Last week we had a BOF at IETF 81. Thanks to all who attended (in-person and via Jabber). For those who couldn't make it, a summary:
--- Begin Summary --- Dan Harkins and Dan Lanz were the BOF Chairs. Sean Turner and Stephen Farrell are the Security ADs. Vincent Roca presented slides about using CICM in a High Assurance, High Performance Security Gateway. Slides: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/81/slides/cicm-1.pdf Lev Novikov presented slides about CICM's logical model and how security domain separation makes CICM different from other crypto APIs. Slides: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/81/slides/cicm-2.pdf There were several points of discussion: 1. What about existing approaches: * Why can't you extend PKCS#11 so that crypto operations like encrypt always return TRUE? A few reasons were given: (a) CICM needs richer semantics (more and different kinds of inputs) than what is available in PKCS#11. Previous attempts at extending PKCS#11 became a mess. (b) Return values can be more complex than just TRUE (e.g., list of things that went wrong). * What about using an existing protocol as an interface? CICM could sit under such a protocol; it is also intended manage the crypto (note the large number of management commands), and not just the pipe (channel). * Which approach, C-style or object-oriented, was intended? The .NET crypto classes might be suitable for an object-oriented approach. CICM is defined in IDL for which one can generate bindings in many different languages including C, C++, Java, etc. We will have to investigate the .NET approach further. ** There was a request that folks on the list discuss these issues for the benefit of the community. 2. The charter is insufficient for a Working Group: * It was noted that there could be two goals: (a) to produce multi-vendor support for a standard interface (b) to introduce these concepts into existing IETF protocols * The charter appears to be too detailed; it should focus more on outlining the problem scope well. * CICM appears to address requirements that are not well explained in published documents. * How would CICM work with Authenticated Encryption with Authenticated Data [RFC 5116], TLS, or IPSEC? What are the consequences on other protocols? The major consequence of these points is that we should re-write the charter and write documents to address the: * larger problem scope * logical model (in more generic terms) and requirements * impact of this logical model on 2-3 existing protocols * details for an corresponding API (e.g., CICM) --- End Summary --- More on this to follow. Lev _______________________________________________ cicm mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/cicm
