Re: [lamps] [EXTERNAL]Re: Re-charter text for LAMPS to work on Post-Quantum, and PQ problem statement

[Mike Ounsworth <[e-mail]>]

Thanks for the feedback Stephen,

I see your point that such a re-think / replacement of X.509 is well outside the scope of LAMPS.


I believe that there are three categories of small modifications to existing X.509-based PKIs that will accomplish the goal (as outlined in my "Problem Statument" draft below)

The question I'm asking is which X.509 tweak solution(s) are worth pursuing? And how / where?

- - -
Mike Ounsworth | Office: [phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]> 
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2019 7:02 AM
To: Mike Ounsworth <[e-mail]>; [e-mail]
Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: [lamps] Re-charter text for LAMPS to work on Post-Quantum, and PQ problem statement


Sorry to be negative but...

On 24/08/2019 14:49, Mike Ounsworth wrote:
> A) LAMPS re-charter so that post-quantum is guaranteed time on future agendas.

To me, that's close to the antithesis of what LAMPS was setup to do.

If current PKI is going to be challenged by quantum computers then IMO we ought re-think x.509-based PKI and not just consider all that an issue to tackle via algorithm agility and whatever other ad-hoc hacks we stumble upon.

x.509 is >30 years old as a container technology for public keys. Pretty much everyone hates it or just about puts up with it. IMO we ought not continue to use x.509 across such a classic/post-quantum boundary - if we get anywhere near wanting multiple keys bound to an identifier (and have >1 of those used for a single key establishment) then I can't see how the costs of re-using x.509 would be worthwhile compared to the costs of ditching x.509.

Such a re-think is definitely not a limited additional mechanism for PKIX or S/MIME.

S.