Subject: new GSS draft

From: "ietf.cat" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 11:21:55 -0400

Greetings all,

I've just submitted a draft (draft-ietf-cat-sskm-00.txt) to the rfc-editor
for a GSS mechanism that may be of interest to members of the CAT group.
The draft presents a relatively straighforward generalization of SPKM, using
shared secret keys rather than public key certificates for authentication.

The rationale behind this generalization is to provide a bridge between
existing secret key (username/password, etc) infrastructures and more
scalable infrastructures based on digital signatures and certificates.  By
expanding SPKM to be useful with both private and public key systems,
organizations with an existing secret key infrastructure can adopt a
GSS-compliant mechanism immediately, and then be able to retain that
mechanism as they slowly convert their userbase from private to public key.

The draft proposal does not modify SPKM messages or syntax, nor does it add
any messages or tokens; it also introduces no new cryptographic transforms.
One could perhaps consider this a "low-infrastructure" mechanism, in the
sense that it allows systems based on secret key technology to retain their
existing keying infrastructure, while at the same time providing a migration
path to newer and more scalable keying systems.

In any event, I'd be happy to hear any comments or feedback concerning the
draft.  Regards,

Wes Doonan
Surety Technologies Inc.

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From: "Wes Doonan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 13:40:48 -0400

One additional bit of info, an online version of the paper upon which this
draft is based can be found at http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/mihir/papers/
in eakd.pdf, eakd.ps, or eakd.ps.gz.

Wes Doonan
Surety Technologies Inc.