On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Olafur Gudmundsson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Nov 16, 2015, at 8:41 AM, Andreas Gustafsson <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Shane Kerr wrote:
>>> Andreas Gustafsson <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I'm also wondering if there might be scenarios where the messages are
>>>> compressed before encryption.  If that is the case, padding with zeros
>>>> is of limited value because they will mostly compress away, and the
>>>> ability to send data of similar compressibility to actual payload
>>>> data, or data of unpredictable compressibility, would be useful.
>>>
>>> It's an interesting idea, but I think I'd like to see some solid
>>> research on this. We understand how to add 0 bytes; I don't personally
>>> understand the implications of generating "similarly compressible" data
>>> to prevent attackers from doing traffic analysis.
>>>
>>> My own feeling is that we should proceed with 0-padding, and perhaps
>>> consider alternate schemes later if there is good guidance in the area
>>> of non-empty padding.
>>
>> We can certainly proceed with *sending* 0-padding.  All I'm asking is
>> for receivers not to reject messages with nonzero padding, so that if
>> alternate schemes are introduced in future senders, they can
>> interoperate with existing receivers.
>
> +1 All resolvers should ignore the contents padding
>
>>
>>> Surely academics have looked at this! Do you have pointers to some
>>> papers covering this approach?
>>
>> I'm afraid not.
>
> Shane,
>
> There is lots of work in this area, but it is trivial to reason about the 
> issue from DNS perspective
> Goal: hide how long the query name is, to defeat traffic analysis.
>
> Padding of the same value in each byte can be compressed to almost nothing 
> ==> same as having no padding, ==> failed to meet goal.
> TLS by default in many cases, compresses before transmission,  ==> DNS 
> padding option must defeat compression

This is a problem that is easily fixed: turn off compression. TLS 1.3
is eliminating compression for similar reasons.

>
> I think the WG should consider if the current text of saying use 0x00 is not 
> good enough,
> there are 3 options, use:
>         - 0x00
>         - cheap randomness
>         - real randomness source
>
> I think the middle one is good enough, a simple seeded hash function i.e. 
> HMAC  is sufficient or /dev/urandom
>
> Olafur
>
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-- 
"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains".
--Rousseau.

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