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Liaison statement
Response to [2002] LS to IETF TLS WG – asking for RFC publication timeline of Post-quantum hybrid ECDHE-MLKEM Key Agreement active internet draft

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State Posted
Submitted Date 2025-09-03
From Group tls
From Contact Sean Turner <sean+ietf@sn3rd.com>
To Group GSMA
To Contacts Wayne Cutler <wcutler@gsma.com>
GSMALiaisons@gsma.com
Cc Joseph Salowey <joe@salowey.net>
Paul Wouters <paul.wouters@aiven.io>
Sean Turner <sean@sn3rd.com>
Transport Layer Security Discussion List <tls@ietf.org>
Deirdre Connolly <durumcrustulum@gmail.com>
Deb Cooley <debcooley1@gmail.com>
Response Contact Joseph Salowey <joe@salowey.net>
Sean Turner <sean+ietf@sn3rd.com>
Deirdre Connolly <durumcrustulum@gmail.com>
Purpose In response
Attachments (None)
Liaisons referred by this one LS to IETF TLS WG – asking for RFC publication timeline of Post-quantum hybrid ECDHE-MLKEM Key Agreement active internet draft
Body
Thank you for reaching out and sending your request to us! We apologise for
missing the deadline but hope the information in this reply is still valuable
in the preparation of your upcoming meeting!

The draft on Post-quantum hybrid ECDHE-MLKEM Key Agreement for TLSv1.3
(https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tls-ecdhe-mlkem/) is an adopted
working group item since March 2025 and has been stable for some time, even to
the extent that it is already deployed in some cases. Therefore we believe this
document is stable enough to be used as normative reference. Referencing an
adopted draft normatively is a practice that other organisation follow as well
and we concur with, particularly in this case.

If you prefer to wait for the final RFC before you reference it normatively, we
are optimistic to begin the progress by Q4 of 2025 but as the IETF does not
work on firm deadline, we cannot guarantee the timing at this point of time.
Note that after approval there is another formal editing phase where the RFC
number is assigned before the RFC is published and this will then likely be
after Q4 of 2025.

In any case please feel free to reach out for any further questions or directly
contact the working group chairs, Sean Turner and Joe Saloway, for a quicker
turn over on any particular questions!