[gnutls-devel] what should be the actual security level of SECURE128?

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

Hello,
 In the 3.3.0 branch one of the new features is the enforcement of the
security level in certificate verification. That would be that with the
SECURE-128 priority string one would expect a minimum security level of
128-bits. However, that would mean that today one couldn't connect on
any major website on the internet as their certificates are signed using
SHA1 (that provides 80-bits of security in theory - less in practice).

So the question is what should we do in gnutls. Make SECURE128 just a
string that provides better security than NORMAL, or enforce the 128-bit
level when this string is specified? The latter will have quite some
implications as a lot of software seems to specify SECURE128 as the
default priority string for no particular reason (and often with no way
to change it). Any ideas?

regards,
Nikos