Re: [jose] RFC 8037 "alg" quirkiness

On 2020-09-19 17:52, Jim Schaad wrote:
> Jumping back to the start.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jose <jose-bounces@ietf.org> On Behalf Of Anders Rundgren
> Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2020 11:58 PM
> To: jose@ietf.org
> Subject: [jose] RFC 8037 "alg" quirkiness
> 
> I have just implemented support for Edwards curves in my JSON library.
> 
> Although it is certainly not a deal-breaker I find the use of "EdDSA" as a
> generic Edwards algorithm identifier rather quirky since it departs from the
> other JWS algorithms:
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8037#appendix-A.4
> 
> [JLS]  I do not find this at all in consistent with the way that the other
> signature algorithms were handled, but that may just be me.  For the ECDSA
> algorithms, the size of the hash is specified because it could be variable
> across the different curve sizes.  So you can do ECDSA with SHA-512 and
> P-256.  The requirement to specify the hash was needed to bring the number
> of options down to just those that are fixed by the curve.

Hi Jim,

It may be just me but I prefer the algorithm/key identifier solution you selected for PKIX:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8410#section-3
It is as you say not identical to the JOSE ECDSA solution, but it is (IMO then...) "closer".

Oracle also adopted the PKIX notation for JCE and so did yours truly for JSF.

Anyway, the crypto world seems to be full of quirks like two different ways
of representing ECDSA signatures.

Nobody died.  We can safely drop this thread :)

Anders

> 
> [JLS] For EdDSA, the hash function is fixed by the curve.  This would change
> if different hash functions where allowed for the same curve but I do not
> believe that this where ever be in danger of happening because it was
> strongly argued that a single hash function was the correct approach.  Since
> there was not a need to specify the hash function independent of the key,
> there was no need to specify an EdDSA with SHA-512 and an EdDSA with
> SHAKE-256 it was not done.
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> For curiosity reasons I took a peek at the initial draft which has (in my
> opinion...) a more logical solution:
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-liusvaara-jose-cfrg-curves-00#appendix-A.4
> 
> May I ask why this change was performed?
> 
> For JSF (JSON Signature Format) I will stick to the "00" scheme which also
> permits use of ed25519ph and friends if needed:
> https://mobilepki.org/jsf-lab/home
> 
> thanx,
> Anders
> 
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