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

[Bill Frantz <[e-mail]>]

On 9/22/15 at 11:21 AM, [e-mail] (Tony Arcieri) wrote:

>On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Julien ÉLIE <[e-mail]>
>wrote:
>
>>What for protocols that aren't subject to unsafe usage and that were
>>relying on the compression facility provided by TLS?
>>Unconditionally removing TLS compression leads to a regression for them.
>>
>
>They can continue using older versions of TLS, or add their own compression
>feature. They shouldn't be relying on an encryption protocol to provide
>compression.

IMHO, compression adds too many security vulnerabilities to a 
general purpose secure communication protocol. I think TLS 1.3 
is right in eliminating it. It is too big a foot gun.

I do have a lot of sympathy with those who have been using 
compression in previous versions of TLS. Probably the best 
solution for them is to have a TLS like library which only does 
compression. It could be largely API compatible so switching 
between TLS and compression is a relatively easy programming 
job. I'll let the TLS implementers say just how hard such a 
library would be to produce.

Cheers - Bill

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