Re: [TLS] TLS process thread

On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 8:31 PM, Peter Gutmann
<pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> Sean Turner <TurnerS@ieca.com> writes:
>
>>In this case, however, our charter provides a clear starting point, namely
>>RFC 5246, and a mandate to minimize the changes to that document.
>
> If the charter really does require that then it sounds like it's high time to
> update the charter...

In particular, we need to make significant changes to the handshake to
address insecure resumption, use a completely different record layer
because of Lucky13 (might as well make it AEAD, as Chacha20+Poly1305
and AES-GCM do that, and whatever fixed up AES+hash people want to use
can be shoehorned in), renegotiation is probably going to die as no
one needs it. (HTTP can use another header number to signal that you
need a certificate, a reconnection is not the worse thing in the
world, no one understands what renegotiation is supposed to do, and
client certificate sensitivity can be fixed by not putting real names
in them)

That's going to be a pretty big change from RFC 5246. Trying to keep
the textual changes minimal probably a lost cause at this point, and
will hurt, rather than help clarity. This is before we try to reduce
round-trips, eliminate unused ciphersuites, introduce the Edwards
curves (necessary for security because people do not write perfect
code, even when they should), and ensure that what we write matches
what we prove (because as I'm sure you know from my opposition to
Dragonfly, I do not support mechanisms that are not shown to be secure
from well picked assumptions)

We can't not make the first changes, and it seems like the second half
of the changes are going to happen anyway. Unless you want another
block of MTI extensions that obviate vast swaths of the RFC, the
entire protocol needs to be edited and presented as a whole. I don't
see a way to do that and adhere to "minimize changes".

Sincerely,
Watson Ladd

>
> Peter.
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