[Cryptography] Crypto Standards v.s. Engineering habits - Was: NIST about to weaken SHA3?

[Bill Frantz]

On 10/6/13 at 8:26 AM, crypto.jmk at gmail.com (John Kelsey) wrote:

>If we can't select ciphersuites that we are sure we will always 
>be comfortable with (for at least some forseeable lifetime) 
>then we urgently need the ability to *stop* using them at some 
>point.  The examples of MD5 and RC4 make that pretty clear.
>Ceasing to use one particular encryption algorithm in something 
>like SSL/TLS should be the easiest case--we don't have to worry 
>about old signatures/certificates using the outdated algorithm 
>or anything.  And yet we can't reliably do even that.

We seriously need to consider what the design lifespan of our 
crypto suites is in real life. That data should be communicated 
to hardware and software designers so they know what kind of 
update schedule needs to be supported. Users of the resulting 
systems need to know that the crypto standards have a limited 
life so they can include update in their installation planning.

Cheers - Bill

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