[secdir] [new-work] WG Review: CURves, Deprecating and a Little more Encryption (curdle)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Security Area. The IESG
has not made any determination yet. The following draft charter was
submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send
your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg at ietf.org) by 2015-12-14.

CURves, Deprecating and a Little more Encryption (curdle)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Proposed WG

Assigned Area Director:
  Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>


Charter:

CURDLE - CURves, Deprecating and a Little more Encryption

The CURDLE working group is chartered to add a small set of cryptographic
mechanisms to some IETF protocols, and to make implementation
requirements including deprecation of old algorithms where there is IETF
consensus to do so. The focus with regards to adding mechanisms is for
those mechanisms that enjoy broad support from implementers.

The set of new algorithms that can be introduced are limited to key
agreement (ECDH) and digital signatures (EdDSA) with Curve25519 and
Curve448 as defined by CFRG [1] [2], and the AEAD mode ciphers consisting
of ChaCha20 and Poly1305 also defined by CFRG [3].  Other variants of
mechanisms, such as the ChaCha20-Poly1305 construct deployed for SSH, may
also be considered as well as AES-CCM[4] and AES-GCM [5] where those are
not already defined and where there is implementer interest.  Related
specifications such as private and public key formats are also within
scope.

The protocols in scope are Secure Shell (SSH), DNSSEC, PKIX, CMS, XML
Digital Signatures and potentially Kerberos and JSON.

Where initial drafts for this work have been produced those will be
immediately considered for adoption as working group documents.  These
include, for SSH, Curve25519/Curve448 digital signatures [6] and key
exchange [7]; for DNSSEC, Ed25519 [8] and Curve448 [9]; for PKIX,
Curve25519/448 NamedCurve [10] and EdDSA signatures [11]; for JSON curves
and signatures [12].

The CURDLE working group will be handling changes to protocols and
registries some of which include what are now considered outdated 
algorithm options, and may propose deprecation of such algorithms. Such
deprecation needs to be done with care, ensuring that interoperability
and the needs of existing implementers and deployments are properly
considered. Where deprecation is practical, the working group is
encouraged to deprecate.

Where there is an IETF working group or area group with expertise in a 
relevant topic the CURDLE working group will defer to the consensus of
the more specific  working group as to where work will be done. For
example, the TLS, OpenPGP and IPSECME WGs are actively considering some
of these topics.

The CURDLE working group is expected to be a short-lived working group
that may not need to ever meet face-to-face. Once the work on the
initially adopted set of drafts has completed the working group will
close or re-charter.

The CURDLE working group is not chartered to consider allocating new 
codepoints for any algorithms or modes other than those mentioned above. 
Should someone wish to propose such work, a re-charter will be required.
At this time, there is no expectation that such a re-charter  will be
requested.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-cfrg-curves
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-cfrg-eddsa-00
[3] RFC 7539
[4] RFC 3610
[5] RFC5288
[6] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bjh21-ssh-ed25519-02
[7] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-ssh-curves-00
[8] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sury-dnskey-ed25519-03
[9] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sury-dnskey-ed448-00
[10] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-pkix-newcurves-01
[11] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-pkix-eddsa-04
[12] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/jose/current/msg05357.html


Milestones:
  Jan 2016 - Decision on which drafts to adopt
  Jun 2016 - Send last draft to IESG


_______________________________________________
new-work mailing list
[e-mail]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/new-work