ietf-smime
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RE: S/MIME v3.2 IDs key size text (resend, no signature)

2008-05-12 16:19:24

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf-smime(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org 
[mailto:owner-ietf-smime(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Paul 
Hoffman
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 12:49 PM
To: Tony Capel
Cc: ietf-smime(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Subject: RE: S/MIME v3.2 IDs key size text (resend, no signature)


At 12:14 PM -0400 5/12/08, Tony Capel wrote:
Sean et al:

How about:

   0 <  key size < 512     : MAY     but refer to security 
considerations
section
 512 <= key size < 1024    : SHOULD- but refer to security 
considerations
section
1024 <= key size <= 2048   : MUST
2048 <  key size           : MAY     but refer to security 
considerations
section

Could you add verbs to your table? MAY what? SHOULD- what?

Not sure what Tony was thinking but I suggested that this go in 3850bis so
it would have been for receiving agents.

"A denial of service opportunity may exploitable by attackers who 
provide an excessively large key, or a key selected to require 
excessive cryptographic processing.  One mitigation approach would 
require that the corresponding public key certificate be 
validated to a 
trusted root [trust anchor] prior to use, thus ensuring that only 
trusted public keys are used.  However, some implementations 
may choose 
to perform signature verification (or data encryption) in 
parallel with 
certificate validation, or even if certificate validation fails.  In 
such cases, measures should be included to limit the impact, for 
example by limiting cryptographic processing time or requiring 
certificate validation prior to the use of large keys."

Regardless of small key size issue, I think text like this 
would be a good addition to the Security Considerations 
section of many documents.

I had something similar in the -02 version, but I'll swap out that text for
this text.

spt