Re: impact of 9.2.2 changes and discussions on opportunistic encryption draft

On Fri, Oct 31, 2014, at 10:24, Martin Thomson wrote:
> On 30 October 2014 19:35, Robert Collins <robertc@robertcollins.net>
> wrote:
> > Also wouldn't it deliver a trivial downgrade attack to folk who can
> > intercept and alter traffic?
> 
> 
> This is already the case.  Hence this being opportunistic.

Actually, it is not necessarily already the case. It is true that, if
you get an Alt-Svc header over an http-schemed connection, yes, this is
already opportunistic. It also doesn't (in that case) deliver a
downgrade attack, since you can't really downgrade from anything non-TLS
:) In this case, having a noauth token is a no-op, and thus just a waste
of bytes.

If, however, you get an Alt-Svc header over an https-schemed http/1.1
connection (or an ALTSVC frame on an h2 connection), those will not
enable opportunistic encryption, as that *would* present a downgrade
attack for a MITM. In this case, having a noauth token to explicitly
enable a downgrade attack sounds like a bad idea.

Thus, I'm -1 on a noauth token.
-- 
Peace,
  -Nick

Received on Friday, 31 October 2014 17:37:54 UTC