Re: Open issues on the Crypto-Agility Requirements draft

[Alan DeKok <aland@deployingradius.com>]

Dave Nelson wrote:
> Well, the term "crypto-agility" implies that the protocol is not bound to
> any *single* cipher-suite.  Substituting SHA-256 for MD5 would not be a
> crypto-agility solution, IMO.  It would be a "fix" for internal RADIUS
> security until such time as SHA-256 becomes ineffective.

  Yes.

> One *could* make the argument that RADIUS doesn't need to be crypto-agile,
> all we need is a "fix" for the internal security mechanisms to tide us over
> until the transport wrapper security mechanisms are widely deployed.

  That's my opinion.  Everyone who has tried to fix RADIUS, or add
negotiation has gotten nowhere.

> In terms of revising the RADIUS Crypto-agility Requirements draft, it would
> be helpful to know whether the WG still thinks that RADIUS needs internal
> security that is indeed crypto-agile.

  Nothing.  Give up on ad-hoc security, and wrap the entire protocol in TLS.

  It makes the "wiretap via RADIUS" issue more difficult.  But I've
never understood we can securely allow third-parties to insert arbitrary
traffic into an AAA exchange, and *without* having one of the parties
notice that the traffic exists.

  Alan DeKok.

--
to unsubscribe send a message to radiusext-request@ops.ietf.org with
the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.
archive: <http://psg.com/lists/radiusext/>