Re: [lamps] Proposed recharter text

[Russ Housley <[e-mail]>]

I am hearing a lot of pushback against item 6 in the draft text.

I have not heard any concern about any other part of the draft text.

I suggest that we drop item 6 off the list for now, and get to work on the other items.  We can get some advice from the Security ADs prior to any future re-charter.

Russ

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The PKIX and S/MIME Working Groups have been closed for some time. Some
updates have been proposed to the X.509 certificate documents produced 
by the PKIX Working Group and the electronic mail security documents 
produced by the S/MIME Working Group.

The LAMPS (Limited Additional Mechanisms for PKIX and SMIME) Working 
Group is chartered to make updates where there is a known constituency 
interested in real deployment and there is at least one sufficiently 
well specified approach to the update so that the working group can 
sensibly evaluate whether to adopt a proposal.

The LAMPS WG is now tackling these topics:

1. Specify the use of short-lived X.509 certificates for which no
revocation information is made available by the Certification Authority.
Short-lived certificates have a lifespan that is shorter than the time
needed to detect, report, and distribute revocation information.  As a
result, revoking short-lived certificates is unnecessary and pointless.

2. Update the specification for the cryptographic protection of email
headers -- both for signatures and encryption -- to improve the
implementation situation with respect to privacy, security, usability
and interoperability in cryptographically-protected electronic mail.
Most current implementations of cryptographically-protected electronic
mail protect only the body of the message, which leaves significant 
room for attacks against otherwise-protected messages.

3. The Certificate Management Protocol (CMP) is specified in RFC 4210, 
and it offers a vast range of certificate management options.  CMP is 
currently being used in many different industrial environments, but it 
needs to be tailored to the specific needs of such machine-to-machine 
scenarios and communication among PKI management entities.  The LAMPS 
WG will develop a "lightweight" profile of CMP to more efficiently 
support of these environments and better facilitate interoperable 
implementation, while preserving cryptographic algorithm agility.  In 
addition, necessary updates and clarifications to CMP will be 
specified in a separate document.  This work will be coordinated with 
the LWIG WG.

4. Provide concrete guidance for implementers of email user agents
to promote interoperability of end-to-end cryptographic protection
of email messages.  This may include guidance about the generation,
interpretation, and handling of protected messages; management of the
relevant certificates; documentation of how to avoid common failure
modes; strategies for deployment in a mixed environment; as well as
test vectors and examples that can be used by implementers and
interoperability testing.  The resulting robust consensus among email
user agent implementers is expected to provide more usable and useful
cryptographic security for email users.

5. Recent progress in the development of quantum computers pose a threat
to widely deployed public key algorithms.  As a result, there is a need
to prepare for a day when cryptosystems such as RSA, Diffie-Hellman,
ECDSA, ECDH, and EdDSA cannot be depended upon.  As a result, there are
efforts to develop standards for post-quantum cryptosystem (PQC)
algorithms that that will be secure if large-scale quantum computers
are ever developed.

a. Specify the use of PQC public key algorithms with the PKIX
certificates and the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS).

b. Develop specifications to facilitate a lengthy transition from
today's public key algorithms to PQC public key algorithms.  Unlike
previous algorithm transitions, time will be needed before there is
full confidence in the PQC public key algorithms.  Therefore,
transition mechanisms that combine traditional algorithms with PQC
algorithms will be needed for "hybrid key establishment" and "dual
signatures".  NIST defines "hybrid key establishment" as any key
establishment scheme that is a combination of two or more components
that are themselves cryptographic key-establishment schemes.  NIST
defines "dual signatures" as any signature scheme that consists of
two or more signatures on a common message.  The specifications
developed will enable PKIX and S/MIME protocols to support hybrid key
establishment and dual signature mechanisms.

In addition, the LAMPS WG may investigate other updates to documents
produced by the PKIX and S/MIME WG. The LAMPS WG may produce
clarifications where needed, but the LAMPS WG shall not adopt
anything beyond clarifications without rechartering.