Re: [TLS] SSL Renegotiation DOS

[Martin Rex <[e-mail]>]

Jorge A. Orchilles wrote:
> 
> Marsh Ray has invited me to present my research and report on SSL/TLS
> Renegotiation Denial of Service on this mailing list. I have posted this on
> my site and will paste here for your feedback:
> http://orchilles.com/2011/03/ssl-renegotiation-dos.html
> 
> *SSL/TLS Renegotiation Denial of Service*
> 
> An SSL/TLS handshake requires at least 10 times more processing power on the
> server than on the client.

I'm sorry, I completely fail to see what renegotiation has to do
with the DoS capability here.

The TLS protocol is a cryptographic protocol, and servers that expect
to talk to real clients performing the protocol as designed will attempt
to perform the cryptographic operations as requested.

A DoS-client could simply open new connections to the SSL server and
blindly fire away precompiled static SSL handshake messages, forcing the
server to do crypto work.  You should be able to make most servers
perform RSA decrypts on arbitrary data, and a significant number
to perform DHE computations.

-Martin