[lamps] let's move beyond X.509 for PQC transition...

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

(I've bcc'd the lamps wg list in case folks there but not
here are interested - there are related discussions on that
list at the moment.)

A number of people are proposing various ways to handle PQC
transitions while continuing to make use of X.509 format
certificates for PKI.

I think X.509, being nearly a 40 year old technology, should
by now have had its day, and the PQC transition seems like a
good opportunity to make the leap beyond the 20th century.

I've no specific proposal for what to do instead but would be
interested if others do, or if folks who happen to be at the
next IETF meeting do, or if people wanted to do a call to
discuss this topic. (There's a specific reason I've no
specific proposal btw - I don't see much point in any way of
handling this that doesn't have support from a bunch of folk,
so this seems like a topic where establishing a level of
interest first may be better.)

Cheers,
S.

PS: Note that I'm not saying that X.509 is awful (parts of it
are of course:-) or that we never should've used it (we were
right to invent X.509v3 back in the 1990's) or that X.509
based approaches can't do the job. I do strongly suspect
though that the attack surface for any X.509 based approach
to PQC transition will be a lot worse than necessary.