Re: [TLS] Length of a variable-length vector: Could it be an odd multiple?

Benjamin Kaduk <bkaduk@akamai.com> Wed, 13 January 2016 20:53 UTC

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To: Jong-Shian Wu <js@crypto.tw>, tls@ietf.org
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From: Benjamin Kaduk <bkaduk@akamai.com>
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Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 14:53:26 -0600
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Subject: Re: [TLS] Length of a variable-length vector: Could it be an odd multiple?
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On 01/13/2016 02:44 PM, Jong-Shian Wu wrote:
> I have a question about the even-vs-odd restrictions on the length of
> a valid variable-length vector defined in TLS specification after
> reading the section 4.3 of RFC 5246 [1] which states that: "The length
> of an encoded vector must be an even multiple of the length of a
> single element (for example, a 17-byte vector of uint16 would be
> illegal)."
>

It means "whole-number" as opposed to fractional, i.e., there should not
be unused "junk bytes" at the end.

-Ben