Re: [TLS] interop for TLS clients proposing TLSv1.1

[Geoffrey Keating <[e-mail]>]

Martin Rex <[e-mail]> writes:

> Does anyone (SSL Labs, Opera, others) have any figures/stats about the
> current "TLSv1.1 version (in)tolerance" for TLS servers on the public
> internet?

I find that about 1.4% of servers will refuse to connect using a TLS 1.2
hello but will connect using a TLS 1.0 hello.  Some of those might be
unhappy about something else in the TLS 1.2 hello (extensions, for
example).  The other 99% accept a TLS 1.2 hello, even though only a small
fraction (about 0.15%) actually supports TLS 1.1 or 1.2.

> The TCP RST in the above situation, as described in Stevens' Network
> Programming, Section 7.5, Socket Option SO_LINGER, only indicates the
> specific SO_LINGER setting that the server had used for his side
> of the connection / his socket (Fig. 7.10  close() l_onoff=1, l_linger=0)
> 
> The SO_LINGER setting for a socket is entirely at the discretion of each peer
> and closing the socket immediately after sending a fatal alert is exactly
> what the TLS spec suggests:
> 
>    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2246#section-7.2.2
> 
>    7.2.2. Error alerts
> 
>    Error handling in the TLS Handshake protocol is very simple. When an
>    error is detected, the detecting party sends a message to the other
>    party. Upon transmission or receipt of an fatal alert message, both
>    parties immediately close the connection. 
> 
>           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!

RFC 793 says, in section 3.5, that a connection is closed by sending a
FIN.  A RST is not a close of the connection but an abort; as RFC 793
says, "Such a message indicates to the site B TCP that something is
wrong, and it is expected to abort the connection."

However, the question of how to close the connection is secondary,
because it should not have been closed in the first place; as the blog
entry says, "The server isn't supposed to behave this way---it's
instead expected to simply reply using the latest HTTPS protocol
version it supports".  You can't really expect software that's broken
in one way to work perfectly in all other ways...