Final steps re PR and algorithm updates

Everyone,

Apologies for the delay in emailing - I have held six talks since at our
last meeting - including as part of the public academic Security
Standardization Research Conference next Monday at NIST in order to get
some final feedback on their plans re algorithm updates in the future.
Once I get a handle on how often NIST expects major updates, I'd like to
have a meeting on when/if we want to keep WG running maintenance mode or
try to produce an update policy document before the charter expires in
January.

I'm currently resolving some outstanding questions re future algorithm
support with DJB re Curve25519, upgrades in future, and finished
discussions on DH small groups and double-checking Bleichenbecher's
attack on the error codes I'll send an email with an update after the
NIST meeting.

I will be working on the PR request and will post results of my
discussion with NIST et al. post-Dec 7th. In particular, there are still
some missing threads to be resolved on the formal objections are making
sure the results of the test-suite and security concerns re particular
algorithms are comprehensible to the Director and developers.

Another factor complicating this process is that I have heard that my
role as staff contact is possibly slated to be terminated on December
1st, likely due to my public concerns over the rights of users and
security researchers over DRM at W3C. This is an issue that Mark and
others know I am actively trying to resolve in terms of EME. In this
case, I'll continue to volunteer my time of course within reason to make
sure the spec is finalized before the charter expires - and regardless
of role at W3C, and will continue to make sure that users and W3C
members with strong feelings about DRM are not left unrepresented.
Regardless, I will do everything in my power to make sure the WebCrypto
WG succeeds.

   cheers,

      harry

Received on Thursday, 1 December 2016 08:40:59 UTC