Re: [TLS] A small detail in HMAC key generation for Finished message

On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Christian Huitema <huitema@microsoft.com>
wrote:

> In the current 1.3 draft, section 6.3.4.3 specifies the content of the
> Finished message. It contains this specification for key computation:
>
> client_finished_key =
>     HKDF-Expand-Label(BaseKey, "client finished", "", L)
>
> server_finished_key =
>     HKDF-Expand-Label(BaseKey, "server finished", "", L)
>
> I wonder what the zero length string actually means. Is it a
> null-terminated string that would encode in binary as a one octet byte
> string of value 0, or an empty string that would encode in binary as a zero
> length string?
>

I see what you mean about the ambiguity here. What I meant was 0 bytes
(i.e., no trailing '\0').

There is one example of encoding a string in section 4.8.1, and the binary
> representation shows the encoding of the final null byte. Is that a common
> assumption?
>

No.

> Similarly, in the HKDF-Expand-Label, do we assume a final null byte for
> the "label"?
>

No. I wonder if we should instead add the '\0' explicitly in the 4.8.1 for
maximal clarity.
-Ekr

> -- Christian Huitema
>
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