Subject: Reasons to include ECC to our charter

From: "Dominikus Scherkl" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 13:33:28 +0200

Dear openPGP Working Group,

Sorry, that I supposed my suggestions for an ECC-extension
to the openPGP message format to be property of this WG while
it is only a personal draft.

Now for my reasons, why this WG should include
<draft-scherkl-openpgp-ecc-00.txt> to its charter:

I think it is time to fulfill the promise this WG made by
reserving space for ECC and ECDSA, if we want to keep this
standard as wide used as it is.

Long time has gone since we reserved IDs for ECC algorithms
and many applications now support ECC but can't provide it in
an openPGP context. So they uses other standards like S/MIME
or proprietary protocols to provide these algorithms to those
who want to enjoy their advantages.

Different sets of ECC parameters have now been tested long
enough to outsource all trivialy (and many not so trivial)
cases that won't provide sufficient security, so ECC becomes
a "well known" algortithm.
In this light the somewhat slightly advantages "short keys"
and "high performance" gain weight due to the lack of
disadvantages.

Therefore I'm convinced we can include it in the standard
without high probability to compromise our security goals.

The attached draft is thought to be fully conform with the
openPGP format and even some other standards, and it defines
all elliptic curves so that no greater changes in the
future are expected (it keeps no further gaps in the ECC
definiton as some older suggestions have done).
If it isn't, I'm sure we can make it with small efford.

At all, the openPGP standard can only gain by adding this
draft to the charter.

Best Regards
-- 
Dominikus Scherkl
Biodata Application Security AG
mail: [email-masked]

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From: Ben Laurie <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 15:40:31 +0100

> At all, the openPGP standard can only gain by adding this

You can't add it to the _standard_ because of restrictive licensing. I
guess Informational RFCs are possible, but they don't make me happy -
essentially the WG is doing free work, both technical and marketing, for
the owner(s) of the patents.

Cheers,

Ben.

--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html

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From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: 09 Aug 2001 17:24:43 +0200

> the owner(s) of the patents.

IIRC, not all ECC stuff is patented, only curves over GF(q), q even,
which can be implemented efficiently using two-valued logic.

-- 
Florian Weimer [email-masked] University of
Stuttgart http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/ RUS-CERT +49-711-685-5973/fax
+49-711-685-5898

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From: Ben Laurie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 16:15:35 +0100

> which can be implemented efficiently using two-valued logic.

As I read it, this I-D includes these.

Cheers,

Ben.

"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff