Re: [TLS] Antw: Re: Antw: Re: Suspicious behaviour of TLS server implementations

["Christian Huitema" <[e-mail]>]

On Friday, September 23, 2016 1:39 AM, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> Andreas Walz <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>>However, where would you draw the line between "I can't" and "I don't want
>>to"?
> 
> It's one of those judgement-call things, I don't know if you can strictly
> define it but as a rule of thumb I'd say that if you encounter it during
> normal processing it's an I-can't problem while if you have to add
special-
> case checks to identify it and refuse to continue it's an I-don't-want-to
> problem.

Yes of course, but there is another aspect to it, the general health of the
ecosystem. Postel's rule is nice, but it removes the pressure on broken
implementations to fix their code. Pushed to the extreme, the result is a
sort of protocol drift, in which buggy variants get first tolerated, and
then accepted as de-facto standards. This tends to hinder future evolutions,
not to mention adding complexity. We often hear that "the IETF has no
protocol police," but in fact it does. Each implementation that takes a
strict view of standard compliance contributes to this policing.

-- Christian Huitema