The Use of RSA/SHA-1 Signatures within Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) and Authentication Header (AH)
draft-ietf-msec-ipsec-signatures-06

DISCUSS only until shepherd acknowledges these nits.
(Personally, I think the RECOMMENDED that Lucy queries is OK)

Document: draft-ietf-msec-ipsec-signatures-04.txt
Review: Lucy E. Lynch
Date: 2 mars 2005 

The Use of RSA Signatures within ESP and AH
draft-ietf-msec-ipsec-signatures-04.txt

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

Very readable document, with a clear statement of need:

   "Some group applications require true data origin authentication,
   where one group member cannot successfully impersonate another group
   member. The use of asymmetric digital signature algorithms, such as
   RSA, can provide true data origin authentication."

The document has some formating nits (see below)

NOTES:

one question - why is this a recommendation and not a requirement?

2.0
   "The use of an ephemeral key pair  with a lifetime of the ESP or AH SA is
   RECOMMENDED. This recommended  policy reduces the exposure of the RSA
   private key to the lifetime of the data being signed by the private key.
   Also, this obviates the need to revoke or transmit the validity period of
   the key pair."

NITS: idnits 1.60

tmp/draft-ietf-msec-ipsec-signatures-04.txt:

tmp/draft-ietf-msec-ipsec-signatures-04.txt(3): Line is too long: the
offending characters are 'an Weis'
tmp/draft-ietf-msec-ipsec-signatures-04.txt(4): Line is too long: the
offending characters are 'Systems'
tmp/draft-ietf-msec-ipsec-signatures-04.txt(5): Line is too long: the
offending characters are 'y, 2004'

  Checking nits according to http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html :

    Checking conformance with RFC 3667/3668 boilerplate...
  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3668 Section 5, para 1 IPR
    Disclosure

  Acknowledgement.

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
    Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
    pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
    this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
    might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
    made any independent effort to identify any such rights.  Information
    on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
    found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.")

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3668 Section 5, para 2 IPR
Disclosure
    Acknowledgement.

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
    assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
    attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
    such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
    specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
    http://www.ietf.org/ipr.")

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3668 Section 5, para 3 IPR
Disclosure
    Invitation.

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
    copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
    rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
    this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at
    ietf-ipr@ietf.org.")


  Checking nits according to http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt :

  * The document seems to lack a 1id_guidelines paragraph about
    Internet-Drafts being working documents -- however, there's a
paragraph with
    a matching beginning. Boilerplate error?

  (Expected a match on the following text:
    "Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
    Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
    other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts."

   ... but found this:
    "Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
    Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
    groups may also distribute working documents as Internet Drafts.")


  - The page length should not exceed 58 lines per page, but there was 1
    longer page, the longest (page 1) being 525 lines

  Miscellaneous warnings:

  - The "Author's Address" (or "Authors' Addresses") section title is
    misspelled.

Minor nits:

The title of this draft is: "The Use of RSA Signatures within ESP and AH"

Understanding that this algorithm *may* be used for unicast, it seems that the major motivation of this draft is for use in multicast environments. Should this be better reflected in the title?

Also, first letter capitalization for words in the title does not seem to be consistent.