Re: Spec unclear about ECC (was Re: PolyCrypt )

I didn't comment on DSA or DH values because the BigInteger concept seems obvious enough.  X9.62 has more subtlety.

Using Key/importKey would allow the use of multiple formats (e.g., X9.62, JWK) without the JS having to convert, just like for other types of keys.  It also provides a degree of future-proofing, in the event that some other format arises.  

If we're going to get rid of importKey here, we might as well just represent RSA public keys as BigIntegers as well.

--Richard


On Feb 7, 2013, at 12:52 AM, Ryan Sleevi <sleevi@google.com> wrote:

> No, I was not agreeing. I was clarifying JWK's relationship to PKCS#1.
> 
> Your proposal creates added complexity for developers for most forms of ECC agreement, by forcing an added asynchronous diversion through the import key phase for a value that will be immediately discarded, or forcing an additional encoding phase into SPKI. This same concern applies to DSA public values. In what situation or scenarios does a Key object provide any value to authors?
> 
> On Feb 6, 2013 9:44 PM, "Richard Barnes" <rbarnes@bbn.com> wrote:
> <trimmed>
> 
> >> On a related note: It seems a little awkward to have the public key represented directly as octets here, when every other public key we use is a Key object.  Suggest changing type of EcdhKeyDeriveParams.public to Key.  That way I could importKey from SPKI or JWK.  You might also want to add an 'x9.62' format to importKey / exportKey, although SPKI is arguable a better format for that sort of thing, since it includes algorithm info.
> >>
> >> --Richard
> >
> > We explicitly removed PKCS#1 from the spec in favour of PKCS#8. I
> > don't see why we'd want to add x9.62 when SPKI is sufficient, and
> > seems entirely inconsistent with the discussion during Lyon.
> 
> It sounds like you're agreeing with the following PROPOSAL (with the idea that EcdhKeyDeriveParams.public would be populated via importKey, say of an SPKI or JWK value):
> 
> REMOVE:
> """
> The ECPoint typedef is a Uint8Array holding an elliptic curve point. An elliptic curve point is converted to an array of Uint8 elements using the procedure specified in X9.62 Annex A.5.7.
> """
> 
> OLD:
> """
> dictionary EcdhKeyDeriveParams : AlgorithmParameters {
>   // The peer's EC public key.
>   ECPoint public;
> };
> """
> NEW:
> """
> dictionary EcdhKeyDeriveParams : AlgorithmParameters {
>   // The peer's EC public key.
>   Key public;
> };
> """
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 7 February 2013 06:00:24 UTC