eap Mailing List: issue: editorial (review of eap-keying-08 by mats naslund)

[Jari Arkko (jari.arkko]

There are multiple issues, each in separate e-mail

Submitter name: Mats Naslund
Submitter email address: Mats.Naslund [at] ericsson.com
Reference: (this email)
Document: Keying Framework
Comment type: E
Priority: 1
Section: multiple
Rationale/Explanation of issue:

  The Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), defined in [RFC3748],
  enables extensible network access authentication.  This document
  provides a framework for the generation, transport and usage of

MN: In what sense is _generation_ of key material really covered?
It explains how some methods have done, but does it really specify
a framework for key generation?

Transient Session Keys (TSKs)
    Session keys used to protect data exchanged in a session between
    the peer and authenticator after the EAP authentication has
    successfully completed.  TSKs are appropriate for the lower layer
    ciphersuite negotiated between the ports of the EAP peer and
    authenticator.  Examples of TSK derivation are provided in Appendix
    B.

MN: sorry, didn't find a single such example.

AAA-Key
    A key derived by the peer and EAP server, used by the peer and
    authenticator in the derivation of Transient Session Keys (TSKs).
    Where a backend authentication server is present, the AAA-Key is
    transported from the backend authentication server to the
    authenticator.  In existing usage, the AAA-Key is always derived
    from the MSK and so can be referred to using the MSK name.  AAA-Key
    = MSK(0,63).

MN: Why not show a figure of the hierachy? In fact, what does it look like?

       ---> TEK
      /
  .../ ---> MSK = AAAk  ----> TSK
     \         \
      \         \---> PMK --> TSK
       \
        \---> EMSK