Hi, Lev
Is NIST working on a CICM-equivalent standard as a follow-on to FIPS
140-3?
Sorry I could not make IETF 81, but I remain interested in the working
group's charter and technical work.
joe
On 8/2/2011 11:06 PM, Novikov, Lev wrote:
Last week we had a BOF at IETF 81. Thanks to all who attended (in-person
and via Jabber). For those who couldn't make it, a summary:
--- Begin Summary ---
Dan Harkins and Dan Lanz were the BOF Chairs.
Sean Turner and Stephen Farrell are the Security ADs.
Vincent Roca presented slides about using CICM in a
High Assurance, High Performance Security Gateway.
Slides: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/81/slides/cicm-1.pdf
Lev Novikov presented slides about CICM's logical model and how
security domain separation makes CICM different from other crypto APIs.
Slides: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/81/slides/cicm-2.pdf
There were several points of discussion:
1. What about existing approaches:
* Why can't you extend PKCS#11 so that crypto operations like
encrypt always return TRUE?
A few reasons were given:
(a) CICM needs richer semantics (more and different kinds of
inputs) than what is available in PKCS#11. Previous attempts
at extending PKCS#11 became a mess.
(b) Return values can be more complex than just TRUE (e.g., list
of things that went wrong).
* What about using an existing protocol as an interface?
CICM could sit under such a protocol; it is also intended manage
the crypto (note the large number of management commands), and not
just the pipe (channel).
* Which approach, C-style or object-oriented, was intended? The .NET
crypto classes might be suitable for an object-oriented approach.
CICM is defined in IDL for which one can generate bindings in many
different languages including C, C++, Java, etc. We will have to
investigate the .NET approach further.
** There was a request that folks on the list discuss these issues for
the benefit of the community.
2. The charter is insufficient for a Working Group:
* It was noted that there could be two goals:
(a) to produce multi-vendor support for a standard interface
(b) to introduce these concepts into existing IETF protocols
* The charter appears to be too detailed; it should focus more
on outlining the problem scope well.
* CICM appears to address requirements that are not well explained
in published documents.
* How would CICM work with Authenticated Encryption with
Authenticated Data [RFC 5116], TLS, or IPSEC? What are the
consequences on other protocols?
The major consequence of these points is that we should re-write the
charter and write documents to address the:
* larger problem scope
* logical model (in more generic terms) and requirements
* impact of this logical model on 2-3 existing protocols
* details for an corresponding API (e.g., CICM)
--- End Summary ---
More on this to follow.
Lev
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Dr. Joseph Mitola III, Fellow of the IEEE
DoD SERC Director of Special Projects
Distinguished Professor
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Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken NJ
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