I would like to raise an issue related to Widget Requirement R46 which
specifies DSA Signature [1] and the Widgets 1.0 Digital Signature
editors draft [2] that requires DSA-SHA256 since this may not be a
good algorithm choice.
One concern is availability of implementations, a question that was
raised on today's Web Applications teleconference.
I have a comment below from Brian LaMacchia, a member of the XML
Security WG, that notes the issue.
Much thanks Brian for noting this issue and expressing it clearly.
regards, Frederick
Frederick Hirsch
Nokia
[1] http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets-reqs/#r46.-
[2] http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/widgets-digsig/#digital
Begin forwarded message:
From: "ext Brian LaMacchia" <[email protected]>
Date: January 8, 2009 12:23:09 PM EST
To: Frederick Hirsch <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: DSA-SHA-256?
No, my comment (I think) was that I was quite surprised by the
Widget folks choosing DSA-SHA256 as the mandatory-to-implement
signature alg, because (a) it's not a standard yet (until FIPS 186-3
comes out), (b) there are no widely-deployed implementations today,
and (c) I don't see any other standard org going in that direction.
Everyone is moving to ECDSA-SHA256 (if anything) -- that's what the
US Government is moving towards with the Suite B set of algorithms,
that's what we're moving to in 1.1, etc.
SHA-1 is dying, so Widget clearly needs to use at least SHA-256.
But I would have expected them to go for ECDSA-SHA256 or (perhaps)
RSA-SHA256, but for small devices like cellphones ECDSA-SHA256 would
make more sense.
Hope that helps,
--bal
