Re: Mandatory Algorithm Changes?

[Jon Callas <[e-mail]>]

Mandatory-to-implement does not mean mandatory-to-use.

If we change 3DES to AES, things don't instantly stop working. If we do 
that, 3DES would be a SHOULD, of course, and there will be a note that 
says that if you don't implement 3DES there could be interoperability 
issues.

I don't think that any reasonable implementor is going to run right out 
and code stupidly. It will obviously take a couple of years before 
someone can safely assume, for example, that the 
algorithm-of-last-resort would be AES.

However, if we ever want to roll 3DES over to AES, we have to start 
sometime. The couple of years of bake-in doesn't start until a change 
is made. Why not now?

I'm willing to concede the point on SHA-256, I wouldn't have brought it 
up at all if NIST hadn't said a couple days ago they're phasing out 
SHA-1 and rolling to SHA-256.

	Jon