Re: [TLS] WGLC for draft-ietf-tls-ticketrequests

Viktor Dukhovni <ietf-dane@dukhovni.org> Sat, 16 November 2019 11:04 UTC

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Subject: Re: [TLS] WGLC for draft-ietf-tls-ticketrequests
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On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 02:38:55AM -0800, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:

> >     The -03 draft added a sentence suggesting that clients should ask for just
> >     one ticket on resumption, but I would like to suggest that this logic
> >     belongs in the server.
> 
> We should probably be emphasizing that *all* policy belongs on the server, and
> we are just defining a signal for the client to convey some information as input
> to the server's decision.  In that mindset I'm not sure that the "subtract one"
> signal is the most satisfying design (though I concede that it is probably the
> most efficient encoding).

Do you have an alternative suggestion?  I am indeed optimizing for a minimally
invasive change that keeps the encoding simple/efficient, at the cost of some
indirection between intended signal and its representation.  As with most
things, there are trade-offs here.

We could indeed have a separate flags field, or separate counts for various
conditions:

    - # to issue on full handshake
    - # to issue on STEK rollover
    - # to issue if server supports/does-not-support reuse
    - ...

But ultimately I think it boils down to whether the client:

    - can keep reusing an existing session with the ticket it already has
    - needs a single new ticket to keep reusing that session
    - is establishing a new session (full handshake) and wants to
      use parallel connections, so may want multiple fresh tickets.

Likely the simplest mechanism that handles the above is enough, and I think the
"-1" suggestion plus a server cap at 1 ticket on resumption, pretty much
handles all three cases.

Perhaps I'm missing some important cases, and if so, it would be good to flush
those out and understand their trade-offs.

-- 
    Viktor.