RE: Support for ECB

There are existing usages of ECB, why would we force a change here? 

-----Original Message-----
From: Zooko Wilcox-OHearn [mailto:zooko@leastauthority.com] 
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 9:17 AM
To: public-webcrypto@w3.org
Subject: Re: Support for ECB

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Ryan Sleevi <sleevi@google.com> wrote:
>
> To bootstrap any of the following modes with suitable performance
> characteristics:
>
> CTR || CCM (which starts with CTR) || GCM (which starts with CTR)

I don't understand how a situation could arise where a programmer would need to use ECB mode to implement these (or for any other purpose). It seems like that situation would arise only if the underlying platform offered ECB mode but not CTR mode. But why don't we just discourage implementors from offering ECB mode and encourage them to offer CTR mode? (And, as previously suggested, encourage them to offer an AES block-encryption function that operates on only a single block.)

Regards,

Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn

Founder, CEO, and Customer Support Rep -- Least Authority Enterprises

https://leastauthority.com

Received on Thursday, 13 September 2012 17:28:08 UTC