Re: [TLS] Closing some open comments on draft-ietf-tls-renegotiation

[Marsh Ray <[e-mail]>]

Dr Stephen Henson wrote:
> 
> I'm asking whether a client should send a fatal alert here so a server admin can
> get some hint of the cause or if it should just silently drop the connection.

I can't find anywhere in the current RFCs that advocate silently
dropping the connection. In fact it defines it in the opposite direction:

> Error handling in the TLS Handshake protocol is very simple.  When an
>    error is detected, the detecting party sends a message to the other
>    party.  Upon transmission or receipt of a fatal alert message, both
>    parties immediately close the connection.  Servers and clients MUST
>    forget any session-identifiers, keys, and secrets associated with a
>    failed connection.  Thus, any connection terminated with a fatal
>    alert MUST NOT be resumed.

As a TLS library, you might not always have an actual socket handle. It
may be require rarely-used code in the application to actually "close
the connection". Application code may not always tell you when a socket
has been closed, so you may not have the opportunity to clean up and/or
log messages about the event.

I think using the currently defined fatal alert protocol is appropriate
here.

- Marsh