Re: 9.2.2 Cipher fallback and FF<->Jetty interop problem

Hi Eric,

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 11:21:52AM -0700, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> > Ok but then if you wait on HTTP/3, 9.2.2 then precludes your ability to
> > select a more modern cipher category like the Aero example. So it doesn???t
> > seem to really meet the former case, and it certainly doesn???t meet the
> > latter.
> 
> I don't think that's true. 9.2.2 doesn't say you can't do non-AEAD. It says
> that you can't do stream or block. Rather:
> 
> "Clients MUST accept DHE sizes of up to 4096 bits. HTTP MUST NOT be used
> with cipher suites that use stream or block ciphers. Authenticated
> Encryption with Additional Data (AEAD) modes, such as the Galois Counter
> Model (GCM) mode for AES <http://http2.github.io/http2-spec/#RFC5288>
> [RFC5288] are acceptable."
> 
> I would assume that any new cipher spec would come with a "this is OK for
> HTTP2" bit (or not). So I don't see the interop problem.

I think it's not easy to tell what will exist in the future, however we can
exhaustively list what existing ciphers we don't want to support. Thus,
shouldn't we instead enumerate a list of properties that are incompatible
with HTTP/2 ? That would leave the door open for new ciphers. HTTP/1 has
benefitted from TLS evolutions for almost 20 years, and I would find it
sad that we have to emit a new HTTP version just to make everyone support
a new cipher. This is instead a property of the TLS layer and both sides
upgrade progressively to support new versions.

Regards,
Willy

Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2014 05:43:31 UTC