Re: [OAUTH-WG] RSA vs PKI?

["Infinity Linden (Meadhbh Hamrick)" <infinity at lindenlab.com>]

i think everyone here probably understands that defining a small set
of required crypto algorithms is a "good thing." otherwise you get
MOSS.

there _are_ issues with both ECC and RSA.

Certicom holds some patents on ECC, so it is not a completely
unencumbered technology.

On the other hand, the NSA has elected to pay for a federal government
wide license for these patents rather than specify RSA in Suite B.
(Suite B being a collection of algorithms the NSA has approved for
securing "sensitive but not classified" government information.) This
has led some people to wonder whether the NSA knows something the rest
of us don't regarding the efficacy of RSA.

Another check mark in the RSA column is the fact that it's quite easy
to find a commercial CA that supports RSA. It's much harder to find
commercial support for ECC and Rabin Williams (despite the latter
being defined as part of ISO9796)

Just my $0.02.

In the interest of full disclosure, i am a former employee of both
RSADSI and Certicom and maintain a small financial interest in
Certicom.

-cheers
-meadhbh

--
   infinity linden (aka meadhbh hamrick)  *  it's pronounced "maeve"
         http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Infinity_Linden



On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 09:20, Brian Eaton <beaton at google.com> wrote:
> [switching subject line to fork discussion]
>
> Hey Igor -
>
> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 7:49 PM, Igor Faynberg
> <faynberg at alcatel-lucent.com> wrote:
>> One question: Is RSA is really essential here? I  think not (why not use ECC
>> or any other PKI algorithm instead?). So, I would agree with Brian so long
>> as RSA is replaced with PKI.
>
> Interesting point, and I'm not sure I fully understand what you are getting at.
>
> The choice of RSA-SHA1 vs RSA-SHA256 vs ECC vs DSA-SHA1 vs <whatever
> comes out next week> seems to be about cryptographic security.  What
> algorithms do we want to use?  How are we going to migrate from older
> algorithms to new algorithms as the old ones are broken?  What are the
> efficiency vs security trade-offs?
>
> PKI, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be about security in the
> cryptographic sense.  It's more about key discovery, and trust.  How
> do you find the consumer's public key?
>
> Have I understood where you are headed?
>
> Cheers,
> Brian
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