Re: [TLS] Confirming consensus: TLS1.3->TLS*

It seems like TLS 2 and TLS 2.0 have very little support, so it's really
just deciding between:

TLS 1.3
TLS 4 (or maybe 4.0)

I'll just amplify Rich's and djb's points by noting that the cost of
switching away from TLS 1.3 really only affects a very small number of
people -- really just the people in and around this WG.

There is a much, much larger universe of people who will make deployment
and implementation decisions, with varying attention span and degrees of
skill, and I think they're best served with a clean start of an unambiguous
version number. Just because it feels uncomfortable to us doesn't mean it
will feel uncomfortable to the larger technical/enterprise community who
don't really *care* about the versioning scheme, they just need to make
some decisions and move on.

-- Eric

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 1:07 PM, D. J. Bernstein <djb@cr.yp.to> wrote:

> The largest number of users have the least amount of information, and
> they see version numbers as part of various user interfaces. It's clear
> how they will be inclined to guess 3>1.3>1.2>1.1>1.0 (very bad) but
> 4>3>1.2>1.1>1.0 (eliminating the problem as soon as 4 is supported).
>
> We've all heard anecdotes of 3>1.2>1.1>1.0 disasters. Even if this type
> of disaster happens to only 1% of site administrators, it strikes me as
> more important for security than any of the arguments that have been
> given for "TLS 1.3". So I would prefer "TLS 4".
>
> Yes, sure, we can try to educate people that TLS>SSL (but then we're
> fighting against tons of TLS=SSL messaging), or educate them to use
> server-testing tools (so that they can fix the problem afterwards---but
> I wonder whether anyone has analyzed the damage caused by running SSLv3
> for a little while before switching the same keys to a newer protocol),
> and hope that this education fights against 3>1.3 more effectively than
> it fought against 3>1.2. But it's better to switch to a less error-prone
> interface that doesn't require additional education in the first place.
>
> ---Dan
>
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