Dear RFC-ISE and others, We submitted the specification of "The BLAKE2 Cryptographic Hash and MAC" as an informational RFC on February 1, 2015. The document is currently in its third revision after various contributors have read it and pointed out minor typographic errors in the original text. Therefore the editorial quality of the document should be sufficient at this point. The CFRG was also informed about the existence of the document. However the document is still in "Finding Reviewers" stage of the RFC process. https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-saarinen-blake2-03
Numerous real-life implementations and applications using BLAKE2 exist, and BLAKE2 is a de facto industry standard hash function. Therefore the CFRG IETF process has little to contribute to the design of the algorithm and we, as editors and algorithm designers, see the current Internet Draft as a final specification. This is why the document was put out as an independent submission like many other cryptographic algorithms. See https://blake2.net/ Recently the OpenSSL development community has expressed renewed interest in having the document finalized as an RFC and they seem to consider this to be a prerequisite of BLAKE2's adoption into the main branch of OpenSSL (although this has not historically been the case for all algorithms). This would especially help in including BLAKE2 in various possible TLS ciphersuites. TLS appears to especially require new PRF and MAC options. If you are still seeking reviewers, you may find Yoav Nir's comments below. There appears to be significant industry pressure to help this document to obtain its RFC number and the open development community is willing to offer any assistance required. Note that draft-saarinen-blake2 this is *not* a protocol specification, just a "FYI" specification for the Internet Community about this particular independent cryptographic primitive. You may approach me (the editor of draft-saarinen-blake2) privately if you require additional reviewers or commentary but want to avoid the openssl-dev mailing list. Best Regards, - markku Dr. Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen <[email protected]> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Yoav Nir <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 10:15 AM Subject: Re: [openssl-dev] [openssl.org #3897] request: add BLAKE2 hash function (let's kill md5sum!) To: [email protected] That shouldn’t be too difficult (finding reviewers, I mean). Is the ISE asking for volunteers to review? What kind of volunteers? IMO what a reviewer needs to be able to say is: - The document is clear (you can implement based on this) - The algorithm might be useful in the IETF - The security claims are sufficient to what IETF protocols need - The security claims are backed up by either peer-reviewed academic papers or equivalent So there’s a lot of people who can do all that. You don’t even need real cryptographers, although having at least one would be good. What is holding things up? Yoav On Jun 11, 2015, at 11:50 AM, Jean-Philippe Aumasson <[email protected]> wrote: The status of the draft is unchanged ("Finding Reviewers"). Perhaps OpenSSL can speed up the review process. BLAKE2 has a keyed (aka MAC/PRF) mode, so it may also replace Poly1305. A BLAKE2 MAC can be customized wrt key or tag size, and can provide the highest security level for a give key/tag size combination. _______________________________________________ openssl-dev mailing list To unsubscribe: https://mta.openssl.org/mailman/listinfo/openssl-dev
