I concur.

On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 6:48 PM Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:

> I concur. I actually had thought we had agreed that the current text
> shouldn't appear and then there was some attempt to converge on a
> replacement, but that
> didn't really work out, so we should just delete it and move forward.
>
> -Ekr
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 10:24 AM Christopher Patton <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm also in favor of simply deleting the text.
>>
>> Chris P.
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 10:19 David Benjamin <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I also agree we should simply delete the text.
>>>
>>> It is irrelevant for ML-KEM. While the text says "if other algorithms
>>> are used", if we ever do consider an algorithm where this matters, we can
>>> always debate it then, with full context, and put it in *that* document,
>>> where it would be more likely to be read by implementers anyway.
>>>
>>> PS: The formatting in that section is slightly odd. Should "Larger
>>> public keys and/or ciphertexts", "Duplication of key shares", and
>>> "Failures" (but delete that one) be subsections?
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 5:49 AM Filippo Valsorda <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 2025-10-28 05:29 GMT+01:00 Viktor Dukhovni <[email protected]>:
>>>>
>>>> > >> I think there is consensus that there is no advise to give to
>>>> implementers
>>>> > >> to handle these failure cases. While we could use that to justify
>>>> saying
>>>> > >> nothing, my own preference is to at least have a sentence
>>>> explicitely
>>>> > >> saying that implementers should do nothing, in case implementers
>>>> become
>>>> > >> aware of these theortical failures and wrongly assume the
>>>> specification
>>>> > >> was not aware and thus "vulnerable" to these issues.
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Perhaps:
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Current:
>>>> > >>     Some post-quantum key exchange algorithms, including ML-KEM
>>>> > >>     [NIST-FIPS-203], have non-zero probability of failure, meaning
>>>> two
>>>> > >>     honest parties may derive different shared secrets. This would
>>>> cause a
>>>> > >>     handshake failure. ML-KEM has a cryptographically small
>>>> failure rate; if
>>>> > >>     other algorithms are used, implementers should be aware of the
>>>> potential
>>>> > >>     of handshake failure.  Clients MAY retry if a failure is
>>>> encountered.
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> New:
>>>> > >>     Some post-quantum key exchange algorithms, including ML-KEM
>>>> > >>     [NIST-FIPS-203], have non-zero probability of failure, meaning
>>>> > >>     two honest parties may derive different shared secrets. This
>>>> > >>     would cause a handshake failure. As with other similar failures
>>>> > >>     (such as bit corruptions), Clients MAY retry if a failure is
>>>> > >>     encountered. Due to the negliable rate of occurances of these
>>>> > >>     failure events, the lack of a known feasable method and the
>>>> > >>     additional risk of introducing new attack vectors when
>>>> attempting
>>>> > >>     to handle these events, it is RECOMMENDED for implementers to
>>>> > >>     not specifically handle post-quantum key exchange shared
>>>> secrets
>>>> > >>     failures, and rely on the pre-existing code paths that handle
>>>> > >>     derivation failures.
>>>>
>>>> It was my impression that there was rough consensus to drop the original
>>>> text and say nothing instead, though the "New" text above is instead an
>>>> acceptable overly-elaborate way of saying "nothing to see here, move
>>>> along".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, it looks to me like there is no consensus on the original text,
>>>> in fact. Different people have different opinions on what to replace it
>>>> with, but that doesn't mean there is consensus on the original. I think the
>>>> bar to ship some text is WG consensus, not lack of consensus on
>>>> alternatives. Does anyone actually support shipping the original text?
>>>>
>>>> Were there any strong objections to saying nothing? All I could see
>>>> were "we could say nothing, or we could say [text]" which implies support
>>>> for saying nothing, as well.
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