Subject: [Gen-art] GenART Last Call review of draft-ietf-smime-gost-06.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 20:26:33 -0500

Background for those who may be unaware of GenART:

GenART is the Area Review Team for the General Area of the IETF.
We advise the General Area Director (i.e. the IETF/IESG chair) by
providing more in depth reviews than he could do himself of documents
that come up for final decision in IESG telechat.  I was selected
as the GenART member to review this document.  Below is my review,
which was written specifically with an eye to the GenART process, but
since I believe that it will be useful to have these comments more
widely distributed, others outside the GenART group are included.

This review was conducted as part of IETF Last Call - I apologize
for it arriving after the conclusion of that Last Call.

Review criteria for WG submissions: "Is this document a reasonable
contribution to the area of Internet engineering which it covers? If
not, what changes would make it so?"

This draft is basically ready for publication, but has nits that
should be fixed before publication.

(1) Sections 3.1 and 3.2 use symbolic OIDs (OBJECT IDENTIFIERs)
that are defined in the [CPALGS] reference.  If the symbolic
OIDs remain, then text should be added to each section to say that
the symbolic OID is defined in [CPALGS].  Alternatively, each OID
could be fully defined as is done in other sections.

(2) Section 7.1  Parameter micalg

   When using the algorithms defined in this document, micalg parameter
   SHOULD be set to "gostr3411-94" or it MAY be set to "unknown".

The "SHOULD do <x> or MAY do <y>" construction is problematic, as
it is not clear whether the "MAY" is implicitly a "SHOULD NOT".
Changing the "or" to "otherwise" would clarify this, and I suggest
that the "MAY" also be changed to a "MUST", so that the text reads:

   When using the algorithms defined in this document, micalg parameter
   SHOULD be set to "gostr3411-94" otherwise it MUST be set to "unknown".

If the "MUST" is not correct, the other possible values for micalg
should be listed.

(3) Section 8

   Cryptographic algorithm parameters affect rigidity of algorithms.

I don't understand "rigidity".  Was "strength" intended?

(4) The Authors' Addresses section (should be s' not 's) contains
contact info for a number of contributors who are not authors.  This
is ok, but the section might be better titled "Contact Information"
- see http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.auth2 .

Note to authors: Please obtain your Area Director (Russ)'s approval
before making any changes to this draft.

Thanks,
--David
----------------------------------------------------
David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 293-7953             FAX: +1 (508) 293-7786
[email-masked]        Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
----------------------------------------------------

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