[eqvinox]

> whether he realizes it or not, he's operating in supremely bad faith this time.

I've met him in person, once, at a CCC event about a decade ago, and as someone clueless about cryptography all I can say to that is that he certainly had (has?) a my-way-or-the-highway personality.

> I, too, don't support the IETF

Out of curiosity, how would you maintain e.g. TLS? Something more academic? Raw "throw it all out there, best-wins"? Another SDO (e.g. ITU)? Other more formal international processes?

[tptacek]

For the record, he's always been extremely nice to me, online and in person, and generous with his time.

I would maintain TLS the same way WireGuard and OpenSSH are maintained. Both have superior track records. I'm generally an opponent of all security and (especially) cryptographic standards bodies.

[eqvinox]

> I would maintain TLS the same way WireGuard and OpenSSH are maintained. Both have superior track records. I'm generally an opponent of all security and (especially) cryptographic standards bodies.

Hmm. This doesn't entirely connect for me… WireGuard and OpenSSH are first and foremost implementations. Are you implying people should follow a "primary" implementation? Does WireGuard even have a protocol specification? (searches - ah, yes, it does. I do know there have been a very number of "further" implementations [e.g. on FreeBSD], though I'm not sure if they're derivative or clean-room.)

But then isn't this just replacing IETF processes with whatever community or corporate processes those projects have? Wouldn't that just be "get shit into {the Linux kernel,OpenBSD}"? They've gotten better but both of those communities have their shortcomings. (For Linux, it's not the social interactions anymore, at this point it's the significant corporate interests.)

[tptacek]

WireGuard in particular is both an implementation and a design, and the design effectively belongs to Jason Donenfeld.

The problem with cryptographic standards bodies is that committee-based design has a long track record of weakening protocols. Originally, part of the ethos of the IETF was that it was merely providing interop for things that were already happening; rough consensus around real implementations. But that attitude expired decades ago; things are now designed de novo in working groups.

Through a herculean effort, TLS-WG managed through that fucked process to drastically improve TLS in 1.3. It did that in part because a team of cryptographers and cryptography engineers camped on the working group and made sure the outcome was sane. And they nearly failed! Banks fought hard to try to keep static handshakes in the new version, so they could do compliance intercepts.

Unfortunately, fully documenting PQC cryptography isn't as glamorous a task as defining the next generation's version of TLS. And yet, we've got a somewhat diverse team of cryptographers on the working group lined up against Bernstein on this.