Re: [jose] POLL(s): header criticality

[Russ Housley <[e-mail]>]

FIRST POLL:   NO
SECOND POLL:  NO
THIRD POLL:   C

First, when designing CMS we discussed this field criticality topic to death.  I'm sad that we are exploring the same ratholes in even greater detail yet again.

If an implementation supports key agreement, then it needs to understand all of the key agreement headers, but it might ignore fields associated with other recipient that are using other key management approaches.

If an implementation supports key transport, then it needs to understand all of the key transport headers, but it might ignore fields associated with other recipient that are using other key management approaches.

If an implementation supports password-based encryption then it needs to understand all of thepassword-based encryption headers, but it might ignore fields associated with other recipient that are using other key management approaches.

And so on.

Russ


On Feb 4, 2013, at 9:48 AM, Karen O'Donoghue wrote:

> *******************
> FIRST POLL: Should all header fields be critical for implementations to understand?
> 
> YES – All header fields must continue to be understood by implementations or the input must be rejected.
> 
> NO – A means of listing that specific header fields may be safely ignored should be defined.
> 
> ********************
> SECOND POLL: Should the result of the first poll be "YES", should text like the following be added? “Implementation Note: The requirement to understand all header fields is a requirement on the system as a whole – not on any particular level of library software. For instance, a JOSE library could process the headers that it understands and then leave the processing of the rest of them up to the application. For those headers that the JOSE library didn’t understand, the responsibility for fulfilling the ‘MUST understand’ requirement for the remaining headers would then fall to the application.”
> 
> YES – Add the text clarifying that the “MUST understand” requirement is a requirement on the system as a whole – not specifically on JOSE libraries.
> 
> NO – Don’t add the clarifying text.
> 
> ************************
> THIRD POLL: Should the result of the first poll be "NO", which syntax would you prefer for designating the header fields that may be ignored if not understood?
> 
> A – Define a header field that explicitly lists the fields that may be safely ignored if not understood.
> 
> B – Introduce a second header, where implementations must understand all fields in the first but they may ignore not-understood fields in the second.
> 
> C - Other??? (Please specify in detail.)
>