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Re: I-D Action:draft-ietf-pkix-ocspagility-02.txt




A
...

On a new topic: Another concern I have is that there's a DoS attack when the attacker sends a really big bogus signture and the client has to spend time figuring this out. We had a long discussion about this on the SMIME list. We added a security consideration in draft-ietf-smime-3851bis as follows:

 Receiving agents that validate signatures and sending agents that
 encrypt messages, need to be cautious of cryptographic processing
 usage when validating signatures and encrypting messages using keys
 larger than those mandated in this specification.  An attacker could
 send certificates with keys which would result in excessive
 cryptographic processing, for example keys larger than those mandated
 in this specification, which could swamp the processing element.
 Agents which use such keys without first validating the certificate
 to a trust anchor are advised to have some sort of cryptographic
 resource management system to prevent such attacks.

I agree that analogous text would be appropriate here.

...

There are 2 tables in RFC 5480. The 1st lists the possibilities for ECDSA but the 2nd (on page 10) provides some RECOMMENDED key sizes, hashes, and curves for a given # of bits of security. What I was saying is that if we use that table, then we could infer everything. But, the group will need to agree to that.

I like referring to such tables as a way to keep things simple, and increase the likelihood of interoperability.

Steve