Recommended Algorithms and Registry issue

When we first started the Crypto API, we assumed cryptography was going 
to be fairly stable in at least the short-term. However, the topic of 
new developments around RSA [1] and now NSA influence on standards 
bodies [2] has the possibility of leading some instability in 
recommended algorithms and algorithms in general. In particular, we can 
imagine various people legitimately wanting custom ECC curves for 
example. How does this change the spec?

Not much, but I'd suggest the two points:

1) Right now we recommend

• RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 using SHA-1
• AES-CBC

Given latest developments, I and some others at W3C would prefer to 
remove "AES-CBC" but keep RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 using SHA-1.

2) The topic of a registry led to massive debates before. I think it 
seemed that the one reason was the administrative overhead of IANA. In 
particular, we can imagine various people wanting custom ECC curves for 
example. It seems like a wiki is too lightweight, but we could either 
have the WebCrypto WG (and W3C staff, with help of a public mailing 
list) maintain a web-page after the end of the life of the WG. The spec 
could then point to the web-page and then warn about the lack of RFF 
policy and lack of interoperability testing.

Any opinions?

cheers,
harry

[1]http://www.slideshare.net/astamos/bh-slides
[2]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security

Received on Monday, 9 September 2013 16:29:00 UTC