Re: draft-harris-ssh-arcfour-fixes-02: informational or proposed?

[Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf at mit.edu>]

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu> writes:

    >> The argument in favor of publishing this document at proposed
    >> is that the existing arcfour cipher is part of a standard and
    >> that many other IETF protocols use rc4 in standards track
    >> documents.

    Keith> previous mistakes are not valid justifications for new
    Keith> mistakes.  previous accidents are not valid justifications
    Keith> for deliberately weakening new products.
So, that's certainly true.  but I can see two points.

1) There is an existing somewhat broken rc4 cipher in the ssh
   standards-track document.  This spec proposes to replace that
   cipher with one that is much less broken.  Why should that be at a lower level of standardization than the existing cipher?

2) The fact that we have rc4 in a lot of standards may suggest that we
    consider the attacks against it not sufficient to actually count
    as broken.  To some extent this second consideration is targeted
    at the security community.


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