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RE: [Cfrg] Defining inter operable ECC keys in for IETF protocols



Would the recently proposed extended DSA with larger key sizes be a workable
alternative?

The key size is still large (does someone know how large a key has to be to
give 2^128 equivalent security). But the signatures are small, 256 bits,
that?s only 32 bytes.

I would prefer ECC or something else that gives me small keys and small sigs
if it is free. Getting to a state where we are confident that an ECC scheme
is free as in beer is hard. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ólafur Guðmundsson [mailto:ogud at ogud.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:04 AM
> To: cfrg at ietf.org
> Subject: [Cfrg] Defining inter operable ECC keys in for IETF 
> protocols 
> 
> 
> I apologize for this open ended question but the WG I 
> co-chair DNSEXT has added security extensions to the base DNS 
> protocol (DNSSEC), currently RSA/SHA1 is the main signing 
> algorithm. DSA is also defined. DSA is reaching end of life, 
> safe RSA signatures and keys are large.
> 
> As DNS messages are carried over UDP packets there is 
> interest in being able ECC due to the fact the keys and 
> signatures are much smaller.
> A proposal has been made for a ECC key format.
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-dnsext-ecc-key-08.txt
> 
> Our worry is that the format proposed is open ended and 
> people can publish/use keys in fields that the rest of the 
> world can not use due to lack of support in common crypto libraries.
> 
> What the DNSEXT working group is looking for is some guidance 
> on how to create a SHORT list of fields/curves to use by ECC 
> in the DNS context and/or wider IETF context.
> 
> Nice feature: In the DNS world we are more interested in 
> keeping Verification time down than signing time, RSA with 
> small exponent is quite nice in this regards. I do not know 
> if the choice of ECC variant has any impact on the difference 
> between signing and verification time.
> If due to the shorter length of ECC key the signature 
> verification times are on-par with equivalent strength RSA 
> key this is a non issue.
> 
> In some environments due to the large number of signatures 
> that need to generated in short time, hardware 
> implementations might be required.
> 
> Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.
> 
> 	Olafur 
> 
> 
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> 

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