On Thu, 2014-03-27 at 19:27 +0100, Dr. Stephen Henson wrote:

> > I'd rather see the ability to add a new section openssl.cnf, like
> >     [ cipher-profile ]
> >     redhat-recommended = AES256-CGM-SHA384
> > 
> > and then you could do things like
> >     -ciphers profile@redhat-recommended:RC4-SHA128
> > 
> Yes I agree. There is an existing method for adding configuration in
> openssl.cnf for vaious purposes (ENGINE, OIDs, FIPS) and instead of a new
> configuration file a configuration module could be added instead. It could be
> extended beyone just cipher strings, for example expressing some SSL_CONF
> commands which would be used whenever that section is referenced.

This looks indeed cleaner, but based on my understanding of openssl, I
think the main issues with that, is (1) that applications may not call
OPENSSL_config at all, and (2) it is not easy to modify just a single
section of that file with system scripts (especially since that file is
expected to be modified manually by the administrator).

The former can be probably overcome by forcing OPENSSL_config() when the
cipher string is parsed, and the latter by allowing OPENSSL_config to
load files from a directory and concatenate them prior to parsing.
What would you think of such an approach? Any better suggestions?

regards,
Nikos


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