Re: [TLS] TLS 1.3 - Support for compression to be removed

[Tony Arcieri <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 8:32 PM, Colm MacCárthaigh <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> it doesn't seem too hard. My 2c: even if this were not the case,
> optimizing NNTP in a backwards compatible way does seem like a more
> important goal than making transport security as secure as possible by
> default.
>

I don't think I could be more opposed to this position. The most important
transport encryption protocol on the Internet should not have sharp edges
simply to cater to the errata of Usenet.

Nobody is forcing NNTP users to use TLS 1.3. I'm not sure the new features
of TLS 1.3 even make sense for NNTP use cases. NNTP can add its own
compression. Or worst case, if there's some existential threat to TLS <
1.3, NNTP can switch and not have compression until they can implement
their own compression feature.

If compression is so important to NNTP, they should add first-class
support. Period. They should not be relying on a poorly conceived feature
which has been repeatedly demonstrated to introduce vulnerabilities in what
is supposed to be a *security protocol* just because they don't want to
implement compression themselves.

-- 
Tony Arcieri