6 ms·

Good. Debian won't be making stable any time soon, so a very reasonable timeline.

pilif 9y ago
I don’t know. We have customers connect to us with their internal systems they haven’t touched in ages. I can’t possibly tell them that they need to update their infrastructure two years (Debian has a two year release cycle and has released this year) from now. And then there are some end-users behind enterprise middle-boxes which don’t support anything beyond TLS 1.1 and I have a feeling it’s going to be difficult to communicate to them that they need to change the configuration. This means that we'll have to package our own FTP and HTTP servers in the future. Not a big deal, but certainly not something I'm looking forward to. Oh and our mail relay I probably have to build myself too or just disable TLS. You have no idea what shitty SSL configurations are used out there by the various systems trying to send us email. Grumble. At this point, I might as well run Linux from scratch when most of the daemons we run won't be able to talk to a seizable chunk of the clients connecting to us any more. In other words: if you set up Debian out of the box today, its default packages will talk to 99% of clients out there on the internet. If you set up Debian in 2019, about 30% of the clients out there won’t be able to talk to you. And the fix won’t just be a configuration change; it will require you to manually build every single daemon you make use of.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  I think introducing some friction here is a good idea, pre 1.2 tls/ssl are objectively broken, insecure protocols. Unless some of these people experience some pain and fix their shit, they will never upgrade, and by extension keeping everyone that wishes to communicate with them vulnerable as well (due to BAD_GUY being able to force protocol downgrades) Is it the right solution to accommodate them (not to mention by default out of the box which means it hurts your users without them being aware of it or able to make an informed choice) and pretend it isn't a problem, and thus putting yourself at risk too? For the same reasons i think its highly irresponsible people like FreeBSD patch in garbage like null cipher support into ssh. It is broken let the people who have to use it for whatever weird reason deal with the burden of their broken shit, don't force it on everyone else and weaken their security.
  - pilif 9y ago
    > not to mention by default out of the box sure. Disable it by default, but leave it compiled in, so an admin can re-enable it by changing a config setting instead of recompiling half a distro. > and thus putting yourself at risk too I'm not at risk if some big restaurant chain orders their supplies over TLS 1.1 instead of TLS 1.2. I'm not at risk if their email server sends us support tickets over TLS 1.1 instead of 1.2. However, my business is at risk if they can't order their supplies and if I then can't receive the support email telling me so. > patch in garbage like null cipher support into ssh there's a huge difference there: null-ciphers are completely pointless and no known client out there only supports null-ciphers. But about 30% of the internet doesn't support TLS 1.2.
    - throwaway2048 9y ago
      Its unfortunate that this situation causes you problems, but there is literally no other way that some people will ever upgrade their shit, you could wait 10 years and they will still be using tls1.1. Its important to at least make it harder than flip some switch and forget about it forever, or nothing is going to change.
      - pilif 9y ago
        (Edit: this reply is a reply to a your comment before your edit that stated I was at risk because of non-mitigatable issues in 1.1) My 1.1 supporting customers are at risk. I'm not at risk. If they take the (unwise) decision that the risk of their connections being eavesdropped is less significant that the amount of work it takes to update their internal network, than its their decision. I am absolutely not in the position to do advocacy there. And neither are other companies who have to serve enterprise customers. „But allowing 1.1 will allow attackers to force secure 1.2 supporting clients to downgrade“ you might say. To which I reply: why are they still supporting 1.1? If they are security conscious enough to update their infrastructure to support 1.2, they can disable anything else when talking to me.
        madez 9y ago
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  I am confused with your two years figure. With a two year release cycle in two years testing will become stable, but this change is in unstable which will become testing in two years. Or did I miss something here ?
  - 0x0 9y ago
    Packages in unstable can enter testing in 2-10 days, not years :) https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting
    - jwilk 9y ago
      To be pedantically correct, the 2 days limit is incorrect. An upload with priority=emergency can be accepted to testing without extra delay.
- pdw 9y ago
  Would it really be necessary to rebuild all daemons? It seems to me that it would be sufficient to drop in a custom libssl that doesn't disable the old protocols.
  - Conan_Kudo 9y ago
    Depends if the protocol change affects the API and ABI. I think with OpenSSL, it might. But I'm not sure about that...
- rlpb 9y ago
  > At this point, I might as well run Linux from scratch... You might as well learn the Debian tooling and run a system with the OpenSSL package patched with a build-time change. On Ubuntu, that'd be the same as maintaining a PPA with one source package in it. On Debian, it's effectively the same except that you'll need reprepro or a script around apt-ftparchive instead. This is far easier than your hyperbole of running Linux from scratch.
- Twirrim 9y ago
  At a previous job they finally deprecated RC4-MD5, long after almost everyone had stopped using it. About a week later they had to re-enable it, because it turned out a few major customers had some old SPARC (IIRC?) boxes that used the service. The extra overhead of non RC4-MD5 ciphers was crippling them. There was some seriously frantic back and forth with the customer to get the situation resolved and figure out a timeline to finally, finally, finally deprecate RC4-MD5.
- yuhong 9y ago
  How many years do you estimate.

I don’t know. We have customers connect to us with their internal systems they haven’t touched in ages. I can’t possibly tell them that they need to update their infrastructure two years (Debian has a two year release cycle and has released this year) from now. And then there are some end-users behind enterprise middle-boxes which don’t support anything beyond TLS 1.1 and I have a feeling it’s going to be difficult to communicate to them that they need to change the configuration. This means that we'll have to package our own FTP and HTTP servers in the future. Not a big deal, but certainly not something I'm looking forward to. Oh and our mail relay I probably have to build myself too or just disable TLS. You have no idea what shitty SSL configurations are used out there by the various systems trying to send us email. Grumble. At this point, I might as well run Linux from scratch when most of the daemons we run won't be able to talk to a seizable chunk of the clients connecting to us any more. In other words: if you set up Debian out of the box today, its default packages will talk to 99% of clients out there on the internet. If you set up Debian in 2019, about 30% of the clients out there won’t be able to talk to you. And the fix won’t just be a configuration change; it will require you to manually build every single daemon you make use of.

throwaway2048 9y ago
I think introducing some friction here is a good idea, pre 1.2 tls/ssl are objectively broken, insecure protocols. Unless some of these people experience some pain and fix their shit, they will never upgrade, and by extension keeping everyone that wishes to communicate with them vulnerable as well (due to BAD_GUY being able to force protocol downgrades) Is it the right solution to accommodate them (not to mention by default out of the box which means it hurts your users without them being aware of it or able to make an informed choice) and pretend it isn't a problem, and thus putting yourself at risk too? For the same reasons i think its highly irresponsible people like FreeBSD patch in garbage like null cipher support into ssh. It is broken let the people who have to use it for whatever weird reason deal with the burden of their broken shit, don't force it on everyone else and weaken their security.
- pilif 9y ago
  > not to mention by default out of the box sure. Disable it by default, but leave it compiled in, so an admin can re-enable it by changing a config setting instead of recompiling half a distro. > and thus putting yourself at risk too I'm not at risk if some big restaurant chain orders their supplies over TLS 1.1 instead of TLS 1.2. I'm not at risk if their email server sends us support tickets over TLS 1.1 instead of 1.2. However, my business is at risk if they can't order their supplies and if I then can't receive the support email telling me so. > patch in garbage like null cipher support into ssh there's a huge difference there: null-ciphers are completely pointless and no known client out there only supports null-ciphers. But about 30% of the internet doesn't support TLS 1.2.
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    Its unfortunate that this situation causes you problems, but there is literally no other way that some people will ever upgrade their shit, you could wait 10 years and they will still be using tls1.1. Its important to at least make it harder than flip some switch and forget about it forever, or nothing is going to change.
    - pilif 9y ago
      (Edit: this reply is a reply to a your comment before your edit that stated I was at risk because of non-mitigatable issues in 1.1) My 1.1 supporting customers are at risk. I'm not at risk. If they take the (unwise) decision that the risk of their connections being eavesdropped is less significant that the amount of work it takes to update their internal network, than its their decision. I am absolutely not in the position to do advocacy there. And neither are other companies who have to serve enterprise customers. „But allowing 1.1 will allow attackers to force secure 1.2 supporting clients to downgrade“ you might say. To which I reply: why are they still supporting 1.1? If they are security conscious enough to update their infrastructure to support 1.2, they can disable anything else when talking to me.
      - madez 9y ago
bigbugbag 9y ago
I am confused with your two years figure. With a two year release cycle in two years testing will become stable, but this change is in unstable which will become testing in two years. Or did I miss something here ?
- 0x0 9y ago
  Packages in unstable can enter testing in 2-10 days, not years :) https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting
  - jwilk 9y ago
    To be pedantically correct, the 2 days limit is incorrect. An upload with priority=emergency can be accepted to testing without extra delay.
pdw 9y ago
Would it really be necessary to rebuild all daemons? It seems to me that it would be sufficient to drop in a custom libssl that doesn't disable the old protocols.
- Conan_Kudo 9y ago
  Depends if the protocol change affects the API and ABI. I think with OpenSSL, it might. But I'm not sure about that...
rlpb 9y ago
> At this point, I might as well run Linux from scratch... You might as well learn the Debian tooling and run a system with the OpenSSL package patched with a build-time change. On Ubuntu, that'd be the same as maintaining a PPA with one source package in it. On Debian, it's effectively the same except that you'll need reprepro or a script around apt-ftparchive instead. This is far easier than your hyperbole of running Linux from scratch.
Twirrim 9y ago
At a previous job they finally deprecated RC4-MD5, long after almost everyone had stopped using it. About a week later they had to re-enable it, because it turned out a few major customers had some old SPARC (IIRC?) boxes that used the service. The extra overhead of non RC4-MD5 ciphers was crippling them. There was some seriously frantic back and forth with the customer to get the situation resolved and figure out a timeline to finally, finally, finally deprecate RC4-MD5.
yuhong 9y ago
How many years do you estimate.