Re: [TLS] Proposed text for IDEA/DES document

[<Pasi.Eronen at nokia.com>]

Len Sassaman wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 Pasi.Eronen at nokia.com wrote:
> 
> >    IDEA has a 128-bit key, and thus is not vulnerable to exhaustive
> >    key search. However, IDEA has not seen widespread use, 
> >    and has not
> 
> IDEA has been widely used, particularly in disk and email 
> encryption programs.

I stand corrected -- maybe that could be rephrased to "IDEA cipher
suites for TLS have not seen widespread use"?

> >    received as extensive cryptographic analysis as AES and 
> other more
> 
> IDEA has received a much better "test of time" than AES, and many
> attempts at attacking IDEA have taken place over the last few
> decades.
> 
> IDEA's problem is its patent, nothing more.

In earlier discussions, some folks brought up the issue of rarely used
code. Even if IDEA as algorithm is fine, it's not necessarily a good
idea to include code in TLS libraries that is basically never used
(and thus might contain undetected bugs, impacting potentially both
security and interoperability).

> (If you're going to claim otherwise, I think you need to provide
> citations for both of those, or else you'll find a lot of
> disagreement.)

Yes, I agree that we need citations and/or better arguments.

Best regards,
Pasi
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