Subject: [Emu] where to exchange protected TLVs

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:35:27 -0700 (PDT)

Hi,

  During Last Call on draft-harkins-emu-eap-pwd a comment was made that
this draft lacked the ability to do a protected exchange of TLVs the way
EAP-GPSK does. Which got me to wondering.

  Is it the intention of the community that each individual EAP method
will have to define ciphers to negotiate, how to negotiate a cipher,
how to get a key for the cipher, how to use the cipher to protect a new
payload that contains arbitrary TLVs? I personally think that's a bad
idea. Each EAP method would have to basically duplicate a whole bunch
of capabilities.

  Would it not be better to do this with two new EAP codes to pass TLVs
in each direction and the have a single definition of the cipher and a
single definition of how to get the key and a single definition of how
to use the cipher and key to protect packets with these new EAP codes?
That leaves EAP methods to do authentication and generation of the MSK
and EMSK, period. The (optional) exchange of packets with these new EAP
codes would happen after the EAP method has finished sending requests
and responses and before "success" is declared.

  Disregarding the EMU charter for a minute, would this be a better
architectural solution?

  regards,

  Dan.

---

From: Alan DeKok <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:30:51 +0200

> idea. Each EAP method would have to basically duplicate a whole bunch

  I agree that it's a bad idea.  Where additional data needs to be
transferred, it would be best to have a way that is EAP method agnostic.

> and responses and before "success" is declared.

  There are multiple ways of doing this.  That is one approach.

>   Disregarding the EMU charter for a minute, would this be a better

  Yes.

  Alan DeKok.