Re: [TLS] TLS process thread

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, 2014-04-09 at 16:49 -0400, Sean Turner wrote:
> All,
> 
> Thanks for your comments on the TLS 1.3 process.
> 
> While the IETF certainly has used competitions in the past, they are
> generally used to select one document from multiple starting points
> and then the documents undergo substantial revisions. Even then, there
> is a fairly mixed track record as WGs often find it very hard to come
> to a final selection and instead get bogged down in the selection
> process.

Hello,
 That was not an issue with the selection of SSL 3.0, the document that
was the basis of this working group.

> In this case, however, our charter provides a clear starting point,
> namely RFC 5246, and a mandate to minimize the changes to that
> document.

I am sorry, but I disagree. The charter proposed in [0], does not even
mention RFC5246, and its points cannot possibly minimize the changes to
RFC5246. It proposes the creation of a new protocol. For example:

o Develop a mode that encrypts as much of the handshake as
is possible to reduce the amount of observable data to
both passive and active attackers.

o Develop modes to reduce handshake latency, which primarily
support HTTP-based applications, aiming for one roundtrip
for a full handshake and one or zero roundtrip for repeated
handshakes.   The aim is also to maintain current security 
features.

If these two are addressed in TLS 1.3, it will be a new protocol whether
or not it was based on RFC5246. Even worse it will be a new
cryptographic protocol designed in a working group that explicitly says
it is not a working group of cryptographers.

[0]. http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-tls/

regards,
Nikos