Re: New work for sacred working group?

Stephen Farrell <[email protected]> Mon, 27 Jun 2005 14:38:35 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.ietf.sacred
Message-ID <[email protected]>

Peter,

Peter Gutmann wrote:

> Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> 
>>Which unencumbered alternatives are you thinking of?
> 
> TLS-PSK.

Haven't read that (not yet an RFC btw) myself, but I now plan
to do so.

I guess I'd have to question the "equivalence" part here since
tls-psk-09 [1] says:

"  It is also possible to use the SRP (Secure Remote Password)
    ciphersuites for shared secret authentication [SRP].  SRP was
    designed to be used with passwords, and incorporates protection
    against dictionary attacks. "

So I would guess that for sacred, TLS-PSK isn't an unencumbered
equivalent since offline dictionary attacks are a high priority
here. Or am I misreading something?

Stephen.

[1] http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-tls-psk-09.txt

> 
> 
>>Anything beyond TLS+PLAIN seem to me be either surrounded with IPR concerns
>>(SPEKE, SRP); or incredible poorly designed and implemented (DIGEST-MD5); or
>>deprecated (CRAM-MD5); or too complex to allow a reasonable implementations
>>(X.509, CMS); or too experimental (TLS PSK); or burdened by history
>>(Kerberos), to be applicable.
> 
> 
> Hmm, I'd hardly call a standards-track TLS RFC "experimental".  Given the
> strong support there is for this from low-powered device vendors, and the fact
> that it's a trivial mod to TLS, I'd hope there'd be good support for this in
> the future.
> 
> Peter.
> 
>