RFC Errata
RFC 6920, "Naming Things with Hashes", April 2013
Source of RFC: IETF - NON WORKING GROUPArea Assignment: art
Errata ID: 8174
Status: Held for Document Update
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Henry Jalonen
Date Reported: 2024-11-12
Held for Document Update by: Orie Steele
Date Held: 2024-11-19
Section 9.4 says:
the hash algorithm name string
It should say:
the case-(in)sensitive hash algorithm name string
Notes:
The RFC does not specify whether the Hash Name String is considered to be case-sensitive or not. According to RFC 8126, section 2.2., it should be clearly stated whether case matters, like in RFC 7518, section 7.1.1. Does this mean one should interpret them as case-insensitive?
Verifier notes:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6920#section-2
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2234#section-6.1
alg = 1*unreserved
unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~"
ALPHA = %x41-5A / %x61-7A ; A-Z / a-z
Its clear that algorithm name's can contain uppercase characters.
In the discussion regarding this errata, there was no objection to the following comment
> this should have been case sensitive and restricted to lower-case only in the ABNF (now it’s “unreserved”).
Such a change cannot be made through the errata process, and requires an update.
None the less the current registry contains no uppercase character based algorithm names, and hopefully won't in the future.