[MLS] Encoding padding as variable-size vector

["Alwen, Joel" <[e-mail]>]

In the MLSCiphertextContent struct we have a field for padding represented using a variable-size vector which helps hide information about the length of content; notably application messages. But because of the way we encode variable-size vectors it turns out you can't actually pad the rest of the content with certain number of bytes: namely 0, 65, 16386, 16387. (E.g. if you pad with a vector of 63 bytes the TLS encoding actually produces 64 bytes for padding: 63 bytes + 1 length byte. But if you pad with 64 bytes you end up with a 66 byte encoding as now you need 2 bytes for the length.

Not being able to pad with 0 is OK. But 65 is kind of annoying. E.g. if you want to pad to a target content length X bytes then if the rest of the content ends up being X-65 bytes long you are out of luck. (Assuming I'm right about how this all works) it seems a bit silly to me for a padding scheme to have somewhat arbitrary gaps like that; especially at a not unreasonable number of bytes to want to pad with.

If I didn't miss something, and you all agree that its better to avoid having gaps like that then how about represent padding as, say, a fixed length vector's?

- Joël


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