Thank you Scott.

ACK, about ML-KEM-512. Ben brought it up as well. Initially I was focusing on 
ML-KEM-768 and higher for the same reason ML-KEM-512 has not made it to TLS 
1.3, extra caution regarding its theoretical security level (<128-bits). I am 
open to adding ML-KEM-512 which could fit in the IKE_SA_INIT. I think even 
ML-KEM-768 may fit in a 1400 packet, but I wanted to confirm that in testing. 
Maybe the better option would be to get an identifier for ML-KEM-512, but for 
the draft to recommend 768. Regardless, let's discuss this further at IETF-119.

ACK about your other two suggestions about randomness. I think I will add it in 
the Security Considerations section.

I will also add text about KEM key re-use. But I don't think we should allow it 
for forward secrecy reasons. Why would we let the initiator re-use a KEM public 
key given that ML-KEM Keygen is relatively fast?



From: IPsec <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Scott Fluhrer (sfluhrer)
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 1:34 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [IPsec] Comments on draft-kampanakis-ml-kem-ikev2


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I just went through the draft, and it looks good.  However, I do have some 
comments/questions:


  *   I see you don't support ML-KEM-512 - is there a specific reason for that? 
 If it is truly level 1 (as strong as AES-128), it should be strong enough for 
most uses (and for some uses, it'll be important to reduce the compute 
time/packet sizes).


  *   On the same note, it occurs to me that, if someone doesn't want to use a 
quantum-nonsafe algorithm, even in the initial exchange, they could do 
ML-KEM-512 there (which should be short enough not to cause fragmentation, as 
long as the other payloads are a reasonable size), and then in the 
IKE_INTERMEDIATE, do a full ML-KEM-768 or ML-KEM-1024.


  *   Should you include any mandates as to whether the initiator can reuse KEM 
public keys (from a cryptographic perspective, it's fine)?  If he is allowed 
to, should there be any guidance how long they can reuse them (as long as they 
have the private keys in memory, they don't have PFS for those SAs).  Even if 
you don't mandate anything, I believe it would be good to raise the issue.



  *   Should there be a note that the randomness used to generate the public 
key (by the initiator) and the ciphertext (by the responder) should be 
independent of any other keys used?  This is self-evident to anyone who knows 
crypto; however, I can see a clever implementor 'optimizing' the system by 
using the same seed to generate both the KEM private key and the ECDH private 
key...

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