Minutes of April 1st Meeting

[johngray-dev]

Present: Mike Ounsworth,John Gray, David Hook, Jean-Pierre Fiset, Julian Prat, Nicola Tuveri, Corey Bonnell, Alexander Railean, Carl Wallace, Felipe Venture, Abel C. H. Chen.

Roundtable discussion on the recent hackathon, where participants shared their contributions and challenges:

• John Gray added composite signature version 04 artifacts, still needs to update the private key format testing, and did some work on MTL revocation
• Jean-Pierre Fiset discussed his work on the ML DSA format and sought guidance on submitting changes.
• Carl Wallace reported on transitioning to Rust code for cryptographic components.
• David Hook focused on interop testing for key formats
• Felipe Ventura worked on integrating his composite implementation into OpenSSL.
• Corey Bonnel worked on testing the private key formats
• Julien Prat provided an update on the interoperability matrix for R5. John Gray asked about the verifiers, leading to a discussion where Mike Ounsworth clarified the difference between automated tests run on GitHub and manually uploaded results. Jean-Pierre Fiset raised questions about the process for updating the compatibility matrix.

Specific Topics:

Reference implementation of Composite Signatures and KEM in Python

• Mike created a reference implementation of composite signatures and composite KEM in python on his flight home. He also generated test vectors for every composite combination which will effectively double the size of the composite drafts.

Composite Key Private Key Format:

• Mike used concatenation without length tagging based on discussions in LAMPS 122. John and Nicola pointed out the challenges posed by variable signature sizes, especially with traditional signatures. Mike responded that NIST has confirmed FNDSA will have fixed sizes, which simplifies the situation. However, they acknowledged that traditional signatures can still present issues due to their variable lengths. This brought up the point around FIPS certification of existing expanded key ML-DSA implementations. David highlighted that some systems in the certification process are limited to expanded keys, which may hinder the ability to produce composite keys. Jean-Pierre noted that while some have submitted for ACVP, no one has submitted for composite yet.

Action Items:

• John Gray will post the slides presented during the hackathon in the GitHub repository.
• John Gray to fix up the private key formats in his implementation and generate .csv files against other providers
• Mike/Daniel to look at updating the link to the R5 HTML file.
• Alexander will schedule a meeting with John Gray to discuss the CMP implementation in May - John to send email to Alex
• Carl Wallace will add support for hash SLH DSA and look into the external MLDSA.