This writeup is for the IETF draft draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04, intended
to be a Proposed Standard.
Document History
1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence
of a few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?
I believe that the WG reached a broad consensus. A total of 18 people agreed
with the adoption call and 8 people agreed with the WGLC. No disagreement was
seen on the mailing list or in any of the working group meetings.
2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions
where the consensus was particularly rough?
No. There was some small controversy about a possible downgrade attack
(addressed by draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-downgrade-prevention), but that really
was against the RFC 9370 structure that this can use, not this draft itself
(and is being addressed separately by the referenced draft)
3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
discontent? If so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email
messages to the responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email
because this questionnaire is publicly available.)
No such threat of an appeal or extreme discontent was noted.
4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the
contents of the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers
indicated plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported
somewhere, either in the document itself (as RFC 7942 recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?
There exist at least four implementations in the public (Cisco, Palo Alto
Networks, Strongswan, Apple). The document does not currently include an
Implementation Status section.
Additional Reviews
5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in
other IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore
benefit from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.
No, it does not. It is entirely an internal option for IKE.
6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review
criteria, such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.
It does not involve a MIB, YANG, media types or URI, hence such reviews are not
required.
7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the
module been checked with any of the recommended validation tools for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module comply
with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified in RFC
8342?
The document does not contain a YANG module
8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of
the final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML
code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.
No parts of the document were written in a formal language.
Document Shepherd Checks
9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion
that this document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed,
and ready to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?
I believe that it is ready to be handed off to the Area Director
10. Several IETF Areas have assembled lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?
No issues need to be addressed; the security considerations already address
things adequately.
11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream (Best
Current Practice, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard,
Informational, Experimental or Historic)? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?
The request is for a Proposed Standard; I believe it is appropriate because it
is stable, has resolved known design choices (which, in this case, are not that
many), is believed to be well-understood, has received significant community
review, and has received a good amount of community interest. I believe that
the datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this.
12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the
intellectual property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in BCP 79?
To the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links to
publicly-available messages when applicable.
A query for IPR claims was made on the IPsec mailing list on 2/27/26; the
author (Panos) replied on 2/27/26 that he was unaware of any such IPR claims.
Two entities (Algo consulting and CNRS) have asserted intellectual property
claims regarding ML-KEM. NIST has reached an agreement with these parties to
allow for the royalty-free, global use of ML-KEM, provided that implementations
adhere to the specifications defined in FIPS 203. An implementation of this
draft would adhere to that specification.
See
https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Projects/post-quantum-cryptography/documents/selected-algos-2022/nist-pqc-license-summary-and-excerpts.pdf
for a summary of the agreement.
13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.
The sole author expressed in a private email a willingness to be acknowledged
as an author.
14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the
idnits tool is not enough; please review the "Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates some
incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)
The current version of the draft (draft-ietf-ipsecme-ikev2-mlkem-04) has all
known nits addressed.
15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the
IESG Statement on Normative and Informative References.
I believe that the references are categorized properly. Now, it is possible to
implement this draft without RFC 9242 or RFC 9370; however, in most situations,
they will be required, and hence I believe their categorization as normative is
appropriate.
16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone.
Did the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?
All normative references are freely available, either as RFCs or as NIST
publications.
17. Are there any normative downward references (see RFC 3967 and BCP
97) that are not already listed in the DOWNREF registry? If so,
list them.
There are no normative downward references.
18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?
All normative references are in a complete state (either a published RFC or NIST
publication).
19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing
RFCs? If so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those
RFCs listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document where
the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.
No, this document does not change the status of any RFC.
20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations
section, especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the
document. Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments
are associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm that
each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents, allocations
procedures, and a reasonable name (see RFC 8126).
The IANA considerations section is appropriate. IANA has already added
preliminary entries into its "Transform Type 4 - Key Exchange Method Transform
IDs" registry; all that remains is for IANA to retarget them to this RFC when
it is published. In addition, the version of the protocol in the current draft
is compatible with the preliminary version cited, hence retargeting the IANA
entries does not cause interoperability issues.
21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.
No new IANA registries are required.