A Cryptographic Evaluation of IPsec
Niels Ferguson, Bruce Schneier · 1999
Introduction In February 1999, we performed an evaluation of IPsec based on the November 1998 RFCs for IPsec [KA98c, KA98a, MG98a, MG98b, MD98, KA98b, Pip98, MSST98, HC98, GK98, TDG98, PA98]. Our evaluation focused primarily on the cryptographic properties of IPsec. We concentrated less on the integration aspects of IPsec, as neither of us is intimately familiar with typical IP implementations, IPsec was a great disappointment to us. Given the quality of the people that worked on it and the time that was spent on it, we expected a much better result. We are not alone in this opinion; from various discussions with the people involved, we learned that virtually nobody is satisfied with the process or the result. The development of IPsec seems to have been burdened by the committee process that it was forced to use, and it shows in the results. Even with all the serious critisisms that we have on IPsec, it is probably the best IP security protocol available at the moment. We hav