Re: [Model-t] draft-thomson-tmi

[Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, at 18:55, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> I think that this really depends on who you are and how you see the 
> world. There are people who are more afraid of the endpoints, given how 
> hard it has become to be able to know and choose who you (the 
> applications and devices you use) communicate with - so these people 
> would like to become intermediaries, or install intermediaries, to 
> regain control of their communications. 

I did not claim that this was addressing all of the problem.  I agree that not being able to trust endpoints that you bought and are responsible for maintaining is a real problem.  I disagree with the idea that more intermediation is any sort of solution.


On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, at 05:30, Russ Housley wrote:
> #2 has pros and cons.  When one connects to a new public wi-fi, some 
> proxies are often offered to reduce latency.  the choice may be to 
> accept these proxies in order to use the service at all.  So, "control" 
> is an interesting choice of words.  However, it would be really useful 
> to always identify the proxies that are involved. 

The scenario you posit is a common one.  Many employers offer a similar choice: allow me to intermediate your web traffic or find another job.  It's not much of a choice, but not strictly a protocol design choice.  The protocol design decision here is whether to design a protocol to include this intermediation or whether to find another way to accomplish the desired goals.

#2 comes in if you decide to design a protocol that involves this proxy. For instance, you might consider using TLMSP [1] over TLS.  And yeah, "control" was a deliberate choice, but it has interesting implications.

[1] https://docbox.etsi.org/CYBER/CYBER/Open/Latest_Drafts/CYBER-0027-2v020-TLMSP-Transport-Layer-Middlebox-Security-Protocol.pdf