Subject: Re: Some DIGEST-MD5 nits

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:20:45 -0500

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Leach <[email-masked]> writes:

    >> -----Original Message----- From: [email-masked]
    Paul> [mailto:[email-masked]]
    >> On Behalf Of Simon Josefsson Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004
    >> 7:09 PM To: [email-masked] Subject: Re: Some DIGEST-MD5 nits
    >> 
    >> 
    >> A few additional notes:
    >> 
    >> I suggest making AES the mandatory to implement cipher.
    >> Currently, there is no reference for rc4 in the document, there
    >> are papers on weaknesses (such as Wagner's [1]), and there is
    >> no discussion in the current document how to deal with Shamir's
    >> findings (see [2]).
    Paul> [Paul Leach] I would suggest that either RC4 be deprecated,
    Paul> or that a new RC4-based cipher specifier be added that
    Paul> discards the first 256 bytes of the RNG. If the latter is
    Paul> the choice, security considerations should be added
    Paul> referencing the above, and noting that discarding 256 bytes
    Paul> handles the problems.

I'm having a hard time seeing the need for this.  It seems like the
current keys are the result of hashing and I don't understand how you
would get a related key attack against digest-md5.

Clarification on this would be appreciated.  If I'm right, there's no
need to introduce new types.  If I'm wrong then there is a serious
security problem.

--Sam

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:20:45 -0500

--Sam