Re: [TLS] datacenter TLS decryption as a three-party protocol

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

Sorry, the more I think about how to do this in a way that doesn't make
things worse, the less faith I have that it is possible.   But if you know
of a way to do it, I certainly don't oppose you doing it.   I'm not an
expert: the fact that I don't see how to do it doesn't mean it can't be
done.

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 7:45 PM, Colm MacCárthaigh <[e-mail]>
wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> The problem is that the actual solution to this problem is to accept that
>> you aren't going to be able to decrypt the streams, and then figure out
>> what to do instead.   Which is work the proponents of not doing that are
>> not interested in doing, understandably, and which is also not the work of
>> this working group.
>>
>> I'm skeptical that there is a way for this working group to solve the
>> proposed problem, but if there is, it involves figuring out a way to do
>> this that doesn't make it easy to MiTM *my* connections, or, say, those
>> of activists in dangerous places.
>>
>
> I find this a very bizarre outcome that works against our collective
> goals. If there is no mechanism at all, then it is quite likely that
> organizations will use static-DH or stay on TLS1.2. Those are bad options,
> in my opinion, because there's no signaling or opt-in to the client. We can
> do much better than that.  Client opt-ins are far from academic. For
> example, browser's incognito modes may refuse to support such sessions, if
> they knew what was going on.
>
> It's also bad if organizations end up deploying static-DH and that means
> we can't do things like checking for changing DH parameters.
>
> It seems like we would be rejecting a good opportunity to make what the
> network operators want work in a better and more secure way, while making
> it harder for passive observers and coercive authorities, to use the same
> mechanism for other purposes. What do we gain? beyond a hollow moral
> victory.
>
> --
> Colm
>