Subject: RE: Last Call: Cryptographic Message Syntax to Proposed Standard

From: "Jim Schaad" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 10:05:54 -0700

Two last call comments:

Draft-ietf-smime-rfc2630bis-05.txt

In section 5.3 the discussion of the signedAttrs field the following
sentence occurs "Each SignedAttribute in the SET MUST be DER encoded."
There are two problems with the statement.  First there is no
SignedAttribute field or structure.  Second, this statement does not
make sense.  It should either be "Each AttributeValue" or "The
SignedAttributes set MUST be DER encoded for tranmission as well as
signature processing." 

Working group straw poll at the IETF meeting prefered the second
alternative.

Draft-ietf-smime-cmsalg-06.txt

In section 6.1 there is a discussion that CMS implemenations must accept
parameters as both NULL and absent for parsing.  There should be a
matching statement that CMS implementations SHOULD generate NULL
parameters.  [This could be absent as well, I don't currently have any
preference as to which option is chosen.]

Jim Schaad

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of The IESG
> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 2:46 PM
> To: IETF-Announce:
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Last Call: Cryptographic Message Syntax to Proposed Standard
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The IESG has received a request from the S/MIME Mail Security Working
> Group to consider the following as Proposed Standards:
> 
>  o Cryptographic Message Syntax
> 	<draft-ietf-smime-rfc2630bis-05.txt>
>  o Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) Algorithms
> 	<draft-ietf-smime-cmsalg-06.txt>
> 
> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
> final comments on this action.  Please send any comments to the
> [email-masked] or [email-masked] mailing lists by November 21, 2001.
> 
> Files can be obtained via
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-smime-rfc2630bis-05.txt
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-smime-cmsalg-06.txt
>