RE: Editorial: Use of MAY in draft-ietf-ipsec-ikev2-algorithms

["Yoav Nir" <ynir@CheckPoint.com>]

Me too.  With a statement that keys weaker than a certain level (say, 128
bits although 96 is probably enough) SHOULD NOT be used, I can live with DES
being demoted to a SHOULD NOT.

Still, I think that DES fits better with the definition of MAY:
"One vendor may choose to include the item because a particular marketplace
requires it or because the vendor feels that it enhances the product while
another vendor may omit the same item."

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ipsec@lists.tislabs.com
[mailto:owner-ipsec@lists.tislabs.com]On Behalf Of Paul Hoffman / VPNC
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 9:31 PM
To: David Wagner; ipsec@lists.tislabs.com
Subject: Re: Editorial: Use of MAY in draft-ietf-ipsec-ikev2-algorithms


At 6:34 PM +0000 6/11/03, David Wagner wrote:
>It's not what size keys the cipher supports that matters; it's what size
>keys are standardized for use in IPSEc.

Exactly right.

>Maybe we should add a line to RFC2451 saying that users SHOULD NOT
>use key sizes shorter than the default.  There's no good reason to use
>shorter keys.  This addition would make everything consistent with a
>SHOULD NOT policy for DES.  Will this make everyone happy?

It would certainly make me happier. That way, we would not be having
different recommendations for IKEv1 than what we have for IKEv2.
Actually, a complete revision to RFC 2451 would be nice, including
removing algorithms for which there are not stable references.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium