Re: [Ipsec] Key length attribute (was: Important changes in draft-hoffman-rfc3664bis; please review)

At 9:59 AM -0400 10/13/05, Dan McDonald wrote:
>  > Does this look right to you?
>
>Except for one thing, yes it does.
>
>That one thing:
>
>	- IKE is supposed to be algorithm-agile.  Let's say some grinning
>           weirdo comes up with a better-than-AES algorithm, or worse, some
>           other grinning weirdo breaks AES and we NEED a new cipher.
>
>	  How will we handle ciphers in the future?
>
>There are two ways to solve this:
>
>	1.) All algorithms must have a default key length that is used when
>	    no key-length attribute is present.  This means picking a default
>	    size for AES.
>
>	2.) All new algorithms with variable-sized keys are treated like AES,
>	    and MUST include a key-length attribute.
>
>I don't care which one of those two is picked, but one of them must be used
>to maintain algorithm-agility.

I strongly support the second one. Default key lengths are of no use 
to the user, and are easy to mis-implement, particularly many years 
from now when the vogue may change.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

_______________________________________________
Ipsec mailing list
Ipsec@ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipsec