a
technical point of view."

  So there wasn't a technical reason for you to do what you did. We
could've had a standards track solution to this work item if you had
just treated my draft in the same way you treated your own. But no. We
have 3 drafts, an implementation problem, and now your opposition to a
draft to lessen that problem as much as possible.

> I do not wish to offend, but I believe cryptography is better left to
> professional cryptographers. I am not a cryptographer; the primary
> author of draft-kuegler-ipsecme-pace-ikev2 is.

  I'm not offended because I'm not a cryptographer and have never said
otherwise. But neither are any of the editors of the IKEv2 draft and I
don't remember your opposition to the advancement of that draft to RFC.

  Dan.