Use of ML-DSA in TLS 1.3

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.¶

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."¶

This Internet-Draft will expire on 19 May 2025.¶

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

ML-DSA [FIPS204] is a post-quantum signature schemes standardised by NIST. It is a module-lattice based scheme.¶

This memo specifies how ML-DSA can be negotiated for authentication in TLS 1.3 via the "signature_algorithms" and "signature_algorithms_cert" extensions.¶

2. Conventions and Definitions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

3. ML-DSA SignatureSchemes Types

As defined in [RFC8446], the SignatureScheme namespace is used for the negotiation of signature scheme for authentication via the "signature_algorithms" and "signature_algorithms_cert" extensions. This document adds three new SignatureSchemes types for the three ML-DSA parameter sets as follows.¶

enum {
  mldsa44(0x0904),
  mldsa65(0x0905),
  mldsa87(0x0906)
} SignatureScheme;

These correspond to ML-DSA-44, ML-DSA-65, and ML-DSA-87 defined in [FIPS204] respectively. Note that these are the pure versions and should not be confused with prehashed variants such as HashML-DSA-44 also defined in [FIPS204].¶

Similarly, the context parameter defined in [FIPS204] Algorithm 2/Algorithm 3 MUST be the empty string.¶

The signature MUST be computed and verified as specified in Section 4.4.3 of [RFC8446].¶

The corresponding end-entity certificate when negotiated MUST use id-ML-DSA-44, id-ML-DSA-65, id-ML-DSA-87 respectively as defined in [I-D.ietf-lamps-dilithium-certificates].¶

The schemes defined in this document MUST NOT be used in TLS 1.2 [RFC5246]. A peer that receives ServerKeyExchange or CertificateVerify message in a TLS 1.2 connection with schemes defined in this document MUST abort the connection with an illegal_parameter alert.¶

4. Security Considerations

TODO Security¶

5. IANA Considerations

This document requests new entries to the TLS SignatureScheme registry, according to the procedures in Section 6 of [TLSIANA].¶

6. References

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Alicja Kario and John Mattsson for their review and feedback.¶

Authors' Addresses