Re: [hybi] A bit of pragmatism

[Bruce Atherton <[e-mail]>]

Thanks for the correction, but I still don't understand.

If you are suggesting your mask for the wss: scheme in order to provide 
for a stream of apparent random bits on the wire, then that makes 
perfect sense. But for the purposely less-secure unencrypted ws: scheme 
I don't understand why it would be necessary.

On 08/01/2011 4:00 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Bruce Atherton<[e-mail]>  wrote:
>> On 07/01/2011 1:19 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
>>> My objective is to make the bits that appear on the wire indistinguishable
>>> from random
>>> from the attacker's perspective. I think it's clear that this is the
>>> strongest form of masking
>>> available, and the method I proposed does that.
>> It is true that your goal is clear, but I don't understand why you think
>> this goal is necessary.
>>
>> The specification already allows for two forms of Websocket, a simple one
>> denoted by the scheme "ws:" and a secure one denoted with "wss:". The latter
>> one will have the random byte stream characteristics you are interested in.
>> If you are uncomfortable with any other kind of stream, make sure your
>> client only supports secure Websockets.
> Regrettably, this is not the case except for certain specific ciphers
> (in particular
> block cipher in CBC mode.) It's not at all the case for RC4 and only
> the case for
> some CTR mode implementations.
>
> Best,
> -Ekr