Re: [perpass] NULL Cipher RFC 2410 to HISTORIC ???

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

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Stephen Kent <[e-mail]> wrote:

>  Phillip,
>
>   On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Hannes Tschofenig <
> [e-mail]> wrote:
>
>>  Hi Stephen, Hi Nicholas,
>>
>> it would be interesting (as a history lesson) if someone could tell us
>> why the group at that time decided to develop a NULL encryption mechanism.
>> Stephen Kent (co-author of RFC 2410) might remember. I have no heard
>>
>
>  It was for testing
>
> no, it was not. please see my response to Hannes.
>
> Steve
>

Well what I should have said is 'testing and other legit stuff'. The people
I talked to said they wanted it for testing. The point was that it was a
completely reasonable proposal.

Given the attitude of the IETF to NAT back in those days there would be
good reason not to lead with NAT bypass as the motivation for the spec.


As for the language being 'delightfully tongue in cheek', its the sort of
thing that looks fun when written but can look awfully bad if there is an
issue resulting.

At any rate, I think the point is made sufficiently that NULL ciphers in
legacy suites do not represent a policy precedent against the PERPASS work.

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