J-PAKE is a password-based authenticated key exchange protocol, developed by Peter Ryan and myself in 2008. Over the past six years, the protocol has withstood all sorts of attacks and has started to see some real-world use in providing end-to-end secure communication for Internet users. The full records of discussions on J-PAKE can be found in the previous lightbluetouchpaper blog.

About six months ago, in the ISO/IEC SC 27 meeting held at Hong Kong in April 2014, I gave a presentation on the rationale of including J-PAKE into the ISO/IEC 11770-4 standard. The presentation slides are available here. An accompanying document was officially circulated among the national bodies under ISO before the meeting. It was agreed in that meeting to start a six-month study period on Revision of ISO/IEC 11770-4 and invite all national bodies to comment my proposal.

This week, in its meeting held in Mexico City, October 20-24, 2014, ISO/IEC SC 27 Working Group 2 considered the contributions received under the study period. After some discussion, SC 27/WG 2 unanimously agreed that this standard should be revised to include J-PAKE.

In the same meeting, two security weaknesses of the existing SPEKE protocol in ISO/IEC 11770-4 were discussed based on the findings reported in our SSR’14 paper. (A copy of the paper is publicly available at IACR ePrint and the paper is discussed in a previous blog post.) After some discussion, it was agreed that the SPEKE specification in ISO/IEC 11770-4 should be revised to address the attacks reported in our SSR’14 paper. The revision work on ISO/IEC 11770-4 starts immediately with myself being one of the editors. We expect to provide the first working draft for comment by 15 Dec, 2014.

On a more lightweight subject, while in Mexico, I try to do as Mexicans do: i.e., drink a glass of cactus (mixed with celery, parsley, pineapple and orange) during the breakfast. It was such a horrible taste that I was unable to finish it the first time. However, the more I try it, the more I like it. Now I can’t have a breakfast without it. The way our body treats a new taste of drink reminds me of the way how our mind treats a new idea. A “new” idea usually has a bitter taste in it as it challenges our mind into accepting something different. The natural reaction is to reject it and remain satisfied where we are and what we already know. However, to appreciate the “sweetness” out of the initial “bitterness” of any new idea, it takes time and patience – and in fact, lots of patience. When I return to the UK, I am sure this will be the drink I miss most from Mexico. So, cheers one more time before my flight home tomorrow!