Subject: Steps forward for low-infrastructure mechanisms

From: "Linn, John" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 10:06:53 -0400

CAT fanciers:

Our draft milestones call for making a determination by July on direction
and intent re progressing low-infrastructure mechanism definitions within
the group.  The purpose of this message is to open a thread to discuss this
topic, in the hope that we can make progress in advance of the Oslo meeting.

We currently have two Internet-Drafts within the WG concerned with various
aspects of low-infrastructure mechanisms: draft-ietf-cat-lipkey-00.txt and
draft-ietf-cat-sskm-00.txt.  An additional proposal (GSS-Easy) was posted to
the list and discussed there, but is not currently available in the
Internet-Draft repository.  Following list discussion earlier in the year, a
straw poll at the Minneapolis meeting indicated greatest interest in
progressing the LIPKEY proposal, with more limited interest in the GSS-Easy
proposal and in digest-based authentication approaches.  Since the meeting,
a new proposal (SSKM) has been introduced, like LIPKEY in its use of the
SPKM framework but using secret-key rather than public-key technology. Also,
an GSS Conversation Function has been suggested to the mailing list,
recognizing that some low-infrastructure mechanisms will require more user
interaction than has been assumed for "traditional" GSS-API mechanisms. 

As of Minneapolis, the apparent group preference was to proceed with a
LIPKEY-based mechanism; assuming that this remains the case, it seems to me
that there are several questions which we should discuss at this point:

(a) perceptions on the value and utility of such a mechanism definition to
the general IETF community

(b) whether group interest exists in extending LIPKEY to span SSKM (or
variant thereof), or in consideration of these as separate alternatives

(c) other changes, if any, to be considered for LIPKEY

Separately, we should consider action on the GSS Conversation Function.

Thought and discussion hereby solicited in this area. 

--jl

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