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

[Russ Housley <[e-mail]>]

On Sep 7, 2015, at 5:41 PM, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 05:22:12PM -0400, Russ Housley wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> The subject under discussion is now much more clear, this is I
> think progress, thanks!  
> 
> The text might still use a bit more polish.  More importantly
> though, is there an intended best-practice recommendation here?
> Or if not, what is the intended purpose of this section?

My intent is to give a heads up.  If there are too many layers, the application may not be able to do anything other than start the negotiation again.

Russ