Re: [TLS] Enforcing Protocol Invariants

[Daniel Migault <[e-mail]>]

I also support something is being done in this direction. I like the idea
of taking ephemeral non allocated code points.

What is not so clear to me is how GREASE prevents a buggy implementations
from behaving correctly for GREASE allocated code points, while remaining
buggy for the other (unallocated). code points.
Yours,
Daniel

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Alessandro Ghedini <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 12, 2018 at 12:27:39PM -0400, David Benjamin wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Now that TLS 1.3 is about done, perhaps it is time to reflect on the
> > ossification problems.
> >
> > TLS is an extensible protocol. TLS 1.3 is backwards-compatible and may be
> > incrementally rolled out in an existing compliant TLS 1.2 deployment. Yet
> > we had problems. Widespread non-compliant servers broke on the TLS 1.3
> > ClientHello, so versioning moved to supported_versions. Widespread
> > non-compliant middleboxes attempted to parse someone else’s ServerHellos,
> > so the protocol was further hacked to weave through their many defects.
> >
> > I think I can speak for the working group that we do not want to repeat
> > this adventure again. In general, I think the response to ossification is
> > two-fold:
> >
> > 1. It’s already happened, so how do we progress today?
> > 2. How do we avoid more of this tomorrow?
> >
> > The workarounds only answer the first question. For the second, TLS 1.3
> has
> > a section which spells out a few protocol invariants
> > <https://tlswg.github.io/tls13-spec/draft-ietf-tls-
> tls13.html#rfc.section.9..3>.
> > It is all corollaries of existing TLS specification text, but hopefully
> > documenting it explicitly will help. But experience has shown
> specification
> > text is only necessary, not sufficient.
> >
> > For extensibility problems in servers, we have GREASE
> > <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-grease-01>. This enforces
> the
> > key rule in ClientHello processing: ignore unrecognized parameters.
> GREASE
> > enforces this by filling the ecosystem with them. TLS 1.3’s middlebox
> woes
> > were different. The key rule is: if you did not produce a ClientHello,
> you
> > cannot assume that you can parse the response. Analogously, we should
> fill
> > the ecosystem with such responses. We have an idea, but it is more
> involved
> > than GREASE, so we are very interested in the TLS community’s feedback.
> >
> > In short, we plan to regularly mint new TLS versions (and likely other
> > sensitive parameters such as extensions), roughly every six weeks
> matching
> > Chrome’s release cycle. Chrome, Google servers, and any other deployment
> > that wishes to participate, would support two (or more) versions of TLS
> > 1.3: the standard stable 0x0304, and a rolling alternate version. Every
> six
> > weeks, we would randomly pick a new code point. These versions will
> > otherwise be identical to TLS 1.3, save maybe minor details to separate
> > keys and exercise allowed syntax changes. The goal is to pave the way for
> > future versions of TLS by simulating them (“draft negative one”).
> >
> > Of course, this scheme has some risk. It grabs code points everywhere.
> Code
> > points are plentiful, but we do sometimes have collisions (e.g. 26 and
> 40).
> > The entire point is to serve and maintain TLS’s extensibility, so we
> > certainly do not wish to hamper it! Thus we have some safeguards in mind:
> >
> > * We will document every code point we use and what it refers to. (If the
> > volume is fine, we can email them to the list each time.) New allocations
> > can always avoid the lost numbers. At a rate of one every 6 weeks, it
> will
> > take over 7,000 years to exhaust everything.
> >
> > * We will avoid picking numbers that the IETF is likely to allocate, to
> > reduce the chance of collision. Rolling versions will not start with
> 0x03,
> > rolling cipher suites or extensions will not be contiguous with existing
> > blocks, etc.
> >
> > * BoringSSL will not enable this by default. We will only enable it where
> > we can shut it back off. On our servers, we of course regularly deploy
> > changes. Chrome is also regularly updated and, moreover, we will gate it
> on
> > our server-controlled field trials
> > <https://textslashplain.com/2017/10/18/chrome-field-trials/> mechanism.
> We
> > hope that, in practice, only the last several code points will be in use
> at
> > a time.
> >
> > * Our clients would only support the most recent set of rolling
> parameters,
> > and our servers the last handful. As each value will be short-lived, the
> > ecosystem is unlikely to rely on them as de facto standards. Conversely,
> > like other extensions, implementations without them will still
> interoperate
> > fine. We would never offer a rolling parameter without the corresponding
> > stable one.
> >
> > * If this ultimately does not work, we can stop at any time and only have
> > wasted a small portion of code points.
> >
> > * Finally, if the working group is open to it, these values could be
> > summarized in regular documents to reserve them, so that they are
> > ultimately reflected in the registries. A new document every six weeks is
> > probably impractical, but we can batch them up.
> >
> > We are interested in the community’s feedback on this proposal—anyone who
> > might participate, better safeguards, or thoughts on the mechanism as a
> > whole. We hope it will help the working group evolve its protocols more
> > smoothly in the future.
>
> This looks interesting and I very much agree that we should do *somthing*
> to
> try to avoid the pain we've seen with deploying TLS 1.3 for future
> versions.
>
> We (Cloudflare) would be happy to help with developing and deploying it,
> and
> see how the experiment goes (and maybe even help put a draft together if
> needed,
> if that is the form this proposal will take).
>
> Cheers
>
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