Early boot, activation, upgrades

[Ivan Krstić]

On Jul 10, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Mitch Bradley wrote:
> Whirlpool takes 1.16 sec/MiB.  SHA512 takes 0.42 sec/MiB  (on a preB3,
> i.e. an LX CPU).

Maybe we have to change the primitives we're using. These timings are  
entirely acceptable for BIOS updates, but not quite enjoyable for  
every boot (which we didn't have in mind when we were rolling the  
crypto). We could come down to shorter RSA and ECC, and SHA-256 and  
256-bit truncated Whirlpool. Unfortunately, our crypto audit has been  
performed on the current set of primitives.

Jon, do you think you would be able to audit the LTC SHA-256 code  
reasonably quickly, and do you have qualms about the NIST 256-bit ECC  
curve triggering unaudited code paths? I'm not familiar with that code.

--
Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | http://radian.org