RFC 4492, "Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Cipher Suites for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", May 2006

Note: This RFC has been obsoleted by RFC 8422

Errata ID: 2389
Status: Verified
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Juho Vähä-Herttua
Date Reported: 2010-07-23
Verifier Name: Sean Turner
Date Verified: 2011-03-26

Section 5.4 says:

   point:   This is the byte string representation of an elliptic curve
      point following the conversion routine in Section 4.3.6 of ANSI
      X9.62 [7].  This byte string may represent an elliptic curve point
      in uncompressed or compressed format; it MUST conform to what the
      client has requested through a Supported Point Formats Extension
      if this extension was used.

        enum { ec_basis_trinomial, ec_basis_pentanomial } ECBasisType;

   ec_basis_trinomial:   Indicates representation of a characteristic-2
      field using a trinomial basis.

   ec_basis_pentanomial:   Indicates representation of a
      characteristic-2 field using a pentanomial basis.

It should say:

   point:   This is the byte string representation of an elliptic curve
      point following the conversion routine in Section 4.3.6 of ANSI
      X9.62 [7].  This byte string may represent an elliptic curve point
      in uncompressed or compressed format; it MUST conform to what the
      client has requested through a Supported Point Formats Extension
      if this extension was used.

        enum {
            ec_basis_trinomial(1), ec_basis_pentanomial(2),
            (255)
        } ECBasisType;

   ec_basis_trinomial:   Indicates representation of a characteristic-2
      field using a trinomial basis.

   ec_basis_pentanomial:   Indicates representation of a
      characteristic-2 field using a pentanomial basis.

Notes:

The ECBasisType enumeration is submitted as part of the ECParameters structure and therefore needs numerical values. It is common to assign numerical values starting from 1 to enums and maximum value of 255 should be enough, since currently there are only two known basis types and it is unlikely to change in the near future.

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