On Thu, 11 Jan 2024 at 12:49, Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> tor 2024-01-11 klockan 13:39 +0100 skrev Holger Weiß:
> > * Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> [2024-01-11 13:10]:
> > > I believe tls-server-end-point is generally best left unimplemented
> > > to
> > > guide efforts towards supporting the stronger tls-exporter.
> >
> > One use case I see for tls-server-end-point is that it allows for
> > supporting channel binding by setups where TLS is terminated by some
> > reverse proxy, thereby protecting against _some_ but not all attack
> > vectors that tls-exporter protects against.
>
> Indeed -- however I think the burden to support those kind of
> environments should be on the entities chosing to deploy and use those
> kind of environments, instead of placing the burden (and weakening
> security) for everyone else.
>
> While I think it is acceptable for standards to acknowledge and allow
> insecure usage modes (with proper caveats), I believe the primary
> purpose and default recommendations for a standard should be to promote
> secure behaviour.  That is not achieved in XEP-0440 now.
>
> A compromise would be to mandate both tls-exporter and tls-server-end-
> point, however I'm hoping the short period that tls-server-end-point
> has been mandated can be ignored and we can select a better mandatory
> method.

Thankfully I think all server implementations took sensible routes
already (i.e. everyone who supports channel binding has tls-exporter
implemented, in current or current+1 releases). Prosody will
automatically offer tls-unique/tls-exporter, and tls-server-end-point
by default unless explicitly configured by the admin.

I think the logic for the wording in the XEP was because some
deployments cannot (easily) use the algorithms with dynamic values, so
tls-server-end-point is seen as the lowest common denominator, and
recommended from an interoperability perspective (some channel binding
is better than none at all).

However I think that the difficulties deploying
tls-unique/tls-exporter that exist today could be overcome with
sufficient support from TLS middleware. I'm not aware of any such
support right now though.

Regards,
Matthew
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