Re: [TLS] Obsolete SCSV!? (was Re: AD review of draft-ietf-tls-oldversions-deprecate-06)

On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 10:11 PM Loganaden Velvindron
<loganaden@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Please go ahead. I remembered a discussion (outside of the ietf) where
> not everybody agreed
> with it but reluctantly implemented it.
>

Found the commit message in LibreSSL:

"

Reluctantly add server-side support for TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV.

   This allows for clients that willingly choose to perform a downgrade and
   attempt to establish a second connection at a lower protocol after the
   previous attempt unexpectedly failed, to be notified and have the second
   connection aborted, if the server does in fact support a higher protocol.

   TLS has perfectly good version negotiation and client-side fallback is
   dangerous. Despite this, in order to maintain maximum compatability with
   broken web servers, most mainstream browsers implement this.

"
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 9:44 PM Sean Turner <sean@sn3rd.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Sep 23, 2020, at 08:43, Sean Turner <sean@sn3rd.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi! this issue was buried in the Ben’s review, but I think it is worth getting some attention on.
> > >
> > >> On Aug 13, 2020, at 13:54, Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@mit.edu> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 04:29:56PM -0400, Kathleen Moriarty wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 5:22 PM Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@mit.edu> wrote:
> > >>>>
> > >>>> - Similarly, the downgrade protection provided by the SCSV of RFC 7507
> > >>>> seems to be entirely obsolete.  Any implementation that is compliant
> > >>>> with this document will support only 1.2 or higher.  If it only
> > >>>> supports one version, no downgrade is possible; if it also supports
> > >>>> 1.3 or newer, the new downgrade-detection mechanism defined by TLS 1.3
> > >>>> applies, so the SCSV mechanism is entirely redundant (i.e., obsolete).
> > >>>> We could effectuate that status change in this document as well.
> > >>>>
> > >>>
> > >>> Has this been addressed in RFC8446?  If not, the specific downgrade
> > >>> examples are just listed as examples.  If a gap is left, then the full
> > >>> document should not be deprecated and made obsolete.  The text infers other
> > >>> versions in my read.  I have not looked to see if this was addressed in
> > >>> RFC8446 yet though.
> > >>
> > >> I'd really like to get a few more people to weigh in on this one -- IIRC
> > >> David Benjamin and Martin Thomson had mentioned some thoughts in the chat
> > >> during the session at 108, and Ekr as author of 8446 would be expected to
> > >> have a good sense of what it does.
> > >>
> > >> The specific RFC 8446 mechanism here is described at
> > >> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8446#section-4.1.3 : "TLS 1.3 has a
> > >> downgrade protection mechanism embedded in the server's random value.
> > >> [...]"
> > >>
> > >> While the RFC 8446 mechanism has the client do the actual detection of
> > >> downgrade, there's a MUST-level requirement on clients to make the check,
> > >> so from a specification point of view the check can be treated as reliable.
> > >> The RFC 7507 mechanism has the server do the detection, but I think the end
> > >> result is still the same: in an "downgraded" exchange between two honest
> > >> participants, the handshake fails and the downgrade is detected.
> > >>
> > >> Since the functionality is still useful, just superseded, this one seems
> > >> like a better fit for "obsoletes" (vs. "historic).
> > >>
> > >
> > > Right now, we have a list of RFCs draft-ietf-tls-oldversions-deprecate will update. RFC 7507 "TLS Fallback Signaling Cipher Suite Value (SCSV) for Preventing Protocol Downgrade Attacks" (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc7507/) is in this list. If you agree with Ben’s logic then we would be move 7507 out of the list of “updates” and adding an obsoletes header, i.e., “Obsoletes: 7507 (if approved)”, and moving 7507 down in s1.1 to the obsoletes paragraph. While this might seem like a minor point, this is the kind of the IESG loves to sink its teeth into so have a WG opinion on this matter can make overcoming later hurdles easier for the AD and doc shepherd.
> > >
> > > Thanks for the your time,
> > >
> > > spt (doc shepherd)
> >
> > All I have gone ahead and submitted a PR to address the point raised by Ben:
> > https://github.com/tlswg/oldversions-deprecate/pull/4
> >
> > spt
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