Re: [TLS] Obsolete SCSV!? (was Re: AD review of draft-ietf-tls-oldversions-deprecate-06)

Please go ahead. I remembered a discussion (outside of the ietf) where
not everybody agreed
with it but reluctantly implemented it.

On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 9:44 PM Sean Turner <sean@sn3rd.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Sep 23, 2020, at 08:43, Sean Turner <sean@sn3rd.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi! this issue was buried in the Ben’s review, but I think it is worth getting some attention on.
> >
> >> On Aug 13, 2020, at 13:54, Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@mit.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 04:29:56PM -0400, Kathleen Moriarty wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 5:22 PM Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@mit.edu> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> - Similarly, the downgrade protection provided by the SCSV of RFC 7507
> >>>> seems to be entirely obsolete.  Any implementation that is compliant
> >>>> with this document will support only 1.2 or higher.  If it only
> >>>> supports one version, no downgrade is possible; if it also supports
> >>>> 1.3 or newer, the new downgrade-detection mechanism defined by TLS 1.3
> >>>> applies, so the SCSV mechanism is entirely redundant (i.e., obsolete).
> >>>> We could effectuate that status change in this document as well.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Has this been addressed in RFC8446?  If not, the specific downgrade
> >>> examples are just listed as examples.  If a gap is left, then the full
> >>> document should not be deprecated and made obsolete.  The text infers other
> >>> versions in my read.  I have not looked to see if this was addressed in
> >>> RFC8446 yet though.
> >>
> >> I'd really like to get a few more people to weigh in on this one -- IIRC
> >> David Benjamin and Martin Thomson had mentioned some thoughts in the chat
> >> during the session at 108, and Ekr as author of 8446 would be expected to
> >> have a good sense of what it does.
> >>
> >> The specific RFC 8446 mechanism here is described at
> >> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8446#section-4.1.3 : "TLS 1.3 has a
> >> downgrade protection mechanism embedded in the server's random value.
> >> [...]"
> >>
> >> While the RFC 8446 mechanism has the client do the actual detection of
> >> downgrade, there's a MUST-level requirement on clients to make the check,
> >> so from a specification point of view the check can be treated as reliable.
> >> The RFC 7507 mechanism has the server do the detection, but I think the end
> >> result is still the same: in an "downgraded" exchange between two honest
> >> participants, the handshake fails and the downgrade is detected.
> >>
> >> Since the functionality is still useful, just superseded, this one seems
> >> like a better fit for "obsoletes" (vs. "historic).
> >>
> >
> > Right now, we have a list of RFCs draft-ietf-tls-oldversions-deprecate will update. RFC 7507 "TLS Fallback Signaling Cipher Suite Value (SCSV) for Preventing Protocol Downgrade Attacks" (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc7507/) is in this list. If you agree with Ben’s logic then we would be move 7507 out of the list of “updates” and adding an obsoletes header, i.e., “Obsoletes: 7507 (if approved)”, and moving 7507 down in s1.1 to the obsoletes paragraph. While this might seem like a minor point, this is the kind of the IESG loves to sink its teeth into so have a WG opinion on this matter can make overcoming later hurdles easier for the AD and doc shepherd.
> >
> > Thanks for the your time,
> >
> > spt (doc shepherd)
>
> All I have gone ahead and submitted a PR to address the point raised by Ben:
> https://github.com/tlswg/oldversions-deprecate/pull/4
>
> spt
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