Merge pull request #4133 from gilles-peskine-arm/psa-conditional-inclusion-c-curves
PSA conditional inclusion: add rationale about ECC curves and FFDH groups
diff --git a/docs/proposed/psa-conditional-inclusion-c.md b/docs/proposed/psa-conditional-inclusion-c.md
index 52138b1..2ddba7f 100644
--- a/docs/proposed/psa-conditional-inclusion-c.md
+++ b/docs/proposed/psa-conditional-inclusion-c.md
@@ -5,8 +5,6 @@
This is currently a proposal for Mbed TLS. It is not currently on track for standardization in PSA.
-Time-stamp: "2020/11/26 09:30:50 GMT"
-
## Introduction
### Purpose of this specification
@@ -86,9 +84,17 @@
For asymmetric cryptography, `PSA_WANT_KEY_TYPE_xxx_KEY_PAIR` determines whether private-key operations are desired, and `PSA_WANT_KEY_TYPE_xxx_PUBLIC_KEY` determines whether public-key operations are desired. `PSA_WANT_KEY_TYPE_xxx_KEY_PAIR` implicitly enables `PSA_WANT_KEY_TYPE_xxx_PUBLIC_KEY`: there is no way to only include private-key operations (which typically saves little code).
-#### Configuration symbols for curves
+#### Configuration symbols for elliptic curves
-For elliptic curve key types, only the specified curves are included. To include a curve, include a symbol of the form **`PSA_WANT_ECC_family_size`**. For example: `PSA_WANT_ECC_SECP_R1_256` for secp256r1, `PSA_WANT_ECC_MONTGOMERY_CURVE25519`. It is an error to require an ECC key type but no curve, and Mbed TLS will reject this at compile time.
+For elliptic curve key types, only the specified curves are included. To include a curve, include a symbol of the form **`PSA_WANT_ECC_family_size`**. For example: `PSA_WANT_ECC_SECP_R1_256` for secp256r1, `PSA_WANT_ECC_MONTGOMERY_255` for Curve25519. It is an error to require an ECC key type but no curve, and Mbed TLS will reject this at compile time.
+
+Rationale: this is a deviation of the general principle that `PSA_ECC_FAMILY_xxx` would have a corresponding symbol `PSA_WANT_ECC_FAMILY_xxx`. This deviation is justified by the fact that it is very common to wish to include only certain curves in a family, and that can lead to a significant gain in code size.
+
+#### Configuration symbols for Diffie-Hellman groups
+
+There are no configuration symbols for Diffie-Hellman groups (`PSA_DH_GROUP_xxx`).
+
+Rationale: Finite-field Diffie-Hellman code is usually not specialized for any particular group, so reducing the number of available groups at compile time only saves a little code space. Constrained implementations tend to omit FFDH anyway, so the small code size gain is not important.
#### Configuration symbols for algorithms
@@ -195,7 +201,7 @@
#### Naming of symbols
-The names of [elliptic curve symbols](#configuration-symbols-for-curves) are a bit weird: `SECP_R1_256` instead of `SECP256R1`. Should we make them more classical, but less systematic?
+The names of [elliptic curve symbols](#configuration-symbols-for-elliptic-curves) are a bit weird: `SECP_R1_256` instead of `SECP256R1`, `MONTGOMERY_255` instead of `CURVE25519`. Should we make them more classical, but less systematic?
#### Impossible combinations
