1. Summary
This is the shepherd writeup for draft-dukhovni-opportunistic-security-04. Paul Hoffman is the
document shepherd, and Stephen Farrell is the responsible Area Director.
The document defines the term "Opportunistic Security" and gives the design philosophy and
principles behind it. Using opportunistic security leads to the use of encryption in situations
which would otherwise use unencrypted communication. This document does not define a protocol, and
does not give a single method for attaining opportunistic security. The publication type is
Informational, which is appropriate for this type of overview publication.
2. Review and Consensus
The document and its predecessors were discussed with great gusto over many months on the SAAG
mailing list, in the UTA WG, and at two IETF meetings. There is a great deal of interest in having a
common set of definitions for the ideas related ot opportunistic security, even where there might be
disagreement about where it should and should not be used.
The IETF Last Call on the -03 draft produced a lot of suggestions for major improvements to the
language in the draft, and the author did a significant revision based on them, all without changing
the design philosophy. There are probably still some people who think that the wording is not what
they would want, and some who think that the whole idea is a bad one, but there was rough consensus
that the document was useful and should be published.
The document has had more review, and ended up getting stronger consensus for the eventual
definition, than the products of many security WGs. Because this document does not define how to
implement opportunistic security, there is some disagreement about its applicability to existing and
future IETF protocols, but there was strong agreement that the definition was good enough for many
protocols.
3. Intellectual Property
The author has stated that his direct, personal knowledge of any IPR related to this document (that
is: none) has already been disclosed, in conformance with BCPs 78 and 79.
4. Other Points
None, really.