Subject: [apps-discuss] APPSDIR review of draft-harkins-brainpool-ike-groups-04

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:41:35 -0800

I have been selected as the Applications Area Directorate reviewer 
for this draft (for background on APPSDIR, please see 
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/app/trac/wiki/ApplicationsAreaDirectorate ).

Please resolve these comments along with any other Last Call comments 
you may receive. Please wait for direction from your document 
shepherd or AD before posting a new version of the draft.

Document: draft-harkins-brainpool-ike-groups-04
Title: Brainpool Elliptic Curves for the IKE Group Description Registry
Reviewer: S. Moonesamy
Review Date: February 6, 2013
IETF Last Call Date: January 31, 2013

Summary: This draft is almost ready for publication as an Informational RFC

This memo allocates code points for four new elliptic curve domain 
parameter sets over finite prime fields into a registry that was 
established by The Internet Key Exchange (IKE) but is used by 
other  protocols.  One of the informational references mention that 
"the 224 bit curve brainpoolP224r1 and the 256 bit curve 
brainpoolP256r1 described below will be used in the new German 
machine readable travel documents (MRTDs) that follow ICAO technical reports".

I did not verify the test vectors.  I did not find any application 
considerations in the memo.

Major issues: None

Minor issues:

In Section 4:

   "Implementations that desire to use the twisted curves internally
    MUST refer to [RFC5639] for the complete domain parameter sets,
    only the "twist" is defined here."

I suggest using "must" and leaving it to RFC 5639 to specify the requirement.

In Section 3:

   "These assigned values SHALL be identical to those being assigned
   to identical curves that are being added to a similar registry by
   [BPIKEV2]."

I don't see a reason for a "SHALL" in the IANA Considerations 
Section.  I suggest framing this as a request and removing the RFC 
2119 boilerplate.  The details can easily be worked out with IANA folks.

   "IANA is further instructed to update the "Group desription" portion
    of the [IANA-IKE] registry by appending Table 1 to the registry table
    and replace the words "this memo" (including the quotes) with a
    reference to the RFC number assigned to this memo."

Typo: description.

I read 
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipsec-registry/ipsec-registry.xml#ipsec-registry-9 
I didn't understand the "not for RFC 2409" in Table 1 at first.  I 
gather that this is about the administrative prohibition mentioned in 
Section 5.  I suggest clarifying the note.

Nits:

These are editorial nits.

I would move Section 5 before Section 3 as it makes the memo clearer to me.

In Section 1:

  "[RFC5639] defines new elliptic curve domain parmaeters for curves"

Typo: parameters

In Section 2:

Typo: arithmatical

In Section 4:

   "discrete logarithm cryptography, for example elliptic curve"

Typo: cryptography

There is a typo for "Californaia".

Regards,
S. Moonesamy