On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 8:22 PM Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:

> David,
>
> Thanks for being patient with me here. Sorry it took so long
>
> As usual, this seems like a question of whether we're going to want a lot
> of flexibility
> (thus motivating orthogonal negotiation) versus whether we're going to
> want little flexibility
> (thus motivating suites). I think that with the historical practice, the
> arguments for orthogonal
> negotiation were a lot stronger, but now that we seem to be leaning
> towards (a) fewer algorithms
> and (b) having algorithms which are themselves suites, I do agree that the
> pendulum is swinging
> more towards suites.
>

I would probably characterize it less as suites vs orthogonality, but as
wanting to keep divisions in meaningful and universal places and not
splitting up tightly-coupled decisions. The flexibility from orthogonality
can be handy, but going too far---as I believe TLS 1.2 did with signature,
prehash, and curve---complicates everything. Imagine if negotiating
AES_128_GCM required separately negotiating block cipher AES-128, mode CTR,
and MAC GHASH.

On balance, I guess, I'm neutral-to-supportive of this change in general,
> if others in the WG want
> to make it. On the details:
>
> - It seems like we could let measurements tell us what code points we
> need. If we never see
>   P256-SHA512 in the wild, then we don't need it (and can add it later if
> needed).
>

I guess this relates to the fun issue of how TLS sigalgs interacts with
X.509. If we believe they are at most a hint for X.509, then I think we can
freely declare that TLS 1.3+ requires curve/hash matching for NIST curves.
Unlike PKCS#1 v1.5, I doubt anyone has smartcards that can only sign
P384-SHA256.

If we believe that non-matching certificates are forbidden in TLS, then,
yeah, it's a concern. I searched CT logs some time ago and found some cases
of P384-SHA256, but that was it.
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg19089.html

I went with the small set for the draft text since it's a little cleaner
and seemed to be what most preferred, but I would be fine with allocating
P384-SHA256 too. Or maybe all 6 non-truncating values. (Or even the full 9
from my original proposal but, as others pointed out to me, P256-SHA384,
P256-SHA512, and P384-SHA512 are kinda silly.)

- I took a quick look at the PR and I'm not sure that some of the code
> points assignments are
>   right. I made comments.
>

Fixed those. Apparently I shifted most of the hashes by one. Sorry about
that!


> - If we decide to allow PKCS#1 v1.5 for in-protocol signatures, then we'll
> probably want to define
>   code points for 1.5 in both in-protocol (CertificateVerify) and
> certificates to distinguish these.
>

Oh? Why would they need to be separate? The others defined for both aren't.

David


> As far as process, it seemed like people were generally positive about
> this in this discussion,
> but I'll rely on the chairs to determine consensus.
>
> -Ekr
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 9:16 AM, David Benjamin <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 8:23 PM Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 5:19 PM, David Benjamin <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 8:07 PM Dave Garrett <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Friday, January 15, 2016 03:45:34 pm David Benjamin wrote:
>>>>> > This is a proposal for revising SignatureAlgorithm/HashAlgorithm. In
>>>>> TLS
>>>>> > 1.2, signature algorithms are spread across the handshake.
>>>>> [...]
>>>>> > I propose we fold the negotiable parameters under one name.
>>>>> [...]
>>>>> > 2. Remove HashAlgorithm, SignatureAlgorithm,
>>>>> SignatureAndHashAlgorithm as
>>>>> > they are. Introduce a new SignatureAlgorithm u16 type and negotiate
>>>>> that
>>>>> > instead.
>>>>>
>>>>> I previously proposed this here:
>>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg18035.html
>>>>>
>>>>> ekr was against it, though it hasn't been discussed that throughly.
>>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg18036.html
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ah, thanks! I must have missed this discussion. Or perhaps I saw it and
>>>> forgot.
>>>>
>>>> ekr, are you still against this sort of thing? I think the new CFRG
>>>> signature algorithms tying decisions together is a good argument for why
>>>> we'd want this. If we believe this trend is to continue (and I hope it
>>>> does. Ed25519 is a nice and simple interface), trying to decompose it all
>>>> seems poor.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm not sure. I agree that the CFRG thing seems to be a new development.
>>> I'll
>>> try to confirm my previous opinion or develop a new one over the weekend
>>> :)
>>>
>>
>> ekr, did you have confirmed or new thoughts on this change?
>>
>> From elsewhere in the thread, I put together a draft PR if you wanted
>> something to look at in that form.
>> https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/pull/404
>> It incorporated some of the suggestions in the thread (not mentioning the
>> really legacy values, pairing NIST curves with hashes, etc.), but that's
>> not the important part. The meat of the proposal is unifying signature
>> algorithms under one number and a shared interface, which I think is a
>> valuable simplification.
>>
>> David
>>
>
>
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