Re: Comments on Mandatory Ciphers and a Proposal

[Christopher Allen <ChristopherA-Lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2:01 PM -0700 7/24/97, Keith Moore wrote:
>I'm willing to consider counter-arguments, but so far I haven't seen
>any argument that is even close to persuasive.

Fundementally there is a security arguement that is being forgotten -- TLS
is first a *security* protocol. Where interoperability and security
conflict, the winner needs to be security. Applications have to be able to
say that they are "conformant" to the TLS protocol even when they provide
the result "we can't agree on a mutual security requirement". (Which, BTW,
I think means they are sufficiently interoperable.)

Allowing Alice Attacker to focus on breaking any MUST cipherspecs, or by
putting in place a MUST ciphersuite that will have to be replaced in a
couple of years for security reasons, or that the market just doesn't
accept that the IESG's decision as to what is "secure enough" is good
enough -- all of these are bad ideas. There is no harm to strongly
encouraging with a SHOULD certain ciphersuites, the harm is not mandating
them.