Re: [jose] Deployed Code (was: Re: #23: Make crypto independent of binary encoding (base64))

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

So is the idea that a standards organization should seek consistency

I understand the WG rationale. I reject it as a sufficient IETF rationale.
If it stands it is going to require two parallel registries for the same
algs.

I have a spec that crosses HTTP and JSON. Am I supposed to use mime
registry in one and this duplicate scheme in the other?

Blocking that type of move is what IETF last call is for. There is a
negligible benefit in the spec and a huge cost to the community.


Sent from my differenc engine


On Jun 14, 2013, at 5:53 PM, Mike Jones <[e-mail]> wrote:

  Short names were chosen because of the core compactness requirement for
the Compact Serialization.  That was an engineering decision that was
consciously made and for which the rationale is clear.



You can disagree with that decision but it has known clear benefits and is
far from arbitrary.



                                                                -- Mike



*From:* Phillip Hallam-Baker [mailto:[e-mail] <[e-mail]>]
*Sent:* Friday, June 14, 2013 2:49 PM
*To:* Phil Hunt
*Cc:* Richard Barnes; Mike Jones; [e-mail]; <[e-mail]>;
George Fletcher
*Subject:* Re: [jose] Deployed Code (was: Re: #23: Make crypto independent
of binary encoding (base64))



I think in this case that it is late to bring up binary encoding in Jose



But that does not mean we can't add it later. Specs have revisions. All
that is needed to support binary is a flag to say what was signed. Defaults
to the current scheme.



Now if it was a case where binary had been raised at the start of the
process and the person got told to shut up because of 'focus' well that
would be different. When people pull that trick I have no qualms about
repeating my concerns in IETF last call. I think that all too often there
is too much haste when starting a WG and people get railroaded into a
broken scheme some faction likes. But that did not happen here so I think
it is going to be for the binary camp to work out the solution.



My bigger Jose concern is the bizarre decision to rename all the crypto alg
names. I have a spec that uses mime and JSON. If I take Jose seriously I
need a second crypto alg registry.



That is junk, that is something that was raised at the start of the
process. So yes, I will make it an issue in IETF last call

Sent from my difference engine




On Jun 13, 2013, at 12:06 PM, Phil Hunt <[e-mail]> wrote:

 Seems like many these days are in a rush. They call for consensus before
discussing the issue.



Isn't it up to the chair?



This isn't unique to this WG.



Too many times the explanation for keeping an apparent 'feature/flaw' is
'because we don't want change'. Yet often the group can't explain it. Or
worse, the group just says "we know the emperor has no clothes, we just
don't feel the need to comment." This is where alarm bells go off for me.

Phil


On 2013-06-13, at 7:35, Richard Barnes <[e-mail]> wrote:

 This would have been a nice discussion to have had 18 months ago, when we
were getting started.



I don't think it's compatible with the IETF ethos to say "Changes to this
document MUST NOT break existing code."  Otherwise, we're not doing
engineering here, we're cleaning up documentation and rubber-stamping.



What would be acceptable is to say "Changes must break cleanly with
existing code".  That is, it should be possible for a JWT implementation
to, say, process both "legacy" JWS syntax and whatever comes out of this
group.  That way, we could come to consensus on the best solution,
incorporating lessons learned from earlier work without being hindered by
them.



Would participants here consider it a acceptable for the output of this
working group to be incompatible with existing JWT implementations, as long
as it had the property that JW* objects in the new format could be clearly
distinguished from "legacy" JW* objects, so that implementations could
adapt their processing?



--Richard







On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:24 AM, George Fletcher <[e-mail]> wrote:

+1

Breaking deployed code as raised by Brian, Naveen and others is a critical
consideration.

Thanks,
George

On 6/13/13 10:19 AM, Mike Jones wrote:

 Jim and Karen, could you please do as Richard suggests and close this
issue as “won’t fix”.



                                                            Thank you,

                                                            -- Mike



*From:* Richard Barnes [mailto:[e-mail] <[e-mail]>]
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 12, 2013 1:57 PM
*To:* [e-mail]; Mike Jones
*Subject:* Fwd: [jose] #23: Make crypto independent of binary encoding
(base64)



In other words: Chairs, feel free to close/wontfix :)



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Richard Barnes* <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: [jose] #23: Make crypto independent of binary encoding (base64)
To: "Matt Miller (mamille2)" <[e-mail]>
Cc: jose issue tracker <[e-mail]>, "<
[e-mail]>" <
[e-mail]>, "<
[e-mail]>" <[e-mail]>, "<[e-mail]>"
<[e-mail]>

To be clear, I structured my message in two parts for a reason, to separate
the analysis from the opinion.  I acknowledge that I am but one voice here,
and I'm increasingly hearing how alone I am :)



On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Richard Barnes <[e-mail]> wrote:

 <impartial-analysis>

So just to be clear on the trade-off the WG has to make:



On the one hand: Breaking every existing JWT implementation in the world

On the other hand: Eternally binding ourselves to base64 encoding, even if
binary-safe encodings become available (CBOR, MsgPack, etc.)

</impartial-analysis >



<personal-opinion>

I have some sympathy with JWT implementors.  It sucks to have to refactor
code.  But I think we're literally talking about something like a 5-line
patch.  And early JWT implementors knew or should have known (to use a DC
phrase) that they were dealing with a draft spec.  As the W3C editor's
draft template says, in big bold red print, "Implementors who are not
taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification
changing out from under them in incompatible ways."



As PHB pointed out in the other thread, it would be nice to use JWS and JWE
in place of CMS one day, without the base64 hit.  We should incur the
implementation pain now, and get the design right for the long run.  Base64
is a hack around JSON; we should build the system so that when we no longer
need that hack, it can go away.

</personal-opinion>



--Richard







On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 10:27 AM, Matt Miller (mamille2) <[e-mail]>
wrote:

I did at first find it curious why the cryptographic operations were over
the base64url-enccoded values, but I was also very focused on JWE, where I
think the field separation problem is less of an issue (at least now).  For
JWS, this would certainly cause problems without some manner of unambiguous
field parameterization.

I will note that unescaped NULL is not valid in JSON, so it could be used
as a separator between the encoded header and the payload.  I do find it
interesting if JOSE could more easily and efficiently support other
encodings.  However, I think that while this is an interesting thought
experiment, it seems we're too far down the path to seriously consider it
unless the current state were shown to be horribly broken.


- m&m

Matt Miller < [e-mail] >
Cisco Systems, Inc.


On Jun 11, 2013, at 6:01 PM, jose issue tracker <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> #23: Make crypto independent of binary encoding (base64)
>
>
> Comment (by [e-mail]):
>
> For both serializations, you already need the base64url encoded versions
> of the JWS Header and the JWS Payload to preserve them in transmission, so
> computing them isn't an extra burden.  In the JWS Compact Serialization,
> you already need the concatenation of the Encoded JWS Header, a period
> character, and the Encoded JWS Payload, so computing that concatenation
> isn't an extra burden.  Given you already have that quantity, computing
> the signature over it is the easiest thing for developers to do, and it's
> been shown to work well in practice.  There's no compelling reason to make
> this change.
>
> Even for the JSON Serialization, the only "extra" step that's required to
> compute the signature is the concatenation with the period character - to
> prevent shifting of data from one field to the other, as described by Jim
> Schaad in the e-mail thread.  So this step isn't actually "extra" at all -
> it's necessary.  It's also highly advantageous to use exactly the same
> computation for both serializations, which is currently the case.
>
> Since there is no compelling reason to make this change, and since making
> it could enable the "shifting" problem identified by Jim, it should not be
> made.
>
> --
>
-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
> Reporter:  [e-mail]   |       Owner:  draft-ietf-jose-json-web-
>     Type:  defect       |  [e-mail]
> Priority:  major        |      Status:  new
> Component:  json-web-    |   Milestone:
>  encryption             |     Version:
> Severity:  -            |  Resolution:
> Keywords:               |
>
-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
>
> Ticket URL: <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/jose/trac/ticket/23#comment:2>
> jose <http://tools.ietf.org/jose/>
>

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