Composite signatures are already through the LAMPS working group and have been 
submitted to IESG for publication.  The final OIDs have been assigned by IANA 
so they are ready for production.

At the IETF hackathons we have had at least 7 different vendors implement 
composite signatures in many different programming languages.   So I think the 
discussion on how to implement them has already been completed.   Adopting this 
draft doesn't mean we are the first movers.

See:  https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-lamps-pq-composite-sigs/13/


I support the adoption of this draft.

Cheers,

John Gray

________________________________
From: Simo Sorce <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 7, 2026 3:13 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [jose] Re: Call for adoption: 
draft-prabel-jose-pq-composite-sigs-05 (Ends 2026-01-19)

If this is the reason I would say adoption is premature. The JOSE and COSE 
standards generally use signatures for authentication purposes in online 
transactions, and breaking classical signature algorithms is not going to 
happen so suddenly


If this is the reason I would say adoption is premature.

The JOSE and COSE standards generally use signatures for authentication
purposes in online transactions, and breaking classical signature
algorithms is not going to happen so suddenly that you need a dual
composite signature protection, you will most probably have plenty of
time to simply change what key/signature you use before an online
attack becomes relevant, even after a Quantum Computer exists that can
break classical algorithms.

The negatives for composite signature that bind both algorithms is that
you'll carry the cost (both computational and byte wise) of two schemes
in such a way you can't immediately drop the broken algorithm from the
implementation even though you have to assign zero security to it (this
has maintenance and security costs associated).

This kind of signature make sense only for long lived documents and to
a lesser extent software signing, which are typically not domains where
JOSE/COSE play a role today.

It would be wise to let others that deal in those areas move first and
then adopt what they do if good, or learn from their mistakes and come
up with something better.

Being first movers is not always the right thing to do.

Best,
Simo.

On Wed, 2026-01-07 at 19:32 +0000, Michael Jones wrote:
> I support adoption of this draft.  As John Bradley said during the discussion 
> of the draft in Montreal, if we don't do this, somebody else will.  Better 
> that we do it.
>
> There are enough long-lived signature use cases for both COSE and JOSE that 
> it makes sense to have this in our toolbox.  We don't know whether Elliptic 
> Curve algorithms or ML-DSA algorithms will be broken first.  If composite 
> signatures are used, the signatures will still be valid no matter which is 
> broken first (until they are both broken).  There are use cases where that 
> extra buffer of protection may be worth having.
>
>                                                                 -- Mike
>
> From: Giuseppe De Marco <[email protected]>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 7, 2026 9:00 AM
> To: Karen O'Donoghue <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; 
> [email protected]
> Subject: [jose] Re: Call for adoption: draft-prabel-jose-pq-composite-sigs-05 
> (Ends 2026-01-19)
>
> I support adoption,
>
> regards
>
> Il giorno mar 6 gen 2026 alle ore 06:13 Karen O'Donoghue via Datatracker 
> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> ha scritto:
> This message starts a jose WG Call for Adoption of:
> draft-prabel-jose-pq-composite-sigs-05
>
> This Working Group Call for Adoption ends on 2026-01-19
>
> Abstract:
>    This document describes JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) and
>    CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) serializations for PQ/T
>    hybrid composite signatures.  The composite algorithms described
>    combine ML-DSA as the post-quantum component and either ECDSA or
>    EdDSA as the traditional component.
>
> Please reply to this message and indicate whether or not you support adoption
> of this Internet-Draft by the jose WG. Please provide some explanation for
> your preference. Also, please reply to all recipients of this message and
> include this message in your response.
>
> Authors, and WG participants in general, are reminded of the Intellectual
> Property Rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79 [2].
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> Sanctions available for application to violators of IETF IPR Policy can be
> found at [3].
>
> Thank you.
> [1] 
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/bcp78/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!azJEhzK3gTbkKrhwnUBu8i0RluhqTNAnuL9do9n5j8rnV9E8S46m0R1UM4bkJM1OUd6BOeeA-CKYXmqD29RzVxnvwP6dxa2d$
> [2] 
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> [3] 
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> The IETF datatracker status page for this Internet-Draft is:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-prabel-jose-pq-composite-sigs/__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!azJEhzK3gTbkKrhwnUBu8i0RluhqTNAnuL9do9n5j8rnV9E8S46m0R1UM4bkJM1OUd6BOeeA-CKYXmqD29RzVxnvwGl34b7z$
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> There is also an HTML version available at:
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>
> A diff from the previous version is available at:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://author-tools.ietf.org/iddiff?url2=draft-prabel-jose-pq-composite-sigs-05__;!!FJ-Y8qCqXTj2!azJEhzK3gTbkKrhwnUBu8i0RluhqTNAnuL9do9n5j8rnV9E8S46m0R1UM4bkJM1OUd6BOeeA-CKYXmqD29RzVxnvwJZZr8Qx$
>
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--
Simo Sorce
Distinguished Engineer
RHEL Crypto Team
Red Hat, Inc

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