3 ms·

Make SSL boring again

44 points by hepha1979 9y ago

cdancette 9y ago
TLDR: cloudflare switched from openssl to the Google fork BoringSSL. They now have out of the box some features they maintained themselves, and have a more stable and maintainable stack.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
  But they also seem to be supporting some features they previously had out of the box?
dfabulich 9y ago
Why did Cloudflare choose BoringSSL over LibreSSL? https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/ https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/ > BoringSSL is a fork of OpenSSL that is designed to meet Google's needs. > Although BoringSSL is an open source project, it is not intended for general use, as OpenSSL is. We don't recommend that third parties depend upon it. Doing so is likely to be frustrating because there are no guarantees of API or ABI stability.
- jgrahamc 9y ago
  Because after Heartbleed we started to look for a performant alternative to OpenSSL that we felt would be safe for us to use.
  - dfabulich 9y ago
    But why not LibreSSL?
    - jgrahamc 9y ago
      LibreSSL doesn't provide the features of BoringSSL that we use so would have required a huge amount of work to use.
- rando444 9y ago
  As a final note we’d like to thank the BoringSSL developers for the great work they poured into the project and for the help they provided us along the way. Seems like they are working pretty close together and got something out of the deal as well.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Interesting, I would think it would be easier to use LibreSSL for this since the OpenBSD folks are so conservative that the modern APIs are likely to be stable. Maybe they want to use more of the legacy APIs that the OpenBSD folks are excising?
peterwwillis 9y ago
Why are we still calling it SSL? It's like saying Telnet whenever you refer to SSH. Also: it seems like there's no release or commit signing, unless I missed it? So couldn't you just compromise one user, or commit bot, or git repo location, and basically own all TLS that Cloudflare uses, effectively owning like half of the internet?

44 points by hepha1979 9y ago

TLDR: cloudflare switched from openssl to the Google fork BoringSSL. They now have out of the box some features they maintained themselves, and have a more stable and maintainable stack.

gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
But they also seem to be supporting some features they previously had out of the box?

dfabulich 9y ago

Why did Cloudflare choose BoringSSL over LibreSSL? https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/ https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/ > BoringSSL is a fork of OpenSSL that is designed to meet Google's needs. > Although BoringSSL is an open source project, it is not intended for general use, as OpenSSL is. We don't recommend that third parties depend upon it. Doing so is likely to be frustrating because there are no guarantees of API or ABI stability.

jgrahamc 9y ago
Because after Heartbleed we started to look for a performant alternative to OpenSSL that we felt would be safe for us to use.
- dfabulich 9y ago
  But why not LibreSSL?
  - jgrahamc 9y ago
    LibreSSL doesn't provide the features of BoringSSL that we use so would have required a huge amount of work to use.
rando444 9y ago
As a final note we’d like to thank the BoringSSL developers for the great work they poured into the project and for the help they provided us along the way. Seems like they are working pretty close together and got something out of the deal as well.
jandrese 9y ago
Interesting, I would think it would be easier to use LibreSSL for this since the OpenBSD folks are so conservative that the modern APIs are likely to be stable. Maybe they want to use more of the legacy APIs that the OpenBSD folks are excising?

peterwwillis 9y ago

Why are we still calling it SSL? It's like saying Telnet whenever you refer to SSH. Also: it seems like there's no release or commit signing, unless I missed it? So couldn't you just compromise one user, or commit bot, or git repo location, and basically own all TLS that Cloudflare uses, effectively owning like half of the internet?