Re: [TLS] Deployment ... Re: This working group has failed

[Yoav Nir <[e-mail]>]

On Nov 27, 2013, at 9:55 PM, Andy Lutomirski <[e-mail]>
 wrote:
>>> Not at all.  I didn't say "bundled set of trust roots;" I said
>>> "explicitly chosen".  This would ban, for example:
>>> 
>>>  - stunnel in client mode with verify = 0 or verify = 1
>>>  - OpenSSL's SSL_VERIFY_NONE mode
>>>  - The default behavior of Python's urllib2 module
>>> 
>>> etc.  If an implementation wanted to offer a scary opt-in way to say
>>> "make me completely insecure", I have no problem with that.  It's
>>> unacceptable, though, that the default behavior of a lot of libraries
>>> is to skip verification.
>>> 
>>> I personally use TLS with private trust roots -- lots of people do
>>> this.  The problem is when people use TLS with no trust roots at all.
>> If by "lots" you mean too many to get them all together for beer night
>> -- yes. But the kind of technical know-how is in short supply, and
>> caring about this even among those with technical know-how is also thin
>> on the ground.
>> 
>> I'm sure there are thousands of people who use TLS with private trust
>> roots, as well as thousands of companies. But that's a small portion of
>> people and companies, and the rest of us also need stuff that works.
> 
> Do you mean that the rest of us need to write mobile apps that appear to
> work but are, in fact, insecure?  

No. Those of us who write mobile apps need the know-how, and can and should get it. And they should be able to configure a common library to be secure according to their needs. That does not mean that this library should not have any other modes.
> 
> I think that the rest of us actually need a TLS library that doesn't
> suck and an easy and foolproof way to create and use a CA key, CA cert,
> and server keypair.

OpenSSL scripts are a Google search away. XCA is free and available for all platforms. The more irritating part is dealing with revocation.

Yoav