Subject: [Cfrg] security level of keyed MD5 as used in RFC 2385

From: "David A. McGrew" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 06:47:33 -0700

Hello,

you might be interested in the technical details of 
draft-iesg-tcpmd5app-00.txt, "Standards Maturity Variance Regarding the 
TCP MD5 Signature Option (RFC 2385) and the BGP-4 Specification.', 
online at 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iesg-tcpmd5app-00.txt.   
Section 3 of that draft outlines the problems in the TCP MD5 Signature 
Option (RFC 2385), which uses 'keyed MD5' as an authentication method 
for TCP.  The interesting technical question here is: how bad (or how 
good) is the security of the keyed MD5 TCP option?  An important factor 
in the security analysis is the fact that there is no key management 
system for this mechanism.  I believe that it is common to use a single 
key across an entire set of machines.  Insights into the real security 
level could provide useful guidance for future work.

Please note that I'm not asking for input on the standards process 
issue here; SAAG is the proper place for such discussions.

David

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