| Internet-Draft | Hybrid ECDHE-MLKEM Update | February 2026 |
| Usama Sardar | Expires 29 August 2026 | [Page] |
This is a quick update of to-be RFC [I-D.ietf-tls-ecdhe-mlkem] for recommending the three hybrid key agreement mechanisms in TLS 1.3.¶
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.¶
The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://muhammad-usama-sardar.github.io/tls-ecdhe-mlkem-update/draft-usama-tls-ecdhe-mlkem-update.html. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-usama-tls-ecdhe-mlkem-update/.¶
Discussion of this document takes place on the Transport Layer Security Working Group mailing list (mailto:tls@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/tls/. Subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls/.¶
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/muhammad-usama-sardar/tls-ecdhe-mlkem-update.¶
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Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶
The readers are assumed to be familiar with [I-D.ietf-tls-ecdhe-mlkem] and [RFC9847].¶
Given the risk of "hardvest-now, decrypt-later" attacks [I-D.ietf-pquip-pqc-engineers], we believe that the hybrid key agreement mechanisms need to be recommended.¶
Section 3 of [RFC9847] defines the meaning of "Y" in "Recommended" column as follows:¶
Y: Indicates that the IETF has consensus that the item is RECOMMENDED. This only means that the associated mechanism is fit for the purpose for which it was defined. Careful reading of the documentation for the mechanism is necessary to understand the applicability of that mechanism. The IETF could recommend mechanisms that have limited applicability but will provide applicability statements that describe any limitations of the mechanism or necessary constraints on its use.¶
This draft aims to build the mentioned consensus.¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
The security considerations of [I-D.ietf-tls-ecdhe-mlkem] apply.¶
This document requests the following updates to three entries in the TLS Supported Groups registry, according to the procedures in Section 6 of [RFC9847].¶
Y¶
Y¶
Y¶
| Value | Description | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| 4587 | SecP256r1MLKEM768 | Y |
| 4588 | X25519MLKEM768 | Y |
| 4589 | SecP384r1MLKEM1024 | Y |
We thank the authors and contributors of [I-D.ietf-tls-ecdhe-mlkem] for their work. We thank Eric Rescorla for this proposal. We also thank Bas Westerbaan for the initial idea.¶