Re: [quicwg/base-drafts] HOL blocking on Finished (#446)

[Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>]

This assertion that record layer authentication is equivalent to the Finished message is one that caused cryptographers considerable heartburn.  They were unwilling to commit to that being sufficient for key confirmation for a range of reasons.

Your point about client authentication is not so clear-cut.  It is arguably possible to have two boolean status values at the server: "is the connection up" and "is the client authenticated", which can lead to a situation where the server can provide *some* responses even if the client isn't authenticated.  Think about those cases where we have post-handshake authentication.  There are some things on the server that aren't universally accessible to unauthenticated clients, but maybe not everything.

In the general case though, you are right.  Generally, guidance is that a server that has requested that the client authenticate wait until it knows for sure.  But we have a lot of servers that request authentication for clients but don't close the connection if the client refuses.  That suggests that the above model - while more complex - is at least valid.

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