[TLS] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: 2nd Working Group Last Call for The SSLKEYLOGFILE Formatfor TLS

[Yaakov Stein <[e-mail]>]

All,

I fully support standardizing the SSLKEYLOGFILE Format.

While it is a debugging tool, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be standardized.

Where I work we maintain a large set of protocol analysis tools
used to verify correct operation of various programs, and document variant behaviors.
This often requires visibility into the internal operation of various browsers and apps.
So, while it is fine for some company’s program to output arbitrary debug files for their own development,
this wouldn’t enable others to understand these files.

The documentation really doesn’t have to be produced by the IETF,
as long as everyone abides by it.
But I don’t know of anywhere else with broad enough remit
to mandate a behavior for all applications using TLS.

Y(J)S

From: Aaron Zauner <azet=[e-mail]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2025 12:27 AM
To: Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>
Cc: Bellebaum, Thomas <[e-mail]>; [e-mail]
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [TLS] Re: 2nd Working Group Last Call for The SSLKEYLOGFILE Formatfor TLS

Hey,

On Mon 24. Feb 2025 at 22:54, Martin Thomson <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 25, 2025, at 06:56, Aaron Zauner wrote:
> To be clear; I agree with that in principle but have the feeling that
> the discussion around an applicable threat model misses the issue of
> what should be in IETF and what should be in development docs,
> debugging tools etc entirely. I'm not currently working on maintaining
> a crypto lib as many of you are but you can't honestly tell me it's not
> possible to work on your end without IETF guidance on debug specifics
> that allow encrypted traffic detail export -- which you already have in
> place for debug and dev anyway.

This also misses the point.  The existence of this format (it will exist whether the IETF publishes a document or not) has enabled interoperation between a number of tools.  The point of moving this work to the IETF was to transfer governance from what was ad hoc to something recognized and respected by the community of people who build the interoperating tools.

Some people view interoperable standards as somehow changing the demand and availability of the thing they document.  Maybe that's true in some markets, but my experience is that the demand is what causes the creation of standards, not the other way around.  Also, if there were not already interoperation and you were concerned that interoperation would cause problems, this might be problematic, but this is a case where that interoperation already exists

I understand your point and just like config formats I see why you'd want to have a published document. But just like with configs it's part of the local tool chain and not a wire format. Open source projects have been able to work with them and use them without involving IETF. I'm just not sure this is the right place for the document. You've done the work and documentation anyway already, and you're interoperable. What do you really gain by having this in IETF? It's also a fringe topic; With that I mean in this case that it's debug specific to a few projects related to TLS and while this is the TLS WG it's still a tooling issue in my estimate. I'm really not sure what the big upside is of having it published here. A lot of chrome, openssl and other tool chain specifics are likewise only documented in the relevant project documents and it works fine for everyone involved; Is there any precedent that showed we need this in IETF - ie. where interop and debugging didn't work out because you couldn't already agree on a format and document it? Because it seems to me the community has already achieved all of this due to your and other people's contribution without adding it as an IETF doc.

Thanks,
Aaron



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