"ISAKMP" flaws?

[Florian Weimer]

* William Allen Simpson:

> Quoting "Photuris: Design Criteria", LNCS, Springer-Verlag, 1999:
>
>   The hallmark of successful Internet protocols is that they are
>   relatively simple.  This aids in analysis of the protocol design,
>   improves implementation interoperability, and reduces operational
>   considerations.
>
> Compare with Photuris [RFC-2522], where undergraduate (Keromytis) and
> graduate (Spatscheck, Provos) students independently were able to
> complete interoperable implementations (in their spare time) in a
> month or so....

Photuris uses a baroque variable-length integer encoding similar to
that of OpenPGP, a clear warning sign. 8-/ The protocol also contains
nested containers which may specify conflicting lengths.  This is one
common source of parser bugs.

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