Re: [Secdispatch] Problem statement for post-quantum multi-algorithm PKI

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

Replying to various folks at once...

On 15/09/2019 15:29, Ira McDonald wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thanks for the link to Kenny's talk.
> 
> Stephen - The hard problem for automotive vehicles is that, even if
> Quantum Computing never comes to pass, algorithms and various
> implementations go on having new weaknesses found over time.
> But decent performance requires hardware assist, in many cases.
> But automotive ECUs are very unlikely to start have large FPGAs
> added soon.  Replacing 100s of expensive ECUs in fielded vehicles
> to allow practical algorithm agility is not going to happen.  This issue
> that Michael Richardson mentioned is at the top of the list for the
> automotive cybersecurity community.

I don't understand how devices that are not going to be updated
can support algorithm agility. Perhaps you mean that you want to
deploy those devices soon and not update for a couple of decades
or something? If so, that sound like a bad plan to me, and one
that'd be better to not cater to really. (RFC8240 has lots of
discussion of that.)


On 16/09/2019 17:05, Mike Ounsworth wrote:
> My Goal: multi-vendor interop on PQ certificates.

That seems to beg the question again as to why x.509 is needed
at all as part of a PQ solution.

> I'm coming from the
> perspective of a CA; it can take years to distribute a root cert to
> all the places it needs to be before you can really start using it.
> Plus, people want to playing with these things ASAP to understand the
> scope of infrastructure changes required. There's the time pressure.
>
> I think you're right that to really deploy any meaningful 20 year
> root using, for example the small lattice schemes, we'll need to wait
> for the NIST PQC algs to stop having so much churn.
>
> That said, laying the groundwork for the "hybrid" property in
> certificates that the NIST PQC community is calling for will require
> much debate and a few RFCs. This work is necessary and independent of
> the choice of algorithm from the NIST PQC competition, so why should
> we wait until 2023 to _start_ thinking about it? Why not do it in
> parallel, be able to offer alpha test versions of PKI products before
> the conclusion of the NIST PQC, and be ready to drop-in the NIST
> winners the day they're ready?

One reason to not do it in parallel is that we don't know how the
winning algorithm parameters will look. I can easily imagine NIST
modifying how those are encoded and/or introducing new variations,
after basic algorithms have been picked, leading to things having
to be re-done.

(Sorry if the quoting is messed up below, if so, it was messed up
in my MUA before I started is my excuse:-)
On 16/09/2019 19:06, Daniel Van Geest wrote:
> Can we support multiple signatures inside a certificate? I don't
> think so.
>
> Why not?  Mike’s problem statement draft has two potential technical
> solutions doing just that, each with advantages and disadvantages.
> Or is there more of a logistical or other issue?  Knowing why you
> think we can’t support multiple signatures inside a certificate could
> help refine the problem statement.

Again, that assumes that x.509 is a sensible part of a solution.
We should first question that. (Mike's draft [1] doesn't.)

Secondly, even if x.509 additions were useful somehow for backwards
compatibility (which I find hard to believe TBH) then dealing with
>1 certificate is likely far easier than messing about inside certs
and thereby breaking all the lovely/horrible x.509 code out there.
So Mike's section 2.1 [1] is way easier than the 2.[2|3] approaches,
despite it being the one with no specific drafts.

Again, all that said, I do understand why it may be attractive
for those who produce certificates to argue for putting the PQ
magic beans inside x.509. There are costs elsewhere implied in
doing that, so it ought not be a starting-out assumption.

I don't consider the question as to why a PQ x.509 is needed
nor why now has been satisfactorily answered so far.

Cheers,
S.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pq-pkix-problem-statement