Wow wasn't aware of that. Its funny to hear and agree with people proclaiming "p...

chasil · on July 6, 2022

I found out about that a few years ago.

If you run "openssl ecparam -list_curves" on a RHEL clone, you will only see p-256, p-384, and e-521 (and e-521 was only added in v7).

If you build libressl and run the same command, there are dozens (and Canada doesn't allow software patents, so it's legal there).

On OpenBSD 7.1, I see this result:

  $ openssl ecparam -list_curves | wc -l
  102

Note the 2 Oakley curves take up 8 lines. There are also 17 matches in this output for NIST curves.

tzs · on July 6, 2022

Canada seems to allow software patents [1]. Amazon got a Canadian patent for their one-click stuff, as mentioned in that Wikipedia article.

Here's a Canadian patent on accelerated finite field operations on an elliptic curve [2]. Here's one on public key cryptography using elliptic curves [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_Canadia...

[2] https://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic-cipo/cpd/eng/patent/23...

[3] https://patents.google.com/patent/CA2129203A1/en

zimmerfrei · on July 6, 2022

Probably more related to RHEL compiling openssl in FIPS mode.

chasil · on July 6, 2022

No, Red Hat has confirmed that they are leery of patents.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=319901#c2

Tomas Mraz 2007-10-05 10:23:00 UTC: "They are intentionally removed due to possible patent issues."

Bill McGonigle 2013-04-11 06:26:53 UTC: "I've read that Sun's ECC code (that went to OpenSSL) was developed to specifically avoid Certicom patents, but I've only seen that asserted, not proven."

Jan-Frode Myklebust 2013-10-07 09:18:49 UTC: "Is this now solved in the RHEL6.5 beta... only the nistp256 and nistp384 curves are supported."