On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Werner Koch wrote:
Recall what happened with Camellia: It is now a year since David Shaw
implemented that cipher in GnuPG but we are still not able to enable
this because the RFC process has not been finished. We have not even
agreed within the WG on algorithm identifiers. Taking a year for such a
simple change - even with consensus in the WG that we want to have
Camellia in OpenPGP - is not really a useful way to get going with a new
cipher or a new curve. OIDS nicely solve this problem for curves.
I really don't like OIDs, given the potential for format-based attacks
that they introduce, but we're already using them anyway. I would like to
see them phased out by v5 though.
However, I see a very large problem here with the "it takes a year to get
an algorithm ID" situation. What's holding that up? And while we're at it,
can we get an algorithm ID assigned for WHIRLPOOL?
We should not drop a better technical better solution just for the
benefit that it is less work. If you need help, just send me the source
of your ID and I do the editing. I'd really like to get an ECC draft
out so that we can get ECDSA into GnuPG to start experimenting with it.
(DSA 2048bit is a bit slow and a transient interop problem)
How was PGP 7.5 handling this? Just one specified curve, or?
--Len.