Re: [TLS] Flags extension and announcing support

OK. I think we have as much consensus as we’re likely to get.

I’ve updated the patch branch and PR to reflect this.

Yoav

> On 22 Jan 2021, at 7:45, Martin Thomson <mt@lowentropy.net> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2021, at 16:16, Yoav Nir wrote:
>> See this PR: https://github.com/tlswg/tls-flags/pull/5
> 
> It looks like there is lots of disagreement there.  I'm going to disagree with others too.
> 
>> All except the first are Server-side.
> 
> Certificate is client-side too.
> 
>> The controversy is about unsolicited flags. An unsolicited flag is a 
>> flag that is set in a Flags extension in a server-side message without 
>> having been first declared in the ClientHello extension.
> 
> So I think that you need to separate requests from responses.  Because Certificate contains response to ClientHello or CertificateRequest, my view is that CertificateRequest can contain any flag (provided that the definition of that flag permits it or you don't know whether it does) and Certificate can only contain flags that CertificateRequest did.  
> 
> This is part of what Ekr seems to have objected to, and I agree with him there.  A server should be able to use any flag in NewSessionTicket or CertificateRequest because those are the messages that initiate an exchange (NST doesn't generate any response, so it's an exchange with one flight, but that's immaterial).
> 
> To review:
> ClientHello is answered by HelloRetryRequest, ServerHello, EncryptedExtensions, and (server) Certificate.
> CertificateRequest is answered by (client) Certificate.
> NewSessionTicket is not answered (which is totally fine).
> 
> Those three first messages above can include new flags.  They can contain the extension or not at the discretion of the entity that sends the message.  Those messages that are in response can only contain the extension if the initiating message contained the extension.  Furthermore, the extension can only contain a specific flag if the initiating message contained that flag.
> 
> In other words, each flag is treated just like an empty extension: you can initiate an exchange with it, but you can only answer with it if it was initiated with it.
> 
> This differs a little from Chris who suggests that only NewSessionTicket can include a flag that was previously not indicated.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TLS mailing list
> TLS@ietf.org
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls