Re: [TLS] TLS grammar checker?

Peter Gutmann <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz> Mon, 17 June 2013 06:09 UTC

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From: Peter Gutmann <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>
To: Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org>, "tls@ietf.org" <tls@ietf.org>
Thread-Topic: [TLS] TLS grammar checker?
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Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:09:04 +0000
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Subject: Re: [TLS] TLS grammar checker?
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Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org> writes:

>Greetings again. The recent errata shows that some of the TLS documents that
>use the grammar invented for SSL can have some errors. People have developed
>tools for checking ABNF grammar in Internet Drafts and RFCs; has anyone
>developed an SSL grammar checker?

The SSL grammar isn't, AFAIK, any kind of machine-parseable formal grammar, in
published automated analyses the authors had to re-state what was going on in
their own notation in order to make it amenable to automated analysis, and
even then could usually only do a subset of the protocol.  So you'd need to
come up with your own grammar that's amenable to automated processing and re-
specific TLS in that.  I can't really see that happening any time soon.

(Having said that, I'd like to see it done.  The grammar used in the SSL/TLS
RFCs is pretty confusing in places).

Peter.