[Servercert-wg] [cabfpub] Interest in Ed25519 and/or Ed448?

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 12:49:58PM -0400, Ryan Sleevi wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 12:44 PM Kurt Roeckx <kurt at roeckx.be> wrote:
> 
> > I do not see any follow-up discussion in the archive that
> > clarifies it. All the issues I see have been resolved, other than
> > the following 2:
> > - The BRs don't allow it.
> > - Browsers don't support it.
> >
> > As far as I can see, the only thing the browsers are really
> > waiting for is the BRs to allow it.
> >
> 
> Hopefully
> https://cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2020-March/001770.html clarifies,
> and highlights why the issues you believe are resolved are not.
> 
> I don't think browsers are waiting for the BRs to allow it. Browsers that
> were interested in supporting such certificates could propose changes and
> drive the discussion. For Chrome, we're not interested in supporting these
> certificates. We're more keen to see energy focused on PQ, which at least
> gives a reasonable payoff for the amount of effort needed to introduce new
> algorithms.

Ed25519 and Ed448 are not new. They exist now, have many
implementations. It does not require a huge amount of research
or effort to implement it. And it's a clear improvement over
the currently supported algorithms.

You're waiting for something that will probably take 10 years
before people think we're ready to switch to it. I consider that
10 year to a realistic one estimate. But I would like to hear from
others how long they think it will take to get PQ algorithms ready
for deployment.

As pointed out in the links you point to yourself, we shouldn't
wait until it's too late again to start a transition to something
more secure, but that's exactly what you've been advocating for
years now.


Kurt