[noise] Noise "conventions" vs the Noise core

[Trevor Perrin]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason at zx2c4.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 4:54 AM, Trevor Perrin <trevp at trevp.net> wrote:
>>
>> Presumably a good Noise library would give users access to the
>> length/type convention, and the padding convention, but also allow
>> users to disable them for raw access to the Noise core.
>>
>> What do people think?
>
> That sounds good to me, so long as it's clear that by "convention" you
> mean "not necessary to be compliant noise".

We don't have a notion of "compliant noise", for better or worse.

We wouldn't frown on people who don't follow the conventions, though I
guess they're taking more responsibility into their own hands.


> Where do ciphersuites fall in terms of core vs convention?

I would say "ciphersuites" are different from "conventions".


> I've
> swapped out sha256(data) with blake2b(data, 32) and hmac-sha256(key,
> data) with blake2b(key, data, 32), for example. (The speed
> improvements are considerable.)

Are the speed improvements really considerable?  I would expect the
small amount of hashing during handshaking is small relative to the
DHs and everything else?

Trevor