Subject: Re: [lamps] Call for adoption of draft-housley-cms-mts-hash-sig

From: Tim Hollebeek <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 09:14:47 +0000

Apologies for the fact that the summer holidays caused this discussion to
last longer than was intended; the consensus on the list appears to support
adoption of this draft as the starting point for this work.

-Tim

From: Spasm <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Tim Hollebeek
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2018 6:03 PM
To: SPASM <[email-masked]>
Subject: [lamps] Call for adoption of draft-housley-cms-mts-hash-sig

The recently approved LAMPS WG Charter adds this work item:

5. Specify the use of hash-based signatures with the Cryptographic Message
Syntax (CMS).  Hash-based signature use small private and public keys, and
they have low computational cost; however, the signature values are quite
large.  For this reason they might not be used for signing X.509
certificates or S/MIME messages; however, sine hash-based signature
algorithms are secure even if a large-scale quantum computer is invented.
The low computational cost for signature verification makes hash-based
signatures attractive in the Internet of Things environments, and the
quantum resistance makes them attractive for the distribution of software
updates.

It has been suggested that the WG adopt draft-housley-cms-mts-hash-sig as
the starting point for this work.  Since Russ Housley is the author of this
draft, Tim Hollebeek will judge consensus for this discussion.  Please voice
your support or concerns on the list.