> On Nov 16, 2015, at 11:32 AM, Shane Kerr <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Olafur,
> 
> At 2015-11-16 10:28:08 -0500
> Olafur Gudmundsson <[email protected] <mailto:[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 
> 
> SHOULD or MUST?
> 
> If it is SHOULD, then it makes sense to document what to do if you
> check the padding.
> 
> Personally I am happy if we decide that padding MUST be ignored (which
> was my original suggestion).
> 

MUST is fine, 

>>>> 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
>> 
>> 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 
> 
> Probably a paragraph saying "turn off TLS compression" is a better
> approach than trying to figure out how to defeat the compression?

yes that is much better, 
> 
> I your analysis is slightly incorrect, because DNS packets are highly
> compressible. For example each RR includes RTYPE, TTL, and so on, which
> will be identical for the entire RRset.

I wish DNS software just stopped doing compression and we could rip out lots of 
ugly slow code :-) 

> 
> So for 0x00 we end up with the padding being compressed out and
> effectively pointless.
> 
> For random data (cheap or real), we end up with the padding being not
> compressed at all, compared to the actual data, which is highly
> compressed. It complicates traffic analysis, but I have faith that the
> big data guys at the NSA can still get some probabilistic pattern
> matching working. ;)
> 
> If we worry about compression, then shouldn't we add entries that
> compress "similarly" to actual packet data? That seems hard, hence my
> suggestion to simply remind people to turn TLS compression off.

I agree lets just say TLS compression MUST be OFF 

Olafur

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> --
> Shane
> 
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