Are you asking about this new proposal (which still needs an amusing name), or the original GREASE mechanism?
The original GREASE mechanism was only targetting ClientHello intolerance in servers. It's true that it uses specific values, and indeed there is nothing stopping buggy implementations from treating them differently. The thought then was ClientHello intolerance in servers is usually just accidental. It takes a certain willful ignorance to forget the default in your switch-case, and then go out of your way to special-case things, rather than recheck the spec as to what you're supposed to do. It was also meant to be lightweight (a one-time implementation cost and a one-time allocation). It's imperfect, but it does seem to help with the problem. This new proposal is targetting ServerHello intolerance problems. Rather than fixing a set of values initially, it regularly rerolls random values over time, with no fixed pattern. It should hopefully be more resilient to this sort of misbehavior. On the flip side, it is more work to maintain and only implementations that update sufficiently frequently can participate, whereas, in theory, anyone could deploy the original GREASE. On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 3:15 PM Daniel Migault <daniel.miga...@ericsson.com> wrote: > I also support something is being done in this direction. I like the idea > of taking ephemeral non allocated code points. > > What is not so clear to me is how GREASE prevents a buggy implementations > from behaving correctly for GREASE allocated code points, while remaining > buggy for the other (unallocated). code points. > Yours, > Daniel > > On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Alessandro Ghedini <alessan...@ghedini.me > > wrote: > >> On Tue, Jun 12, 2018 at 12:27:39PM -0400, David Benjamin wrote: >> > Hi all, >> > >> > Now that TLS 1.3 is about done, perhaps it is time to reflect on the >> > ossification problems. >> > >> > TLS is an extensible protocol. TLS 1.3 is backwards-compatible and may >> be >> > incrementally rolled out in an existing compliant TLS 1.2 deployment. >> Yet >> > we had problems. Widespread non-compliant servers broke on the TLS 1.3 >> > ClientHello, so versioning moved to supported_versions. Widespread >> > non-compliant middleboxes attempted to parse someone else’s >> ServerHellos, >> > so the protocol was further hacked to weave through their many defects.. >> > >> > I think I can speak for the working group that we do not want to repeat >> > this adventure again. In general, I think the response to ossification >> is >> > two-fold: >> > >> > 1. It’s already happened, so how do we progress today? >> > 2. How do we avoid more of this tomorrow? >> > >> > The workarounds only answer the first question. For the second, TLS 1.3 >> has >> > a section which spells out a few protocol invariants >> > < >> https://tlswg.github.io/tls13-spec/draft-ietf-tls-tls13.html#rfc.section..9..3 >> >. >> > It is all corollaries of existing TLS specification text, but hopefully >> > documenting it explicitly will help. But experience has shown >> specification >> > text is only necessary, not sufficient. >> > >> > For extensibility problems in servers, we have GREASE >> > <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-grease-01>. This enforces >> the >> > key rule in ClientHello processing: ignore unrecognized parameters. >> GREASE >> > enforces this by filling the ecosystem with them. TLS 1.3’s middlebox >> woes >> > were different. The key rule is: if you did not produce a ClientHello, >> you >> > cannot assume that you can parse the response. Analogously, we should >> fill >> > the ecosystem with such responses. We have an idea, but it is more >> involved >> > than GREASE, so we are very interested in the TLS community’s feedback. >> > >> > In short, we plan to regularly mint new TLS versions (and likely other >> > sensitive parameters such as extensions), roughly every six weeks >> matching >> > Chrome’s release cycle. Chrome, Google servers, and any other deployment >> > that wishes to participate, would support two (or more) versions of TLS >> > 1.3: the standard stable 0x0304, and a rolling alternate version. Every >> six >> > weeks, we would randomly pick a new code point. These versions will >> > otherwise be identical to TLS 1.3, save maybe minor details to separate >> > keys and exercise allowed syntax changes. The goal is to pave the way >> for >> > future versions of TLS by simulating them (“draft negative one”). >> > >> > Of course, this scheme has some risk. It grabs code points everywhere. >> Code >> > points are plentiful, but we do sometimes have collisions (e.g. 26 and >> 40). >> > The entire point is to serve and maintain TLS’s extensibility, so we >> > certainly do not wish to hamper it! Thus we have some safeguards in >> mind: >> > >> > * We will document every code point we use and what it refers to. (If >> the >> > volume is fine, we can email them to the list each time.) New >> allocations >> > can always avoid the lost numbers. At a rate of one every 6 weeks, it >> will >> > take over 7,000 years to exhaust everything. >> > >> > * We will avoid picking numbers that the IETF is likely to allocate, to >> > reduce the chance of collision. Rolling versions will not start with >> 0x03, >> > rolling cipher suites or extensions will not be contiguous with existing >> > blocks, etc. >> > >> > * BoringSSL will not enable this by default. We will only enable it >> where >> > we can shut it back off. On our servers, we of course regularly deploy >> > changes. Chrome is also regularly updated and, moreover, we will gate >> it on >> > our server-controlled field trials >> > <https://textslashplain.com/2017/10/18/chrome-field-trials/> >> mechanism. We >> > hope that, in practice, only the last several code points will be in >> use at >> > a time. >> > >> > * Our clients would only support the most recent set of rolling >> parameters, >> > and our servers the last handful. As each value will be short-lived, the >> > ecosystem is unlikely to rely on them as de facto standards. Conversely, >> > like other extensions, implementations without them will still >> interoperate >> > fine. We would never offer a rolling parameter without the corresponding >> > stable one. >> > >> > * If this ultimately does not work, we can stop at any time and only >> have >> > wasted a small portion of code points. >> > >> > * Finally, if the working group is open to it, these values could be >> > summarized in regular documents to reserve them, so that they are >> > ultimately reflected in the registries. A new document every six weeks >> is >> > probably impractical, but we can batch them up. >> > >> > We are interested in the community’s feedback on this proposal—anyone >> who >> > might participate, better safeguards, or thoughts on the mechanism as a >> > whole. We hope it will help the working group evolve its protocols more >> > smoothly in the future. >> >> This looks interesting and I very much agree that we should do *somthing* >> to >> try to avoid the pain we've seen with deploying TLS 1.3 for future >> versions. >> >> We (Cloudflare) would be happy to help with developing and deploying it, >> and >> see how the experiment goes (and maybe even help put a draft together if >> needed, >> if that is the form this proposal will take). >> >> Cheers >> > _______________________________________________ >> TLS mailing list >> TLS@ietf.org >> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls >> >
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