Re: [TLS] Comments/Questions on draft-gutmann-tls-encrypt-then-mac-00.txt

[Bodo Moeller <[e-mail]>]

> A possible problem with this approach is that there are both broken
> servers and broken networks and I don't have good information about
> the latter. (It's obviously much more difficult to detect.)
>
> Broken networks can stop the transit of TLS based on version and that
> has been observed, very rarely, in the wild. However, just because we
> haven't observed it much doesn't mean that it's not happening, it just
> means that we rarely get to observe it.


I know -- and the boundaries between "broken network" and "attacker" may
not always be clear: if the broken network effectively *is* an attacker
(even unintentionally so) and weakens the cryptography of the connection,
it may make a lot of sense to avoid that network entirely.