Re: [ietf-smtp] TLS1.3

[Viktor Dukhovni <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 06:02:13PM -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:

> > It emits a fatal "unexpected message" alert.  Turn off the
> > client-cert request, and it works fine.
> >
> > Name withheld to protect the guilty.
> 
> I wouldn't necessarily blame the operator. It's almost a sure bet that  
> they're using OpenSSL, and this developer's opinion is that OpenSSL is one  
> of the worst, most confusing, and the most poorly documented API libraries  
> in existence.

I are of course free to vent, but on this particular issue the
frustration is misdirected.  The OpenSSL TLS client silently ignores
solications for client certificates when none are configured at the
client.  It is up to the server to then accept or deny the handshake.
[ Rare applications that want to select certificates dynamically can
register for a callback, but then the decisions are theirs to make. ]

> Things  
> have reached the stage where it's been determined that the OpenSSL library  
> is reporting an error code that its own documentation describes thusly:
> 
>       SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL
>           Some non-recoverable, fatal I/O error occurred. The OpenSSL error
>           queue may contain more information on the error. For socket I/O on
>           Unix systems, consult errno for details.
>
> And, immediately after that, the code in question does "consult errno", and  
> finds that it's zero. No error has occured, according to the operating  
> system.

This is likely TLS session termination without a TLS close notify, i.e.
potentially vulnerable to truncation attacks.  An empty read on EOF does
not set errno.  In OpenSSL 1.1.1e there was a fix for that, to make it
an SSL_ERROR_SSL, but that turned to have too many backwards compatibility
issues, so it got rolled back in 1.1.1f.

-- 
    Viktor.