Re: [TLS] [Cfrg] 3DES diediedie

[Kyle Rose <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 5:00 AM, Hubert Kario <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> we have enough problems weeding out implementation mistakes in TLS, we
> don't
> need yet another protocol and two dozen implementations that come with it
>

Strongly agreed.

Focusing energy on getting "something" working for low-power devices is
putting the cart before the horse. Security has to be a primary objective
here, in the standards world in general and in CFRG in particular. We can
surely consider tradeoffs---more frequent key rotations, security
guarantees reduced in a well-defined way, shorter lifetimes for
credentials, etc.---but these should be explicitly chosen, not determined
after the fact based on what happened to be in our toolbox at the time.
Keeping 3DES around in a general-purpose protocol headed for
standardization in spite of the known problems with small block sizes is
almost certain to create more work in the coming years for everyone simply
to benefit implementors of systems for which security is clearly not the
primary concern.

>From following the discussion, low power crypto seems like a research area
at this point, not an implementation effort. (Of course, the flaws in
whatever ill-advised schemes get implemented will generate their own
research efforts and inevitable transitive trust problems with supposedly
more-secure systems. Alas, we haven't yet figured out a way to keep people
from generating sufficient rope to hang themselves with.)

Kyle