---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kyle Hamilton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: May 16, 2005 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: Reducing SSL overhead
To: Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


If you can get the browsers to agree to use null ciphers, then
theoretically you can do away with the bulk-cipher overhead.

However, you will still have to deal with the hash-generation overhead
(much smaller, if I remember correctly), as it still provides
authentication of the data as coming from the same source.

Also, you would have the overhead (at connection startup) of the
public-key cryptography to verify the certificate.  (If we had some
way to allow connections to servers that don't have certificates
[i.e., unauthenticated server mode, which many SSL server
implementations don't support], then even that overhead would be
reduced, and the only thing that would be negotiated is the key to the
MAC.)

Then again, NULL-NULL-NULL wouldn't exactly give any kind of SSL
bonus, and would cause additional protocol overhead.

Unless I'm wrong?  Correct me, here, guys?

-Kyle

On 5/16/05, Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Say I'm a website owner who wants to give my users the assurance that
> (theoretically; let's not go there right now) comes with an SSL
> connection, but don't want or need the overhead of encryption.
>
> Would it be possible (i.e. what would the side effects be) to enable the
> null cyphers in our SSL implementation, assuming that we made it so that
> using them didn't invoke the lock?
>
> Would that have much effect on server computational load, or is the
> encryption and decryption not where most of the cycles go?
>
> Gerv
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> mozilla-crypto mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-crypto
>

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