Re: How long is ZZ?

The normative reference is RFC 2631.

How does that not answer the question?
On Mar 1, 2014 1:13 PM, "Jim Schaad" <ietf@augustcellars.com> wrote:

> I ran across this problem within the last couple of years.  There is,
> unfortunately two different answers to the question.
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> TLS (RFC 5246)
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> A conventional Diffie-Hellman computation is performed.  The
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>    negotiated key (Z) is used as the pre_master_secret, and is converted
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>    into the master_secret, as specified above.  Leading bytes of Z that
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>    contain all zero bits are stripped before it is used as the
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>    pre_master_secret.
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> CMS (RFC 2631)
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> H is the message digest function SHA-1 [FIPS-180 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2631#ref-FIPS-180>] ZZ is the shared
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>    secret value computed in Section 2.1.1 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2631#section-2.1.1>. Leading zeros MUST be
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>    preserved, so that ZZ occupies as many octets as p. For instance, if
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>    p is 1024 bits, ZZ should be 128 bytes long.
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> As you can see from the above text, some specifications say to remove
> leading zero bytes from ZZ while others say to keep them.
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> We need to document which is to be implemented by the spec.   I would say
> to keep the leading zero bytes as I think this is more common, but I have
> absolutely no proof of that fact.
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> Jim
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