Re: SSH in ECC Internet Draft

[Joseph Galbraith <galb-list%vandyke.com@localhost>]

Ben Harris wrote:
> In article <1160499087.4380.11.camel@thunk> you write:
>> On Tue, 2006-10-10 at 11:17 -0500, Nicolas Williams wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 01:52:24AM +1000, Damien Miller wrote:
>>>> IMO that (some) ECC libraries happen to use ASN.1 is not a good reason
>>>> to use it as protocol element.
>>> The draft defines one ASN.1 type ('curves', a SEQUENCE of OIDs) where
>>> existing SSHv2 constructs could be used instead.  The draft's other uses
>>> of ASN.1/DER do not require an implementation of SSHv2 to implement
>>> ASN.1/DER outside ECC libraries, but this one type does.
>> actually, it looks to me like there may be a deeper problem: the same
>> "two level negotiation" issue which affected the gssapi key exchange.
>>
>> I think you need to define a family of ssh key exchanges, one per
>> defined "curve", so that two implementations which support
>> noninteresecting sets of ECC curves but also support other KEX
>> mechanisms can find other common mechanisms.
> 
> Um, implementations aren't allowed to support non-intersecting sets of 
> curves, since Appendix A.1 requires all implementations to support four 
> standard curves.

While the implementation must support them, the site policy
may disable them.

Thanks,

Joseph