Hi,

The last few days I scanned the web for problems regarding
Netscape Navigator and SSL but I only came across those MSIE
related threads here on the list (I/O errors, EXP56, just to
name a few details).

One of those postings sent by Ralf Engelschall includes the
following

> Bascially there are three approaches: 1. the unclean approach where no
close
> notify alerts are send or received (violates the SSL/TLS standard), 2.
the
> accurate approach where close notify alert is send and the close
notify of the
> client received (can cause hanging connections) and 3. (the default!)
where
> mod_ssl sends the close notify but doesn't wait for the clients close
notify
> (which _IS_ standard compliant!).

What I'm interessted in is the statement regarding the
compliance to the standard when solving the MSIE problem
using approach 3.

My questions is : When one party just sends the CloseNotify
and does not wait for the respective answer the session is
allowed/not allowed to be resumed ?

The spec reads here:
> 5.4.1 Closure alerts
>
>    The client and the server must share knowledge that the connection
>    is ending in order to avoid a truncation attack.  Either party may
>    initiate the exchange of closing messages.
>
>      close_notify      This message notifies the recipient that the
>                        sender will not send any more messages on this
>                        connection.  The session becomes unresumable if

>                        any connection is terminated without proper
>                        close_notify messages with level equal to
>                        warning.
>
>    Either party may initiate a close by sending a close_notify alert.
>    Any data received after a closure alert is ignored.
>
>    Each party is required to send a close_notify alert before closing
>    the write side of the connection.  It is required that the other
>    party respond with a close_notify alert of its own and close down
>    the connection immediately, discarding any pending writes.  It is
>    not required for the initiator of the close to wait for the
>    responding close_notify alert before closing the read side of the
>    connection.
>
>    NB: It is assumed that closing a connection reliably delivers
>    pending data before destroying the transport.


In particular my problem is the side by side comparison of
those two sentences

1.
>                        The session becomes unresumable if any
connection
>                        is terminated without proper close_notify
messages
>                        with level equal to warning.

2.
>    It is not required for the initiator of the close to wait for the
>    responding close_notify alert before closing the read side of the
>    connection.

The standard is not violated though but approach 3 will give
you the same performance penalties as approach 1. In my
understanding you can not resume a session without having
send a CloseNotify as well as having received one.

Probably someone can comment on this or tell me about the
de-facto standard resp. the way it is implemented in most of
the SSL aware client/server software.



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