Re: [TLS] What would make TLS cryptographically better for TLS 1.3

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 02:21:35PM -0700, Robert Ransom wrote:
> On 10/31/13, Watson Ladd <[e-mail]> wrote:
> It also needs to either allow session resumption without the
> possibility of reusing any key used to encrypt or authenticate
> application-level data, or explicitly forbid session resumption.

Sure.

> > Renegotiation should be killed: it serves no purpose.
> 
> Renegotiation is a critical feature of TLS, which serves multiple purposes.
> 
> * Renegotiation allows rekeying of a session.  This is absolutely
> required for any ciphersuite based on a block cipher with a 128-bit or
> smaller block, because block cipher modes' security properties degrade
> after they are used for more than some number of blocks.

This can be done without a synchronous renegotiation by just computing a
new sessionkey every so many bytes/blocks/records (whatever's
appropriate to count for the cipher in use).

> * Applications can also use renegotiation-based rekeying to improve
> forward secrecy; for example, the Mixminion specification
> (<https://github.com/nmathewson/mixminion-doc/blob/a661212831d2afc3200339b2634ca16452e3aeec/spec/minion-spec.txt>,
> section 4, line 1040) requires that relay-to-relay TLS connections be
> rekeyed using renegotiation every 15 minutes for this purpose.

Indeed.  Speaking of which, resumption must support PFS rekeying.

> * A TLS connection can be established by a fully trusted device which
> knows a password or other application-layer authorization credential,
> authorized to perform some operations using messages within the TLS
> connection, and then transferred with the help of renegotiation to a
> less trusted device to actually perform those operations.  This is
> similar to the preceding use, but to provide 'sideways secrecy' rather
> than forward secrecy.

As long as there's no MITM...

> * One version of the Tor 'link protocol' (Tor's term for its outer
> TLS-based connection protocol) uses renegotiation to provide secrecy
> for the server's certification chain against purely passive attackers.
>  The purposes above could be served by applying a one-way function to
> the originally derived key material, then discarding the old keys;
> this purpose cannot.

I thought this was no longer in use.

Also:

 * Privacy protection for the user's PSK ID and/or cert and/or other
   identifying data.

   But again, an NPN-style extension should take care of this.

 * Relatedly, the server can request user authentication asynchronously,
   in which case NPN-style extensions don't help.

   I'd be happy to get rid of this: user authentication in such cases
   belongs in the app layer.  However, it may not be feasible to get rid
   of such uses of renegotiation, so it probably has to stay :(

Nico
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