Subject: RE: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-pkix-scvp-00.txt

From: "David P. Kemp" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 14:39:47 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
> 
> A single instance of a parser is not going to convince many people that 
> constrained ASN.1 is sufficient. A syntax that implementors can understand 
> well enough to write a parser is what is needed.

A single instance of just any parser (i.e. a commercial library) is not
sufficient.  But a single instance of an Open Source parser should be
sufficient for any developer who can type "configure; make" :-).
Competition in the marketplace, or in the Bazaar of ideas, will ensure
that if one implementor can do it on an ARM, the rest will follow.

Sorry, but the idea of a protocol that says "here is a certificate,
give me the public key" just makes me gag.  What device has enough oomph
to run a protocol engine but not enough to extract the key from an
X.509 cert?

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 12:07:28 -0700

At 02:39 PM 7/1/1999 -0400, David P. Kemp wrote:
>give me the public key" just makes me gag.

Um, have you read the draft? The protocol gives back much more than that. 
Reading the draft may help prevent future gagging.

>   What device has enough oomph

Probably none; the protocol returns much more than the key. There are lots 
of devices who do not have the oomph to do good path validation with all of 
the constraints. Getting just the public key is not interesting, given that 
you want to validate it.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium