Re: Excessive Optionality in Cryptography Anti-Pattern (was: Re: JSONWebSignature2020 vs JcsEd25519Signature2022)

Inline

On Thu, Mar 9, 2023 at 10:08 AM Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 7, 2023 at 10:02 PM Christopher Allen
> <ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com> wrote:
> >      https://www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/musings-agility/
>
> Christopher, excellent article!
>
> I hope that members of these mailing lists take the time to read it.
>
> To your point: Sadly, and too often, people believe that the
> individuals working on these cryptographic security specifications at
> IETF, W3C, and ISO do more due diligence on these standards, or are
> far more sure of the design over time, than they actually are.
> Especially developers that are not involved in the process.
>
> Every version 1.x standard is an experiment to a certain degree. Sure,
> we incubate them and do multiple implementations and pour over the
> minutiae of the specification text, but once they're deployed into the
> wild, they take on a life of their own.
>
> Algorithmic agility, for all the hopes that were placed into it in the
> late 90s and early 2000s, just hasn't worked out, yet is it just
> accepted by some as a "best practice", when the non-trivial amount of
> CVEs show a different story.
>
> There is a certain aspect of "deference to authority" here that's also
> harmful to the security community. Developers are told not to roll
> their own crypto (which they shouldn't do) and "listen to the IETF
> CFRG" (which they should do), but the secondary consequence to that is
> that it's highly unpopular to question whether some of the decisions
> made in the late 90s have a place in cryptography and security today.
>
> Your article clearly calls out one of these highly problematic myths
> -- that "algorithmic agility is a good thing", and cites multiple
> practicing cryptography and security experts (at IETF and elsewhere)
> that have been speaking out against the "algorithmic agility" myth for
> the better part of the last decade.
>

Citation needed.

Here is counterpoint from IETF regarding HPKE, which is one the most
popular new crypto related work items, and has taken the opposite approach:

"In recent work here, COSE HPKE <
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-cose-hpke/> is however going
for the full agility that you criticize.
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/cose/4HkrEz2io72eGHss5tFI-wyiQ-E/"

I think folks using the word "agility" in so many different ways is making
the argument "against cryptographic agility" nearly meaningless at this
point.


>
> Thanks for writing the article, and adding to the list of writing that
> is speaking out against unfettered algorithmic agility. It helps those
> of us that are trying to design security solutions for a modern
> landscape.
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> News: Digital Bazaar Announces New Case Studies (2021)
> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>


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