On Nov 20, 2014, at 9:40 PM, Joseph Salowey <[email protected]> wrote:
> "The named curve registry contains 160-bit elliptic curves which are 
> considered to be roughly equivalent to only an 80-bit symmetric key 
> [ECRYPT-II].   The use of curves of less than 192-bits is NOT RECOMMENDED."  

Good catch, and this should be added to the text.

> In the last paragraph the use of the term fingerprint seems odd and perhaps 
> misleading.  I think the term hash algorithm would be better:
> 
> "the use of the SHA-256 hash algorithm is RECOMMENDED"

Yep.

> 
> 2.  Section 4.4
> 
> The rational section makes it sound like there is limited support for ECDHE.  
> I think this is changing quite rapidly and we should be promoting ECDHE 
> suites more.  Also, I've also run into some folks who are under the 
> misconception that using ECC cipher suites require the use of ECDSA 
> certificates.  In addition, I think the document should mention that many DHE 
> implementations also have security issues with validating group parameters 
> (this is mentioned in the attacks draft, but it might also be good to 
> reference it here).   
> 
> Suggestion for rational in section 4.4:
> 
> "Rationale: Although Elliptic Curve Cryptography is widely deployed there are 
> some communities where its uptake has been limited for several reasons, 
> including its complexity compared to modular arithmetic and longstanding 
> perceptions of IPR concerns (which, for the most part, have now been resolved 
> [RFC6090]). Note that ECDHE cipher suites exist for both RSA and ECDSA 
> certificates so moving to ECDHE cipher suites does not require moving away 
> from RSA based certificates.  On the other hand, there are two related issues 
> hindering effective use of modular Diffie-Hellman cipher suites in TLS:
> 
> o There are no protocol mechanisms to negotiate the DH groups or parameter 
> lengths supported by client and server.
> 
> 
> o There are widely deployed client implementations that reject received DH 
> parameters if they are longer than 1024 bits. In addition, several 
> implementations do not perform appropriate validation of group parameters and 
> are vulnerable to attacks referenced in section 2.9 of [UTA-Attacks]."

That seems like a good addition, but it might be controversial. If the latter 
is true, we can wait for a revision.

--Paul Hoffman
_______________________________________________
Uta mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/uta

Reply via email to