Re: [TLS] Proposed text for removing renegotiation

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, 2014-06-09 at 11:17 -0700, Martin Thomson wrote:
> On 9 June 2014 00:34, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > Could somebody elaborate on what is that issue and why does it need to
> > be solved? (it is not even mentioned in the TLS 1.3 charter) As someone
> > who follows the mailing list that proposal comes out of the blue with no
> > context whatsoever.
> 
> 
> I think that this has been covered in the thread, but piecemeal:

Not in my opinion. The arguments being presented are very vague, as the
ones you quote below.

> * Renegotiation is a major source of security issues, both of the "we
> screwed the TLS design up" sort and of the "my application didn't
> realize that these things could change" sort.  There is a clear desire
> to remove features that enable either sort of problem.

Could you please cite these security issues. In the 17 years of the
protocol I have only seen one.

> * Renegotiation is just more protocol complexity.  Removing it
> potentially makes implementations simpler.

Where do you base this conclusion? Have you implemented it and you found
it complex, or have you tried to model it in some formal model and was
impossible? Renegotiation, is one of the most simple parts of the
protocol (Martin Rex argued for that in a previous e-mail and I concur).
Your proposal to solve this "complexity" is more complex than the
current solution.

> I think that either might be sufficient justification for removing the feature.

Not to me. I believe that unless hard evidence of the problems are
presented, this call for action here is unwarranted.

regards,
Nikos