Re: draft-harris-ssh-rsa-kex-01.txt

[pgut001%cs.auckland.ac.nz@localhost (Peter Gutmann)]

der Mouse <mouse%Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA@localhost> squeeked:

>Now, RFC3447 *does* specify that conversion.  But the encoding of this data
>blob as a string is deceptively close to the encoding of the big number as an
>mpint (the major difference is exactly how and when leading zero bits are
>included).  I'd like to see this similarly explicitly acknowledged and
>clarified.

Why is it encoded as a string in the first place when the value is quite
clearly an integer?  For the equivalent DH keyex, the corresponding quantities
e and f are encoded as mpints and not strings.  Making a subtle change to the
encoding for this alternative keyex method seems to be asking for implementor
confusion.

Peter.