Re: [dispatch] [RAI] MSRP Expert Review of draft-pd-dispatch-msrp-websocket-04

Ben Campbell <ben@nostrum.com> Sat, 11 January 2014 21:54 UTC

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To: draft-pd-dispatch-msrp-websocket.all@tools.ietf.org, Mary Barnes <mary.ietf.barnes@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [dispatch] [RAI] MSRP Expert Review of draft-pd-dispatch-msrp-websocket-04
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On Jan 10, 2014, at 5:34 PM, Ben Campbell <ben@nostrum.com> wrote:

> --3
> 
> I am not happy with the downgrade of of the TLS requirement between client and relay. I recognize that WebSocket

Robert pointed out to me that my comments on this section were truncated. Apparently I'm not qualified for this email gizmo. Here's another try:

I recognize that the WebSocket API limits the application's ability to control the security parameters of the connection. I think this is a general issue for moving application protocols to use WebSocket, that perhaps needs to be addressed in the WebSocket API.  We probably need an whole IETF (or at least RAI+APPS) policy for how to handle this. But MSRP is somewhat unusual in having a "MUST use" TLS requirement, and in the current security climate we need to take a really hard look at anything that weakens the normative security requirements of a messaging protocol.

I don't have an answer for how to proceed, but at a minimum I would like to see considerably more discussion of the implications and any potential mitigation of this in the Security Considerations sections.