Subject: RE: [Hash] BOF Goals

From: Robert Zuccherato <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:05:12 -0400

I would have to agree with Jon's comments.  The two approaches suggested in
the charter (hash truncation and randomized hashes) may very well end up
being the final solutions that we decide on.  However, there are still too
many open questions regarding the security, efficiency and suitability of
these constructions.  Given that many (most?) applications can simply switch
to using RSA with SHA-256 and that we have to wait for NIST on DSA anyway, I
don't think that there is any need to rush into anything.  Clearly there is
important work to be done.  As Jon said though, that work should probably be
done in the IRTF rather than the IETF.

In any case, it would probably be prudent to wait until after the
Cryptographic Hash Workshop at NIST (October 31st-November 1st) before
deciding upon any charter.  It is not unreasonable to expect the results of
that workshop to be relevant to what gets discussed here.

	Robert Zuccherato.

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:42:16 -0700

At 10:05 AM -0400 7/21/05, Robert Zuccherato wrote:
>Given that many (most?) applications can simply switch to using RSA 
>with SHA-256 and that we have to wait for NIST on DSA anyway, I 
>don't think that there is any need to rush into anything.

Fully agree. I don't think anything in the charter has "rush" implied in it.

>Clearly there is important work to be done.  As Jon said though, 
>that work should probably be done in the IRTF rather than the IETF.

If the research is already being done in the cryptographic community, 
then it is fine to report on that research as input to an IETF 
Working Group. We do this all the time in other IETF contexts, such 
as commercial and academic research being done on real-time 
applications having an effect in the various SIP-related working 
groups. Lots of crypto research appears in other Security area 
working groups, of course.

If the research is *not* being done yet, it is far from clear if we 
could get it to happen in an IRTF research group, particularly 
because the perceived need for the research is low. The CFRG has not 
produced much in the way of crypto research. In fact, the only active 
CFRG Internet Draft is the one we are talking about here in this WG.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium