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On 6/13/13 11:47 AM, Justin Karneges wrote:
> On 06/13/2013 10:18 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>> On 6/13/13 8:40 AM, Matt Miller wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Jun 12, 2013, at 8:41 PM, Peter Saint-Andre 
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
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>>>> 
>>>> On 6/6/13 6:40 AM, Matthew Wild wrote:
>>>>> On 6 June 2013 10:21, Simon Tennant <[email protected]> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> End to end encryption is a worth goal. This is very cool
>>>>>> for getting information on the s2s connection.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Perhaps on first sight. However this kind of usage is
>>>>> exactly why the XEP died last time around. It isn't
>>>>> suitable for anything except purely informational/debugging
>>>>> purposes. This is because the link can change - it might be
>>>>> encrypted when you check it, and then reconnect unencrypted
>>>>> without you knowing. Also, malicious entities can always
>>>>> lie.
>>>> 
>>>> What I'd like is to know whether the connection from my
>>>> personal IM server (stpeter.im) or my company's IM server
>>>> (say, cisco.com) to a random server like prosody.im or
>>>> jabber.ietf.org is encrypted. Sure, malicious entities can
>>>> lie, but I try not to create accounts or authenticate with
>>>> malicious servers. :-) Look, I need to have *some* level of
>>>> trust in the server I authenticate with. I just want to know
>>>> if the path from there to the next server is encrypted, too.
>>>> If I'm a server admin presumably I have some kind of
>>>> server-side tool I can use, but that's not the case if I'm
>>>> not an admin.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I don't disagree that the user is trusting their server by
>>> logging in.  And if this check were to stop at "my.domain --> 
>>> other.domain", then I can see some confidence in the results 
>>> because of the trust. Changes in the state *could* be dealt
>>> with by making this information available in a pubsub-like
>>> manner (I sensed the collective shudder from some of our server
>>> developers and operators before I even typed that sentence (-:
>>> ).
>>> 
>>> However, that trust doesn't carry over to the answer for 
>>> "other.domain --> [email protected]" which users will want
>>> so very, very desperately.
>>> 
>>> I don't necessarily have a problem with this as a
>>> protocol-level diagnostic tool; it can help users (or rather,
>>> the developers of the client the user interacts with) and
>>> admins to troubleshoot. But the potential of abuse and
>>> over-interpretation is extremely high.
>> 
>> Yes, that is true, and I too don't want people to read more into
>> the results than is justified. I will keep that very much in mind
>> as I work on the next revision.
> 
> What I'd like to see is an extra attribute on each incoming
> stanza, indicating that it was received via a protected s2s
> connection. Since the attribute would be per-stanza, it doesn't
> have the race condition problem of the hop check.
> 
> My use-case is I'm running a service that allows administration
> via XMPP. Users may whitelist JIDs that should have access. The
> current drawback with this approach is that it is not ultra secure.
> Someone could conceivably make a dialback attack and act as someone
> else. My plan is to add a checkbox to the administration config:
> "Only allow administration from secure domains". The idea here is
> that an incoming stanza would only be trusted if it was flagged as
> having arrived via TLS-secured s2s, thus closing the dialback
> security hole. True, this does not confirm that the user's client
> is using TLS, but I don't think this is something I need to concern
> myself with. It would be the user's responsibility to ensure nobody
> else can hijack his account (by always using TLS, by using a good
> password, and by trusting the admin of his server).
> 
> Just one attribute is needed for this, stamped on by the receiving 
> server. Perhaps it could be a SHIM header.
> 
> Maybe this should be in a different spec than the hop check. I
> just wanted to bring up the idea here since I figure it fits the
> discussion. It would provide some amount of tangible security
> without having to go full-on e2e.

Interesting. I definitely think that's worth pursuing, for the simple
reason that it can indeed be stamped by the receiving server (and I
can know whether my connection to the receiving server is encrypted).

Peter

- -- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/


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