Re: [TLS] Server-side missing_extension MUSTs

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

Reinforcing what David says here:
It's natural to pick the cipher suite first and then look for the key_share
extension, so if, for instance, you pick a PSK-only cipher suite, then you
wouldn't look for the key_share.

Obviously, you could add a check that said that if an EC cipher suite was
advertised, then you had to look for key shares even if you picked one, but
it's not a check you otherwise need.

-Ekr




On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 8:58 AM, David Benjamin <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 11:06 AM Hubert Kario <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday 13 July 2016 14:43:58 David Benjamin wrote:
>> > To be clear, I am not at all opposed to useful errors or strict
>> policing of
>> > what the peer sends. That's all great. Indeed the linked test below
>> makes
>> > use of more specific error codes than TLS provides. But I would like
>> such
>> > things to:
>> >
>> > 1. Be useful, either for debugging or because it rejects an invalid
>> > handshake that would otherwise go unnoticed.
>> > 2. Come out naturally out of what the implementation would do anyway, to
>> > keep complexity down.
>> >
>> > I'm also quite okay with budging on #2 where #1 is strong. Complexity is
>> > the currency we pay for adding things. But I do not think this
>> particular
>> > error code passes #1 (the special-case is not useful and such a peer
>> would
>> > not be able to handshake against correct implementations anyway), so I'm
>> > not willing to sacrifice #2 for it.
>>
>> Then I fail to see how missing_extension does not flow out of correct
>> implementation (and from general RFC recommendations).
>>
>> You need to parse the Client Hello, and then sanity check it (length of
>> session ID, validity of ciphers, lack of duplicate extensions, etc.).
>> Making sure that mandatory extensions are in place in the same code
>> seems to me like a obvious place to do it.
>>
>
> The extension is not mandatory. Whether it is mandatory or not depends on
> the cipher suite selected. The cipher suite selected depends on the
> contents (or lack of) the extension. This makes checking things somewhat
> circular.
>
> If it were simply mandatory, by all means, mandate a missing_extension
> alert. I still do not think it'd be very useful (I'm more interested in
> non-syntax-error cases), but I have no objections.
>
>
>> In other words, you shouldn't delay checking if a particular extension
>> is present until the time you want to use it. If there is any chance
>> (or possible configuration) in which you would end up using it, you
>> should complain that the extension is missing or it is malformed.
>>
>> This way when you start to depend on it, things won't start breaking
>> suddenly and you end up writing Yet Another Workaround for Broken
>> Implementations™
>>
>
> I still do not see how returning handshake_failure (or whatever the "no
> common cipher" error is) for this case instead of missing_extension will
> cause broken implementations to come up.
>
> David
>
>
>> > On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 10:02 AM David Benjamin <[e-mail]>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 3:31 AM Dave Garrett <[e-mail]>
>> > > wrote:
>> > >
>> > >> To be clear though, completely mandatory extensions, at least as
>> we're
>> > >> doing them here, are a new thing. TLS 1.2 relied on separate
>> messages for
>> > >> stuff, but we're front-loading everything into the ClientHello to get
>> > >> reliable 1RTT (with the exception of HRR).
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 8:12 AM Hubert Kario <[e-mail]>
>> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >> On Wednesday 13 July 2016 05:23:53 David Benjamin wrote:
>> > >> > I don't believe an implementation which fails to send
>> supported_groups,
>> > >> > etc., in 1.3 would ever leave a developer's workstation. It would
>> not
>> > >> > interoperate with anything.
>> > >>
>> > >> it would interoperate with itself, and for some deployments that's
>> enough
>> > >> of a passing grade... (Even if you do interoperatbility testing you
>> > >> do not check all possible permutations of features and settings)
>> > >>
>> > >> I wholeheartedly agree with Dave here, error definitions should be
>> strict
>> > >> (both on the when and what to do). One, because it allows to better
>> > >> diagnose (in general, maybe not in this specific situation) problems.
>> > >> Two, because you can write a strict negative test case that actually
>> > >> checks for it.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/+/1c256544dda26e4042c1af082580a1b87c9a690f/ssl/test/runner/runner.go#5646
>> > > Also something I have plenty of experience with. We're obsessive about
>> > > adding this kind of test in BoringSSL[0]. :-)
>> > >
>> > > One doesn't need this alert to write a test for curve negotiation.
>> Just
>> > > test that the handshake hits the usual codepath for there not being a
>> > > common cipher.
>> > >
>> > > This semi-mandatory extension isn't new in TLS 1.3, depending on your
>> 1.2
>> > > behavior. BoringSSL will already refuse to select an ECDHE cipher if
>> > > supported_curves is missing. 1.2 does not require this, but we opted
>> to do
>> > > it for simplicity[1].
>> > >
>> > > David
>> > >
>> > > [0] If anyone wants to try, I'm sure there is an
>> implementation-agnostic
>> > > TLS protocol test suite one could extract out of that. It would take
>> some
>> > > wrangling as we cheat and condition on BoringSSL error codes, but the
>> nice
>> > > thing is I've already built up a large battery of tests here.
>> > >
>> > > [1] Previously we always picking our most preferred curve if the
>> extension
>> > > was missing, like OpenSSL. But now our most preferred curve is
>> X25519, not
>> > > P-256. It did not seem worth kludging that when we could just decline
>> the
>> > > cipher. No one's noticed, so I would say that worked.
>> > >
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Hubert Kario
>> Senior Quality Engineer, QE BaseOS Security team
>> Web: www.cz.redhat.com
>> Red Hat Czech s.r.o., Purkyňova 99/71, 612 45, Brno, Czech Republic
>
>
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