Re: [MLS] Charter for KEYTRANS

Document: charter-ietf-keytrans-00-01.txt

I share a number of Richard's concerns about the level of
generality of this proposed charter.

I'm not sure that "authentication mechanism" is the term that I would
use here. Specifically, it seems likely that people will want to
deploy CT-like models in which there is a separate directory which
actually provides authentication and then a transparency mechanism
that is provided separately. I recognize that some ways of deploying
KT also are usable as authentication, but that's not the only way to
do things. The word I would use here is "public verifiability"
of the consensus data.

I concur with Richard that going from transparency about key
bindings to transparency about bindings and group state
is a huge scope expansion, and I think an unwise one. MLS already
provides a measure of consistency for group state and I think
This group should confine itself to providing transparency
for the identity->key bindings. You can always recharter later
once that's done.

  The KEYTRANS working group will develop a standard for
  authenticating information about artifacts in an end-to-end
  encrypted messaging system with the above properties.

As above, I don't think the right word here is "authenticating
information" but rather "public verifiability".

I would also strike the language here about end-to-end
encrypted messaging systems. While it's true that that's
the motivating case, if the system is cognizant of that
then something has gone wrong.

These comments would also entail some changes later in the charter,
but it's probably more helpful to discuss them in only one place,
so I'll stop here.

-Ekr

On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 12:18 PM Roman Danyliw <rdd@cert.org> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Since the KEYTRANS BoF at IETF 116 (
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/116/session/keytrans), there has
> been follow-up discussion on crafting a charter.  Since KEYTRANS is
> targeting a similar audience as MLS and is proposing an artifact to
> integrate with MLS, I'm sharing it here for visibility and review here.
>
> Current version of the KEYTRANS charter text
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/12NMFA0P1OYtE6_QoqP3J80tDr0z2-FEm2ZdiWeauAHE/edit
>
> Multiple threads of discussion
> -- initial charter
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/keytrans/6VIEM87-TNe1OYXZRUyAwJX_1vo/
>
> -- AD review of charter
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/keytrans/GfDMvADn5ZgdR7ZfTZt2y296Nuo/
>
> While posting here, please bring any feedback to the keytrans@ietf
> mailing list.
>
> Regards,
> Roman
>
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