Re: [TLS] chairs - please shutdown wiretapping discussion...

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

On 10/07/17 23:07, Russ Housley wrote:
> Stephen:
> 
>>>
>>>> And to avoid a repeat of Russ' failed justification, many protocols
>>>> use and depend on TLS where the entity controlling the TLS server
>>>> private key materials is not the higher layer sender or receiver,
>>>> so all four points in the definition in 2804 are fully met by your
>>>> wiretapping scheme.
>>>
>>> It is clear that you do not agree with the reasoning that I posted on
>>> Friday.  Some people do, and clearly, others do not.
>>>
>>> So, I failed to convince you.  However, you have also failed to
>>> convince me that the proposal is wiretapping under the definition in
>>> RFC 2804, Section 3.
>>
>> Consider SMTP/TLS. Where one MTA on the path supports this.
>> Say it's one operated by an anti-spam company for example.
>> That is clearly not the sender nor recipient.
>>
>> That meets all 4 points in 2804, right?
> 
> You are pointing to email.  Some MTAs will use SMTP over TLS, but many others do not.  It would be great if they all do, especially for the authentication.  In your response you are talking about an email system that has been using plaintext for ages, and you are trying to apply hop-by-hop a mechanism to the delivery.  Then, you are saying that the sender and receiver have confidentiality expectations that are being violated.  I do not buy it.

See [1].

Those show nearly 90% of mails being encrypted with
TLS now.

In many mail deployments there will be an added hop e.g.
for anti-spam (we do that here in tcd) to an outside
party.

While not 100% of mail is encrypted with TLS on all
hops, much is. (And the UTA WG are developing MTA-STS
to try improve that.)

If one of those external parties implements your
scheme then mail senders and receivers will not know and
that real TLS application meets the 2804 definition for
lots and lots and lots of emails.

Hence, 2804 applies here and the standards-track label
ought be removed.

S.

[1] https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/

> 
> Russ
> 
>