[Ach] [cryptography] Diffie-Hellman Params Best Practice on Web Server?

[L. Aaron Kaplan]

On Dec 11, 2013, at 11:04 PM, Aaron Zauner <azet at azet.org> wrote:

> Hehe, at least you went with your own explaination. I looked it up and Bruce does that way better than I could. :)
> 
> To simplify for people who don't want to go through Wikipedia reading up on computations/arithmetic modulo prime and number theory (it's actually not that bad as long as you find a good math text book with a chapter on number theory in it): these parameters (groups and primes) are publicly known - sent in plain at the beginning of the key exchange - and designed to be publicly known. Pre-computation would not make much sense; since there are different groups, and of course, many different primes to choose from. All groups I'd feel comfortable to recommend are above 1536bits. i.e. pre-computation is extremely unlikely. Whats-more - there are attacks on some groups and subgroups that are outside of standard specifications or -  for example - badly chosen at random [0] [1] [2]. 
> 
> Since I could not find a single source that recommends generation (and regeneration) of DH parameters in a way that makes sense (i.e. describes why that should be done - instead of just recommending it or configuring services that do that) I'm convinced that we should stay with the parameters as recommended by RFCs and implemented in various crypto libraries.
> 
> 

ACK!
That's also what Florian pointed us to.

All right, I take it that we now have a clear picture what to write into the DH section.

a.


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