[Trans] Fwd: Certificate Transparency with Russian GOST algorithms

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

For some reason Dmitry's mail is not arriving at the
IETF server, so I thought I would forward it myself.

Melinda


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Certificate Transparency with Russian GOST algorithms
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 22:16:47 +0400
From: Dmitry Belyavsky <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
CC: [e-mail]

Hi all!

Here are some thoughts about using CT in Russia with Russian
cryptographic algorithms (GOST). They were discussed with Ben Laurie
during the IETF meeting in London. I am not sure which mailing list is
the right place to post to, so I post it to the WG mailing list.

Laws and practice in Russia requires using of the GOST hash and digital
signature in X.509 certificates for government services. These
certificates are signed by Russians CAs which are not in lists of
trusted CAs in major browsers. It is not a problem to create an
installation of log server in Russia containing the list of Russian CAs.
But Russia-based service should use the GOST hash algorithm in the
Merkle tree and GOST signature algorithm for signing SCT. It seems to be
not a problem because if GOST-based certificates are submitted to
GOST-based log, browsers not understanding the GOST algorithms will not
have to verify GOST-based SCTs. But also it means that the hashing
algorithm of Merkle tree should become the config-time parameter of the
log instance instead of being hardcoded. Also it should be possible to
find out which algorithm is used in this or that log instance and it
should be strictly prohibited to change this algorithm after start of
the log instance. It seems to be a good idea anyway because of the
requirements of cryptographic algorithms agility.

-- 
SY, Dmitry Belyavsky