At Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:54:41 -0700,
Michael Thomas wrote:
> 
> Eric Rescorla wrote:
> > At Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:19:04 -0700,
> > Michael Thomas wrote:
> >   
> >> Eric Rescorla wrote:
> >>     
> >>> At Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:39:06 -0700,
> >>> Michael Thomas wrote:
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >>>> Rohan Mahy wrote:
> >>>>     
> >>>>         
> >>>>> Michael,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> At issue here is what the default implementor is likely to do.  With a 
> >>>>> new 4xx, the misguided but well-meaning implementor is likely to try 
> >>>>> to "helpfully" "repair" the error without thinking about or 
> >>>>> understanding the security context.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Using a Warning code raises the bar significantly, but still allows 
> >>>>> automata to at least log what happened.
> >>>>>       
> >>>>>           
> >>>> As I said, a receiver is completely at liberty to prevent the downgrade 
> >>>> by not
> >>>> accepting the downgraded request.
> >>>>     
> >>>>         
> >>> Unless, of course, someone is impersonating the receiver.
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >> Given how tangled up SIPS is, I really no idea what you're talking
> >> about, or whether it's even responsive to my suggestion. Last I heard,
> >> the entire raison d'etre of SIPS was that the next hop is cryptographically
> >> identified via TLS. I'm guessing that you're not suggesting that TLS
> >> is useless against impersonation attacks.
> >>     
> >
> > Of course not.
> >
> > The point here is that if a caller automatically downgrades to SIP,
> > an active attacker can then intercept the request and accept it,
> > regardless of the receiver's preferences.
> >   
> 
> Um, so? That's the risk that the sender takes by sending stuff in the 
> clear. And
> where's the problem here anyway? The steps are: try SIPS, then try SIP. 
> If the
> first succeeds, there's no attack. So it's only in some slim window of 
> when the
> receiver was down, or something like that. Doesn't seem to me to be 
> something
> to get all exercised about, especially when you factor in all of the 
> other insecurities
> associated with SIPS.

I'm not saying it's something huge to get exercised about. However, since
the question is what behavior to define here, we might as well get it
right.

-Ekr


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