Ketan Talaulikar has entered the following ballot position for
draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-pqc-auth-11: No Objection

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COMMENT:
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Thanks to the authors and the WG for their work on this document.

Disclaimer: not an IPsec expert and so take my comments might be off; happy to
be corrected

I have some comments and questions on this document provided inline in the
idnits output of v11. Look for the <EoRv11> tag at the end to ensure you are
seeing the full review.

<major> Section 3.4, IKEv2 Message Fragmentation, and normative RFC 9329

276        IKEv2 peers supporting the PQC authentication mechanism defined in
277        this specification MUST implement IKEv2 message fragmentation
278        [RFC7383], unless IKEv2 runs over a reliable transport (e.g.,
279        [RFC9329]) or the underlying network is known to support sufficiently
280        large MTUs without fragmentation issues, since PQC public keys and

RFC 9329 defines a condition that excuses implementations from an explicit MUST
implement requirement and makes that RFC a borderline a normative reference? If
the reference is intended to remain merely illustrative, please consider
rephrasing that in a separate sentence. However, I don't know how someone can
figure the underlying network without a user provided config/policy knob and I
can't say whether or not that makes RFC 9329 more like a given thing that is
needed?

<major> Are RFCs 9881 and 9909 Normative References? Same Q as Deb raised.

433        The three security levels of ML-DSA are identified via
434        AlgorithmIdentifier ASN.1 objects, as specified in NIST [CSOR] and
435        referenced in PKIX Algorithm Identifiers for the ML-DSA [RFC9881].
436        [FIPS204] defines both a pure and a pre-hash variant of ML-DSA, but
437        PKIX Algorithm Identifiers for the ML-DSA [RFC9881] specifies only
438        the pure variant.
440        The different parameter sets of SLH-DSA are identified via
441        AlgorithmIdentifier ASN.1 objects, as specified in NIST [CSOR] and
442        referenced in PKIX Algorithm Identifiers for the SLH-DSA [RFC9909].
483        The Security Considerations section of PKIX Algorithm Identifiers for
484        ML-DSA [RFC9881] and PKIX Algorithm Identifiers for SLH-DSA [RFC9909]
485        apply to this specification as well.

I could be wrong, but they seem to depend on and require a reader/implementer
to go through those?

<major> This is related to Security Considerations. The document explains how
peers advertise PQC authentication methods, but it does not state what local
policy is necessary when post-quantum authentication is a requirement rather
than an opportunistic preference. RFC 9593 Section 6
(https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9593.html#section-6) warns that an attacker
able to break one announced authentication method online can strip stronger
methods and induce the weaker choice. Is something on those lines required or
at least be helpful here?

635        The second approach involves using the Externalμ-ML-DSA API allowed
636        by [FIPS204]; specifically by the comment to line 6 of algorithm 7 of
637        FIPS 204.  In this method, the implementation calls the External μ
638        pre-hashing mode with the SignedOctets string and the ML-DSA public
639        key, which externalizes the message pre-hashing originally performed
640        inside the signing operation (see Appendix D of [RFC9881] for ML-DSA
641        pre-hashing).  The resulting μ value is then passed to the
642        cryptographic library to execute the Externalμ-ML-DSA.Sign API, which
643        uses μ and the ML-DSA private key to produce the signature.  This
644        document specifies only the use of ML-DSA's External μ mode and does
645        not use HashML-DSA.
649        Both approaches are considered "pure" mode and produce the same ML-
650        DSA signature and are fully interoperable.

<question> This is about appendix A - it appears to provide implementation
guidance? If so, please consider moving the normative/interoperability-relevant
text into the relevant sections ?

<EoRv11>



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