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RE: Comments on updated X9.42 draft

1998-11-11 18:21:25
Eric & Robert:

Okay. I will settle for a section in security considerations that tells
when the originator and recipient need to perform validation.  Since the
draft still supports Static-Static D-H as well as Ephemeral-Static D-H,
there are times that when each party needs to be concerned.

Robert:

Can you propose some text?

Russ

At 08:13 AM 11/10/98 -0500, Robert Zuccherato wrote:
Russ;

----------
From:        Russ Housley[SMTP:housley(_at_)spyrus(_dot_)com]
Sent:        Monday, November 09, 1998 3:26 PM
To:  Robert Zuccherato
Cc:  Eric Rescorla; ietf-smime(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Subject:     RE: Comments on updated X9.42 draft

If the recipient is an authomated service, such as a time stamp agent
or a
mail list agent, the attacker may be able to tell whether or not the
recipient could generate the shared secret allowing proper decryption.
If
the attacker can tell, then the attack seems to be a real concern.

Agreed.  I'm just concerned with mandating other users, who will not be
responding to messages that don't decrypt properly, to use this
technique.

How do we tell implementors when this is an issue and when it is not?
Do we
put it in security considertions?

That would be my preference.  I don't see why we couldn't describe when
these attacks are a concern and it is recommended to perform public key
validation.

      Robert.



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