Re: [secdir] [Cfrg] ISE seeks help with some crypto drafts

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

On 10/03/2019 20:57, Tony Arcieri wrote:
> 
> I think there are significant compelling reasons to prefer OCB mode 
> over pretty much all other existing modes:

FWIW, I don't, because we're not dealing with a clean slate.

In the IETF context, whether or not OCB is a bit better
then currently deployed modes is not an interesting
question.

One interesting question might be: is OCB so much better
that it could we displace uses of some existing mode with
OCB. That seems unlikely to me for the widely used modes.

Another interesting question might be: is OCB so much
better that we want to deploy it alongside current modes.
I don't see the overall benefit of that myself.

So even though I'm happy to accept that OCB has better
properties than e.g. GCM, I don't think it's so much
better that RFCs for it are that useful.

That said, if the RFC for such a thing said "this is nice
for brand new stuff (although library support will be less
comprehensive) but is not worth the costs associated
with adding it to existing protocols" then I'd be less
against such RFCs being produced. Understandably enough,
that kind of statement doesn't get added to such RFCs;-)

S.

PS: In case the ISE is still listening, the above is a
reason why I think having CFRG produce this kind of RFC
(instead of routing 'em via the ISE) would be a better
plan. CFRG could (I think) likely reach better informed
judgements (in the open) as to whether or not some crypto
technique is really worth documenting in an RFC.