[TLS] permitted client behaviour when rejecting renegotiation

[Martin Rex <[e-mail]>]

Considering the guidance in draft-ietf-tls-renegotiation-03.txt
and the specification of HelloRequest starting with rfc-2246 (TLSv1.0)
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2246#section-7.4.1.1

I'm a little confused about a sensible client behaviour.

TLSv1.0 and newer say this:

   Meaning of this message:
       Hello request is a simple notification that the client should
       begin the negotiation process anew by sending a client hello
       message when convenient. This message will be ignored by the
       client if the client is currently negotiating a session.
                                                                 This
       message may be ignored by the client if it does not wish to
       renegotiate a session, or the client may, if it wishes, respond
       with a no_renegotiation alert.

SSLv3 does not have that _general_ permission to ignore this handshake
message.

If a client wants to abort the handshake (for whatever reason) it
should IMHO send a fatal "handshake_failure" alert *WITHOUT* a
prior warning "no_renegotiation" alert.

My impression from my testing with openssl-0.9.8l was that it may have
a server-side problem with a client ignoring HelloRequest.


Question to implementors: what will your TLS servers do when a client
simply ignores HelloRequest--a behaviour that has been allowed by all
existing TLS specs for 10 years?


-Martin