OFF TOPIC: XML Key Agreement Specification

["Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker@verisign.com>]

All,

	This is off topic and out of scope, but I would appreciate review
from people on this list, to me personally please rather than the list.

	The relevance to this list is that the existence of a Key Agreement
exchange would answer the frequent criticism of Trust Services that signing
each message is unacceptably slow.

	The security considerations group may be interested in the
application of the ART methodology to establish the risks inherent in the
requirement and the degree to which the protocol provides adequate controls.

	The attached paper that describes a key agreement algorithm that
establishes a shared secret between two parties if an only if the two
parties hold the private keys identified in their credentials and requires
only a single request/response round trip.

	The anticipated application area is to secure Web Services, hence
the XML syntax. However the same algorithm could be implemented in another
syntax to support other applications (IPSEC, 802.11b security, TLS).

	Going forward the plan is to spend time soliciting comments from the
crypto/protocols community for some time before proposing that a working
group is started anywhere (i.e. want to make sure it works first).

	The paper will be available from the www.xmltrustcenter.org site in
the near future. 
		Phill

Phillip Hallam-Baker FBCS C.Eng.
Principal Scientist
VeriSign Inc.
pbaker@verisign.com
781 245 6996 x227

Phillip Hallam-Baker (E-mail).vcf

X-KASS-31.pdf