[Muromec]

The trick to asn.1 is to generate both parser and serializer from the spec. Elliptic curve math on the other hand is ... yeah, you need to know the math and also know the tricks to code that implements it. Both of those have steep learning curve, but it's hardly because it's a mess or it's old.

[thayne]

The problem with ASN.1 is that it is big and complicated, and you only need a fraction of it for cryptography, and it isn't really used for anything outside of pki anymore.

It wouldn't be as bad if asn.1 had cought on more as a general purpose serialization format and there were ubiquitous decent libraries for dealing with it. But that didn't happen. Probably partly because there are so many different representations of asn.1.

A bespoke serialization specifically for certificates might actually have aged better, if it was well designed.

[jll29]

Assuming there are some libraries for it, would this make a pretty good case for LLM-generated ports of these existing libraries into other languages or onto other OSs/platforms? One implementation could be treated as "the spect".

[pocksuppet]

ASN.1 is protobufs designed by committee. It is a general-purpose serialization format, but there's no good reason to choose it instead of protobufs.

[thayne]

> It is a general-purpose serialization format

Yes. My point is that in practice it hasn't really been used for much outside of cryptography.

> there's no good reason to choose it instead of protobufs

Well, the reason it is used in a lot of the places it is, is because protobufs didn't exist when those protocols or file formats were created.

There are also some things that ASN.1 does better at a technical level. Of important significance to cryptography is that the DER representation is "canonical", meaning that there is only one way to serialize a set of data to bytes. That's important because it means that you can just hash the contents of the serialization for signatures, rather than having to have some kind of separate canonicalization step (which is a common source of mistakes).

[mschuster91]

> Both of those have steep learning curve, but it's hardly because it's a mess or it's old.

Bitpacking structures used to be important in the 60s. That time has passed, unless you're dealing with LoRa, NFC or other cases of highly constrained bandwidth there are way better options to serialize and deserialize information. It's time to move on, and the complexity of all the legacy garbage in crypto has been the case of many a security vulnerability in the past.

As for the code, it might be personal preference but I'd love to have at least some comments referring back to a specification or original research paper in the code.

[Muromec]

I think you misunderstand the problem asn.1 solves and constrains it works within (both 30 years ago and now). We sure can have a better one now once we learned all the lessons and know what good parts to keep, but this critique of bitpacking is misplaced.

[Avamander]

ASN.1 is not used because of just bitpacking. There are other benefits to ASN.1 and it's probably one of the least problematic parts there.

People who have thought they can do better have made things like PGP. It's one of the worst cryptographic solutions out there. You're free to try as well though.

[Muromec]

People who though they can do better did JWT, that is not complicated at all and has no bugs as well. Also solves 20% of what asn.1 is used for.

[thayne]

Maybe a bit pedantic, but it would actually be the more general JOSE which includes tokens (JWT), signatures (JWS), and key transmission (JWK).

And there is a related binary format that uses CBOR (COSE) as well.

[tptacek]

The trick to ASN.1 is to serialize/unserialize it backwards.

[dwattttt]

#1 NSA, I get it now!