Re: extension of Web Cryptography API to include curve25519 and 448

I've also been pointed to https://github.com/w3c/webcrypto/issues/181 (and
https://github.com/w3c/webcrypto/issues/181#issuecomment-288537325
specifically)
wherein this approach was similarly discussed and (at least in principle)
agreed upon.

-mike


On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 4:59 PM Mike West <mkwst@google.com> wrote:

> I think a reasonable approach here would be to propose this improvement to
> WebCrypto via WICG (https://wicg.io/). There seems to be interest in the
> mechanism, and adding two reasonably well-defined algorithms to the
> existing spec is probably something that won't be terribly controversial.
> Getting browser vendor interest in the details and implementation of those
> algorithms via the WICG would be a good signal that the W3C should pick it
> back up, either in this working group or another (which would require some
> charter work one way or the other, which is a bit of wrangling that it
> seems reasonable to avoid until we know that there's a need).
>
> FWIW, this seems reasonable to me, and I've heard interest in similar work
> from entities inside Google as well. I expect I could hook them up with
> y'all via the WICG. :)
>
> -mike
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 4:51 AM Daniel Veditz <dveditz@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
>> That seems like a reasonable proposal but updating the Web Crypto API
>> seems outside the scope of this group's charter.
>>
>> Wendy: Where should we direct this request? The API was defined in the
>> Web Crypto WG, closed since 2017. A note on their w3.org page said that
>> maintenance of the Web Crypto spec would be carried on in the Web Security
>> Interest Group, which closed in October. Would this fit in the Web
>> Authentication group, or is their scope limited to that one specification?
>>
>> -Dan Veditz
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 1:49 AM Ilya Chesnokov <
>> ilya.chesnokov@protonmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello, members of web app security group.
>>>
>>> My name is Ilya Chesnokov and I represent Proton Technologies AG - the
>>> company behind Protonmail, the world's largest encrypted email provider.
>>> Our company is interested in enhancing the web cryptography
>>> specification (https://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/) to include
>>> curve25519 and curve448. For the former curve, there exists a written
>>> proposal, albeit incomplete
>>> https://github.com/trevp/curve25519_webcrypto. Also, there was a formal
>>> voting with most votes against this; the main reason was that these curves
>>> were not included in the CFRG or TLS standards (an example vote is here
>>> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webcrypto/2014Aug/0107.html
>>> ).
>>>
>>> Now both curves are included in CFRG standard
>>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7748 and in the TLS draft
>>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-curve25519-01, therefore, it
>>> seems that including these curves now in the web crypto API is a reasonable
>>> choice.
>>>
>>> Proton technologies is interested in writing necessary specification,
>>> since it will advance our openpgp implementation (working draft of the spec
>>> with curve 25519 is here
>>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-koch-openpgp-rfc4880bis-02). This
>>> mail is intended to gauge interest in including curve 25519 and curve 448
>>> to web crypto api, all replies are welcome.
>>>
>>> Best regards Ilya Chesnokov
>>>
>>> Sent with ProtonMail <https://protonmail.com> Secure Email.
>>>
>>>