Re: crypto-ISSUE-27 (aes ctr): Specification of AES-CTR mode counter bits [Web Cryptography API]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 9:24 AM, Ryan Sleevi <sleevi@google.com> wrote:
>
> Was there a reason for the naming change?
>
> As mentioned on previous calls, this is something that won't be able
> to be minified (the literal strings "counter" and "length" will have
> to appear in the final dictionary), thus the "counterBlock" and
> "counterBitsLength" seem... overly long?

I see. The original names are ambiguous because it isn't clear whether
"length" refers to the length of the entire counter block or the
portion that is incremented (the counter bits):

dictionary AesCtrParams : AlgorithmParameters {
  // The initial value of the counter. counter MUST be 16 bytes.
  ArrayBuffer counter;
  // The length, in bits, of the counter
  [EnforceRange] octet length;
};

We can solve this problem by improving the comments:

dictionary AesCtrParams : AlgorithmParameters {
  // The initial value of the counter block. |counter| MUST be 16 bytes.
  ArrayBuffer counter;
  // The length, in bits, of the part of the counter block that is incremented
  [EnforceRange] octet length;
};

but it would be nice to improve the name for "length", too.

Wan-Teh

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2012 17:59:23 UTC