I agree that is a reasonable approach.

In the XMPP example from earlier it was method 2 that they were using for 
multiple recipients, and that worked because the receiver requested the key 
from the sender after receiving the message.

So 2 may be useful in some multi recipient scenarios though probably not all.

John B.

On 2012-07-18, at 7:04 PM, Mike Jones wrote:

> Hi all,
>  
> I’ve been thinking about two of our open issues, which are closely related, 
> and am writing to make a proposal to resolve both of them.  The issues are:
>  
> (1) Currently we specify methods for using symmetric keys to key wrap a 
> separate Content Master Key (CMK), but no means of using the symmetric key as 
> the CMK directly.  Some applications need this functionality, both for size 
> and for efficiency reasons.
>  
> (2) Currently we specify methods for performing key agreement and directly 
> using the resulting key as the CMK to perform block encryption, but no means 
> of using the agreed-upon key to wrap a separate CMK.  When doing key 
> agreement for multiple recipients, a separate CMK is needed.
>  
> Thus, I propose that we define methods for filling in both of the holes 
> above, as follows:
>  
> (a) Define “alg”:”dir” (direct) to mean that the symmetric key is directly 
> used as the CMK for the block encryption and integrity calculations, rather 
> than as a key to wrap the CMK value.
>  
> (b) Define “alg”:”ECDH-ES+A128KW” and “alg”:”ECDH-ES+A256KW” to mean that the 
> result of the key agreement is respectively used as the 128 bit or 256 bit 
> AES Key Wrap key to wrap the CMK.
>  
> Doing this will enable all four flavors, whereas we’re currently missing 2 
> and 3 below:
> 1.  The symmetric key used to wrap a separate CMK
> 2.  The symmetric key used as the CMK
> 3.  The key agreement result used to wrap a separate CMK
> 4.  The key agreement result used as the CMK
>  
> I recognize that flavors 2 and 4 are not usable with multiple recipients when 
> methods such as JWE JSON Serialization are used (which counts on a common CMK 
> value to enable a common ciphertext value).  A note to that effect would be 
> added to the JWA definitions of “alg”:“ECDH-ES” and “alg”:”dir” and it would 
> be pointed out in the JWE-JS spec that “alg” values that utilize a separate 
> CMK MUST be used when the plaintext is encrypted to multiple recipients.
>  
> Comments?
>  
>                                                                 -- Mike
>  
>  
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