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Re: [secdir] secdir review of draft-housley-suite-b-to-historic-04

Russ Housley <housley@vigilsec.com> Tue, 24 April 2018 15:48 UTC

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From: Russ Housley <housley@vigilsec.com>
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Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 11:48:28 -0400
Cc: IESG <iesg@ietf.org>, IETF SecDir <secdir@ietf.org>, draft-housley-suite-b-to-historic.all@ietf.org
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To: Taylor Yu <tlyu@mit.edu>
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Subject: Re: [secdir] secdir review of draft-housley-suite-b-to-historic-04
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> On Apr 23, 2018, at 11:51 PM, Taylor Yu <tlyu@mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's
> ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the
> IESG.  These comments were written primarily for the benefit of the
> security area directors.  Document editors and WG chairs should treat
> these comments just like any other last call comments.
> 
> The summary of the review is Ready with Nits.
> 
> It's not clear to me whether there are any replacement specs for the
> crypto suites being declared Historic.  Are the remaining crypto suites
> for these protocols of comparable strength and security properties?
> 
> More concretely, Section 5 says:
> 
> "5.  Impact of Reclassifying the Suite-B-related RFCs to Historic
> 
>   No interoperability or security concerns are raised by reclassifing
>   the Suite-B-related RFCs to Historic Status."
> 
> It would be helpful to have some explanation.  For example, is it true
> that none of the RFCs being moved to Historic Status is the sole
> specification of an algorithm or an identifier for an algorithm that we
> expect people to continue using?

Yes, it is true that the conventions for using these algorithms are specified in other documents.  The Suite B profile documents make reference to those other documents.

Section 4.5 points to the one document that makes reference to one of the Suite B profile document as a citation for a ciphersuite.  Both of these ciphersuites are defined in RFC 5289, which would have been a better reference.

> Also there's a typo: "reclassifing" should be "reclassifying".

Indeed.

> Similarly, in Section 7:
> 
> "7.  Security Considerations
> 
>   The CNSA Suite includes algorithms using the larger key sizes that
>   are included in Suite B.  There are no interoperability or security
>   concerns raised by reclassifying the Suite-B-related RFCs to Historic
>   Status."
> 
> Will there be forthcoming specs for using CNSA Suite algorithms with
> these protocols?

There will be documents, but unlike the Suite B profiles, the IESG will not be asked to approve them as Informational RFCs.

Russ

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