-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:        Re: [COSE] draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13
Date:   Tue, 16 Feb 2021 11:50:01 -0500
From:   Rene Struik <[email protected]>
To:     Benjamin Kaduk <[email protected]>
CC: John Mattsson <[email protected]>, [email protected] <[email protected]>



Hi Ben:

I am interested in getting a carefully crafted technical document out of the door. The only area where I needed to get external ietf help with was the iana section, for which I reached out to the designated iana expert of the time (Jim Schaad), where we quickly reached consensus over the phone and a few email exchanges. The last change to this was April 2020, almost a year ago.

The iana cose "bickering" is about the value of 6 one-word character strings, in an otherwise quite voluminous, since 137 pages, document, where the value could be "new" or "reuse existing" (i.e., at most six bits of entropy). The current iana cose request may not be perfect. If it requires improvement, I can write some text to accommodate this *in parallel* to the IESG review.

What has to stop is the political posturing, which is not productive. I have been trying to chase people who volunteered to serve the ietf in various capacities for months now, but have trouble seeing the "serve" element in their roles come to fruition.

If reusing existing RFC 8152 text was so easy, why is co-factor ECDH and the unwisdom of deterministic ECDSA policy advice then suddenly on the menu? I think these topics are not uncorrelated. Please note that writing the iana pkix/cms section was easy, so perhaps one should reflect on what makes it easy or hard to reuse things or make progress.

Let us all look in the mirror and see whether we like what we see. We are supposed to be a community of technical people who want to collaborate to get something done, so let us act this way.

Rene


On 2021-02-15 3:08 p.m., Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
Hi Rene,

My understanding is that for the registration requests contained in
draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations, the IANA registration request
process was implicitly started by the IETF Last Call announcement. It
would also be possible to request assignment in the COSE registries viathe
general assignments form linked from https://www.iana.org/protocols/apply .

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 02:31:01PM -0500, Rene Struik wrote:
Questions/point of information:
a) where is the distinct step for "someone making a registration request
of iana" described?
b) which algorithms for which I requested iana cose code points do not
meet the security requirements?
c) which message structure requirements for said requested code points
are not met?

{here, message structure refers to syntax, whereas security also deals
with robust security properties}


On 2021-02-15 2:17 p.m., Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
Hi Rene,

Section 16.11 discusses what the IANA Designated Experts should do upon
receipt of a registration request, which is a distinct step from what
someone making a registration request of IANA should do.

I further note that the final bullet of the section says that "Algorithms
that do not meet the security requirements of the community and the
messages structures should not be registered"; it seems natural to methat a Designated Expert would choose to consult the COSE WG email list inorder
to get feedback from the community.

-Ben

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 02:13:15PM -0500, Rene Struik wrote:
Hi John:

I would be eager to have an answer to the question I posed earlier:

/I could not find the procedure you seemingly had in mind below in
RFC 8152 (a search in RFC 8152 on the term "email" also did not
yield this info). Isn't this all described in Section 16.11 [1]? If
you could point me to what I am apparently missing, please letme know!/


Since you seem to know much more about IETF processes than I do, any
timely help much appreciated! {I am sure it would also help others more
verses into technical matters than procedural questions.}

Best regards, Rene

On 2021-02-14 4:56 p.m., Rene Struik wrote:
Hi John:

To my knowledge, I followed the steps described in Section 16.11 [1]
(Expert Review Instructions), already in April 2019 (almost 2 yearsago):

16.11. Expert Review Instructions
All of the IANA registries established in this document are
defined as expert review. This section gives some general
guidelines forwhat the experts should be looking for, but they are
being designated as experts for a reason, so they should be given
substantial latitude.

Expert reviewers should take into consideration the followingpoints:

[snip (enumeration of four aspects to consider)]

I could not find the procedure you seemingly had in mind below in RFC
8152 (a search in RFC 8152 on the term "email" also did not yield this
info). Isn't this all described in Section 16.11 [1]? If you could
point me to what I am apparently missing, please let me know!

In all fairness, I think you would have to agree that I did reach out
to the relevant actors at the time, in good conscience, in a timely
manner (in contrast to the language you used in your forelast email).

Best regards, Rene

Ref: [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8152#section-16.11

On 2021-02-14 4:08 p.m., John Mattsson wrote:
Hi Rene,

True, Jim used to be one the experts. My comment that you did not
talk to any of the experts is not true.

The only IANA history I know of started on 6 Nov 2020 when Göran (one
of the experts) followed the procedure and sent a mail to the COSE
mailing list commenting and asking about the COSE registrations. I
and several other people in COSE WG seem to share Göran’s concerns.
You cannot expect COSE WG to read your draft before somebody send it
to the list. If I had written the draft I would personally had sent
in to COSE a long time ago. I wish someone would have helped you with
that.

You need to ask Göran and the other two experts on the statusbut to
me it seems like the COSE WG is aligning on the technical aspects of
the IANA registrations:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/cose/?gbt=1&index=IEx4C67-IGkQ9BpI8DUFxhElcwA

Cheers,

John

*From: *Rene Struik <[email protected]>
*Date: *Sunday, 14 February 2021 at 20:11
*To: *John Mattsson <[email protected]>, Göran Selander
<[email protected]>, "[email protected]"
<[email protected]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
*Subject: *(small timeline correction) Re: [COSE]
draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13

Correction: LWIG WGLC was in August 2019 and not August 2020, as I
mistakenly put in my previous note (i.e., already 18 1/2 months or
more than 1 1/2 years ago).

See
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations/history/
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations/history/>

On 2021-02-14 2:04 p.m., Rene Struik wrote:

Hi John:

I did have a brief look at my past correspondence on iana-cose
code points, where I discussed this with Jim Schaad (designated
iana cose expert over the relevant time period):

- email correspondences {March 27, 2019; April 12, 2019; April
15, 2019};

- f/u. discussions w/ Jim Schaad (triggered by trying to help out
Pascal Thubert on his ap-nd Editor queue draft): phone call {Thu
March 16, 2020}; email correspondence {April 6/7/22/25, 2020}

History of iana sections in curve-draft document:

- iana/cose section has been in there since April 14, 2019 (v04
of the draft). See
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations/04/
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations/04/>

- WGLC LWIG group: August 6, 2019;

- IETF Last-Call: August 24, 2020 (two-week);

- your comment: Nov 9, 2020

- your (nontechnical) email below: today, Feb 14, 2021 (32 days
after my last email to the list).

Contrary to what you seem to suggest below, my records above
indicate I have reached out to the relevant people already almost
two (!) years ago, in good conscience (where email and phone
conversations with Jim Schaad were productive, with 1-2 days
feedback loop). I have trouble understanding why during all this
time the technical points you seem to take issue with have not
been narrowed down (as I repeatedly suggested offline and which
is good engineering practice). Please note that even something as
simple an uncontroversial as registering Wei25519 and Wei448has
not been stricken off the list since the November 2020 note.I
think one should reflect why this (in an Internet *Engineering*
Task Force).

Best regards, Rene

On 2021-02-14 3:13 a.m., John Mattsson wrote:

Hi Rene,

>I value your feedback, even though you brought up your points
more than two months after the

>IETF Last-Call.

All the comments has been purely regarding the IANA
registrations for COSE. To my understanding you did not
discuss these registrations with the dedicated IANA experts
or the COSE WG beforehand. The suggested COSE registration
are quite strange. Any delay is purely due to you not
discussing and anchoring these registrations. I have
suggested that that this issue is discussed at the interim on
Tuesday, but it is not my job to drive your registrations. I
am just commenting on the questions from the dedicated IANA
experts.

You can always remove the COSE registrations, but I think
that would be sad. I agree with you that a registration for
Wei25519 is good to have. Another alternative is to movethe
registration to a separate draft.

>I uploaded a new version of the lwig curve draft [1], changing the
intended status to "standards track". I hope

>this helps.

You cannot just change the status from “informational” to
“standards track”. They are very different things.
Informational is just general information, while standards
track means IETF consensus and recommendation. Changing the
status would (I assume) require wg consensus and then redoing
the last calls.

/John

*From: *Rene Struik <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Date: *Wednesday, 13 January 2021 at 15:26
*To: *John Mattsson <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>, Göran Selander
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>,
"[email protected]" <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>, "[email protected]"
<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject: *Re: [COSE] draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13

Hi Goran, John:

Please let me know if my response to the COSE mailing list
(Dec 19th) works for you. If you have comments, please
suggest constructive improvements.

I really would like to get closure on this.

I value your feedback, even though you brought up your points
more than two months after the IETF Last-Call. I hope wecan
move forward without undue delays.

Thanks for your help, Rene

On 2020-12-19 11:01 a.m., Rene Struik wrote:

Dear John:

Based on your review and other feedback received, I
slightly updated the draft and posted the latest revision
as [1].

Your review below (of Nov 6, 2020) seems to bring up
three topics, viz.: (1) definition of Wei25519 and Wei448
vs. verbiage in NIST docs; (2) need for iana
registrations for ECDSA25519 and ECDSA448; (3) need for
iana registrations ECDH25519 and ECDH448.

Please find below some feedback.

General feedback:

Please bear in mind that the specifications of ECDSA25519
and ECDH25519 in the lwig curve document aim to yield
schemes that are strictly NIST-compliant (i.e., these
would allow FIPS 140-2 accreditation if the curves would
be in the "NIST recommended" set). See also Note 2 of
Section 4.1 of [1]. A similar remark applies to ECDSA448
and ECDH448.

Detailed feedback:

(1) Definition of Wei25519 and Wei448 vs. verbiage in
NIST docs.

Draft NIST SP 800-186 indeed defines a short-Weierstrass
version of Curve25519 [dubbed W-25519] and FIPS 186-5
allows its use; similar for Curve448 [dubbed W-448
there]). I have now added references to these draft
specifications in the lwig-curve draft. I have
double-checked all domain parameters, mappings between
curve models, tables of isogeny details in the lwig draft
and provided Sage scripts for the CFRG crypto panel
review at the time. I do anticipate that NIST will arrive
at the same values in their final publication when they
decide to publish this. (I am happy to share Sage scripts
for this purpose.)

(2) Need for iana registrations for ECDSA25519 and ECDSA448.

ECDSA is determined by an instantiation of hash function,
curves, and representation conventions for inputs and
outputs (i.e., message representation, curve point
representation, and signature representation).
a) ECDSA448 uses SHAKE256 under the hood, which is
currently not defined with COSE. Hence, my request to
register ECDSA w/ SHAKE256 and Wei448 as "ECDSA448".
b) ECSA25519 uses SHA256 and Wei25519 under the hood. I
thought to request to register "ECDSA25519" since this
would allow referencing the quite careful write-up
(Section 4.3), including bit/byte ordering, checks, and
nondeterministic behavior (and, thereby, keeping this
concise). Please note that this is very similar to the
COSE IANA registry for "ES256k1" (ECDSA w/ SHA256 and
Bitcoin curve secp256k1).

(3) Need for iana registrations ECDH25519 and ECDH448.

ECDH25519 and ECDH448 are co-factor Diffie-Hellman key
establishment schemes and can, therefore, not be based on
(cofactorless) Diffie-Hellman, as defined in RFC 8152.
(Please note that there is no difference for the NIST
curves, which all of co-factor h=1, but in our case one
has h=8 and h=4, respectively). Here, one shouldnote
that the ECDH25519 and ECDH448 write-ups (Section 4.1 and
4.3) quite carefully cross-reference co-factor ECDH in a
NIST-compliant way. Apart from the co-factor ECDH vs.
ECDH issue and objective to comply with all strict NIST
validation checks, the objective was also to make sure
that ECDH25519 and ECDH448 can be used in settings where
either or both parties uses ephemeral keys (which ismore
flexible than what RFC 8152 allows).  Hence, the request
to register "ECDH25519" and "ECDH448", to make sure this
covers the intent of these schemes accurately and with
precise description.

It is possible that I overlooked something in this
assessment. If so, any constructive suggestions are welcome.

Ref: [1]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-19
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-19>

Best regards, Rene

On 2020-11-06 5:04 p.m., John Mattsson wrote:

Hi,

I looked through this draft again. I think it isa
very good draft and I think it will be a solution to
some of the problems IoT devices have with Ed25519. I
will bring up this draft for discussion in the LAKE
WG at IETF 109.

I find it strange that the IANA registration hasnot
been coordinated with COSE WG at all. I am a bit
surprised to see IANA registrations for
COSE/JOSE/PKIX/CMS at all in a LWIG draft (is that in
charter?). If LWIG wants to register new algorithms,
I think LWIG at a minimum should coordinate withCOSE
WG and other groups. I think this draft should be
presented at the next COSE WG meeting.

I support registration of W-25519 and W-448 curves as
long they agree with NIST. I would like answers to
the questions why ECDSA25519 and ECDH25519 are needed
at all. There is no ECDSAP256 and no ECDHP256, so why
are specific algorithm registration needed for
W-25519?  It makes no sense to me that a special
signature registration is needed for COSE but not for
PKIX? If PKIX can use ecdsa-with-SHA256 why cannot
COSE use ES256?

I don't think ANSI X9.62 is an acceptable normative
reference. NIST just removed the normative reference
to ANSI X9.62 in SP 186-5.

Cheers,

John

*From: *COSE <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]> on behalf of Rene
Struik <[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Date: *Friday, 6 November 2020 at 20:37
*To: *Göran Selander
<[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]>,
"[email protected]" <mailto:[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]>,
"[email protected]" <mailto:[email protected]>
<[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject: *Re: [COSE]
draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13

Hi Goran:

Please find below some brief feedback on your note:

- the naming wei25519 has been around since the first
draft (Nov 13, 2017, i.e., 3 years minus 1 week ago),
see [1]. NIST indeed produced two draft documents,
viz. Draft NIST SP 800-186 and Draft FIPS Pub 186-5
(on October 31, 2019), which generated lots of (to my
knowledge still unresolved) comments during public
review. It is hard to refer to that document, since
it is only a draft and unfortunately has quite afew
errors.

- earlier versions of the lwig draft have received
reviews by the crypto review panel (Stanislavslav
Smyshlyaev), iotdir early-review (Daniel Migault);
the sections on COSE/JOSE code point assignments
resulted from a phone call and various email
exchanges with Jim Schaad; the section on PKIX/CMS
was suggested during IETF Last-Call secdir-review
(Russ Housley) and reviewed by him. The documenthad
IETF Last-Call Aug 24, 2020. See, e.g., the status
pages [1].

- ECDSA has been around since 1999, has been widely
standardized, and has seen lots of analysis, where
ECDSA25519 is simply yet another instantiation.
Signature generation and verification times for
ECDSA25519 should be similar to those of Ed25519
(since timing is dominated by scalar multiplication,
where one could simply use Montgomery arithmetic
[3]). In my personal view, ECDSA25519 may be more
secure than Ed25519 (if only because it is
non-deterministic, see Security section [6]); similar
side-channel care has to be taken in either case.

 - As mentioned in the draft, one can easily switch
between Wei25519 and Curve25519 (which requires a
single field addition or subtraction only, i.e.,
<.01%, see Appendix E.2 [7]). As mentioned in the
draft, one could use Wei25519.-3 with an existing
generic implementation that hardcodes the domain
parameter a=-3, but needs to compute an isogeny and
dual isogeny for this (adding 5-10% cost, see
Appendix G.2 [8]]) and a ~9.5kB table (see Section
5.3 [4]). However, if one already has generic
hardware support, one may still have a significant
win (see Section 6 [5]).

- The isogeny for Wei25519.-3 has odd degree l=47,
which is co-prime with the order of the curve, so is
in fact invertible. With Wei448.-3, the isogeny has
degree l=2, so is not invertible; however, this does
not really matter, since it is invertible with
correctly generated public-private key pairs (which
have prime/odd order) and the factor two is absorbed
with co-factor ECDH, where h=4 then.

I hope this helps.

(*) For ease of tracking, it would help if iana
related comments are flagged in the subject line
(e.g., include (iana) in the beginning hereof).

Best regards, Rene

Ref with hyperlinks:

[1]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-struik-lwig-curve-representations-00
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-struik-lwig-curve-representations-00>

[2]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations/
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations/>

[3]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-4.3
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-4.3>

[4]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-5.3
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-5.3>

[5]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-6
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-6>

[6]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-8
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#section-8>

[7]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#appendix-E.2
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#appendix-E.2>

[8]
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#appendix-G.2
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13#appendix-G.2>

On 2020-11-06 11:19 a.m., Göran Selander wrote:

Hi,

Apologies for cross-posting LWIG and COSE. Ihad
a brief look at
draft-ietf-lwig-curve-representations-13 and
noticed it registers a lot of new COSE(andJOSE,
PKIX, and CMS) algorithms. Has this draft been
discussed in COSE(JOSE/CURDLE)? If not, perhaps
it should be before being progressed?

1.The draft needs to manage the overlap withNIST
SP 800-186, which should be referenced and
mappings, name of curves, etc. aligned. The draft
defines Wei25519 and Wei448. It is unclear if
these are identical to W-25519, W-448 as defined
in NIST SP 800-186. We probably would not want
two slightly different definitions and/or names,
multiple COSE code points, etc.

1.The draft registers the COSE algorithm
"ECDSA25519" as "ECDSA with SHA-256 and curve
Wei25519". That is not how the other COSE
signature algorithms work. They work like PKIX
where the curve is given by the public key. Also,
why cannot W-25519 be used with the existing
ES256 signature algorithm?

2.The draft registers the COSE algorithm
"ECDH25519". There are no COSE ECDH algorithms
for P-256, why is anECDH algorithm for W-25519 be
needed?

Other questions. I may have missed it, but

2.is it described what are the expected security
properties of ECDSA25519(including mapping)
compared to Ed25519? For example w.r.t. side
channel attacks?

3.has any performance measurements been made
comparing ECDSA25519 (including mapping) andEd25519?

4.similar questions on security and performance
with Wei25519.-3 instead of Wei25519. If I
understand right, the former mapping is not
reversible, but could benefit from optimizedcode
with hardcoded domain parameters.

5.ANSI X9.62-2005 was withdrawn in 2015 and is
behind a paywall, is this reference necessary?

Göran





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