[Fwd: Key Encoding Text]

[Sean Turner <turners@ieca.com>]

Here's the proposal I mentioned at the f2f.

spt

--- Begin Message ---

• From: Sean Turner <turners@ieca.com>
• To: robert.griffin@rsa.com, "Fitzgerald, Indra" <indra.fitzgerald@hp.com>, Judy Furlong <Furlong_Judith@emc.com>
• Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:54:28 -0400

Bob, Judy, and Indra,

In the past, some symmetric key systems have had problems when two 
clients chose different ways to load the keys they were given.  For 
example, one decided to load the key it was given in its register as the 
first byte of the OCTET STRING going in the last byte of their register 
and another did as the first byte of their register.  They're obviously 
not going to interoperate.   I know it seems like this ought to be a 
"duh" kind of thing, but I'm afraid it could happen again without saying 
something.  I've drafted the attached text to explain how the bytes in 
the key that is sent correspond to how it needs to be used (for AES and 
DES keys).  I think it needs to go in the spec because I think it's 
normative.  But, I'm not entirely sure where we should put it.  Thoughts?

spt

Proposal for Key Encoding Text.doc

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