Re: [TLS] draft-rescorla-tls-renegotiate.txt

Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@sun.com> Sat, 07 November 2009 00:10 UTC

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Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:59:38 -0600
From: Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@sun.com>
To: Martin Rex <mrex@sap.com>
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Cc: Nasko Oskov <noskov@microsoft.com>, tls@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [TLS] draft-rescorla-tls-renegotiate.txt
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On Sat, Nov 07, 2009 at 12:53:46AM +0100, Martin Rex wrote:
> Nicolas Williams wrote:
> > Stop using SSLv3.  Its end has arrived.
> 
> I was actually looking for an answer from engineering,
> not for one from sales.  :-|

:/

Right, the real choice is: stop using re-negotiation without the fix
and/or stop using TLS without the fix (which means stop using SSLv3).

The first choice leaves clients without the fix vulnerable when they
talk to servers that don't have the fix and do accept re-negotiation.
That's pretty bad (surely many servers won't get the short-term fix).

The second choice renders a large portion of the installed base
non-interoperable.  That's... much worse.

I don't know how addicted we are to re-negotiation and SSLv3, so I can't
tell you which choice should win in the short-term, but then, I think
turning off re-negotiation may well prove easier than we may have
thought (see my reply to Marsh just now).  In the longer term though, we
should deploy the fix and SSLv3 clients should go away.

Nico
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