Re: [TLS] I-D Action: draft-ietf-tls-prohibiting-rc4-01.txt

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hi Viktor,

(No hats and without taking a position on the draft itself yet...)

On 04/10/14 04:35, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
> Well, I for one am not.   Disabling RC4 does more harm than good
> with opportunistic TLS.

Not sure I agree with that specific point. Disabling RC4 could be
a configuration or code change, depending.

If a code change is needed to disable RC4 then its going to be fine
to use a better alg. I don't see there's a real case where there's
no better alg to code up than RC4.

If disabling RC4 is a config change, then in almost all cases the
result should be a better alg being selected. There could I guess
be cases where there's nothing better to configure, but frankly, I
doubt that that's really a significant set of TLS installations.
(Note that's not to say that those currently using RC4 are not
significant - I'd say a lot of those could in principle change but
just haven't yet.)

And if anyone is going to disable RC4 and as a result end up with
cleartext, then we should just get them a new foot-gun:-)

So I don't think that the opportunistic security design really helps
to decide SHOULD NOT vs MUST NOT for this draft.

S.