Re: [TLS] draft-ietf-tls-esni feedback

On Sun, Oct 20, 2019 at 2:41 PM Rob Sayre <sayrer@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was implementing https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-esni-02
> (since I believe that version is what Firefox and Cloudflare currently
> ship), and I had a difficult time parsing this part of the draft:
>
> struct {
>   ServerNameList sni;
>   opaque zeros[ESNIKeys.padded_length - length(sni)];
> } PaddedServerNameList;
>
> struct {
>   uint8 nonce[16];
>   PaddedServerNameList realSNI;
> } ClientESNIInner;
>
> I hadn't seen the fixed-but-variable length construction that the "zeros"
> field uses before (although I haven't written much TLS code).
>

It is used in other places. See, for instance:
https://tools.ietf.org/rfcmarkup?doc=8446#section-5.2

Judging by the mailing list archives, the design of the field is
> intentional. It's not clear to me why "zeros" wasn't specified as
> variable-length with a prose restriction, though.
>

Because then you have a spurious length field.

This part of the spec is also just generally difficult to follow, in my
> opinion. I had no trouble following the ESNIKeys section. Perhaps the
> problem is in the interaction of prose order, serialization order, and
> procedural code order.
>

Well, this structure is likely to change a fair bit, so probably not worth
trying to update the text right at this moment.

-Ekr

>
> thanks,
> Rob
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