Re: [saag] AD review of draft-iab-crypto-alg-agility-06

[Russ Housley <[e-mail]>]

Nico and Viktor:

Late last week, you each made comments on Section 2.5.  I have tried to address them.  The text in my edit buffer is:

2.5.  Cryptographic Key Establishment

   Traditionally, protocol designers have avoided more than one approach
   to exchanges that establish cryptographic keys because it makes the
   security analysis of the overall protocol more difficult.  When
   frameworks such as EAP [RFC3748] and SASL [RFC4422] are employed, key
   establishment is very flexible, often hiding many of the details from
   the application.  This results in protocols that support multiple key
   establishment approaches.  In fact, the key establishment approach
   itself is negotiable, which creates a design challenge to protect the
   negotiation of the key establishment approach before it is used to
   produce cryptographic keys.

   Protocols can negotiate a key establishment approach, derive an
   initial cryptographic key, and then authenticate the negotiation.
   However, if the authentication fails, the only recourse is to start
   the negotiation over from the beginning.

   Some environments will restrict the key establishment approaches by
   policy.  Such policies tend to improve interoperability within a
   particular environment, but they cause problems for individuals that
   need to work in multiple incompatible environments.

I hope the change in terminology helps.  Let me know.

Russ