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OpenSSL 3 Strategic Architecture
- snvzz 8y agoStill prefer libressl. A shame that openssl's history of failing at security is rewarded with donations and use, rather than shunned.
- IloveHN84 8y agoBut libressl breaks ABI compatibility (see that BSD is taking a step backward). OpenSSL is affected by what we can call "fame". It's the mostly wide used security library in the whole internet and it's the favourite target for hackers. For comparison, it's the same that happens to OS: windows and android are the preferred target platforms because of the large user base they have.
- gray_-_wolf 8y ago> see that BSD is taking a step backward what do you mean?
- blattimwind 8y ago> OpenSSL is affected by what we can call "fame". OpenSSL is also affected by the problem that it was basically a toy project in the first couple years and got very little attention for well over a decade. OpenSSL is currently where Windows was ~15 years ago: XP and previous releases were an unmitigated security disaster, and slowly, release-for-release things are now improving. OpenSSL also suffers from typical industry diseases: Very poor documentation, poor interface design.
- myst 8y ago> But libressl breaks ABI compatibility Who cares? Compatibility with insecurity is not a goal.
- acdha 8y agoAre you volunteering to patch every program which uses OpenSSL? If not, you have the answer: it’s been widespread for decades and so many things use it that compatibility is a big concern. Think about a distribution like Debian with thousands of packages, some of which update frequently and others which haven’t been updated in years. If it’s compatible, you can ship one shared library update but if it’s not you’re either not upgrading or maintaining a ton of patches.
- icebraining 8y agoDebian is a bad example; they compile everything from scratch, they don't need ABI compatibility.
- mtgx 8y agoOr just switch to Noise already. http://www.noiseprotocol.org/ http://www.noiseprotocol.org/
- tatersolid 8y agoYikes. Backwards compatibility is tough. Strange that with the bump to 3.0 they didn’t at least announce the removal legacy primitives and TLS versions. Are they going to support DES and RC4 forever?
- brians 8y agoIsn’t there something in here about a legacy module?
- userbinator 8y agoAre they going to support DES and RC4 forever? It might not be the exact use-case for OpenSSL but there's plenty of existing content or protocols using those algorithms, which no one is going to bother changing ("encrypted" PDFs come to mind). In any case not having RC4 isn't such a big deal; it's a tiny algorithm you could literally memorise and write into where it's needed (which I suspect is why it became so popular.) DES is a bit trickier though.
- tatersolid 8y agoLet PDF readers find their own DES library. Or at lest make its non-default part of the build. But even having it there as optional is risky and adds to an already huge maintenance burden. You know the distro packagers will enable every feature just like they did with DTLS support (which is what made Heartbleed pervasive). Packagers don’t want to deal with complaints and support tickets because their OpenSSL build doesn’t do 3DES. So they turn on all the things.
- brians 8y agoNeat. I look forward to better FIPS handling and the deprecation story. And to vulnerabilities from the loadable module support. Getting the property based binding right looks tough!
- zdw 8y agoThe OpenSSL strategy seems to be to try to leapfrog LibreSSL in terms of version numbers (which already has released a 2.x branch, hence their 3.x versioning), and revise their API, but still have considerable complexity. The LibreSSL approach was to write a new library and API, libtls, which does away with the substantial configuration complexity in applications: https://man.openbsd.org/tls_init.3 https://man.openbsd.org/tls_init.3 I'd argue that LibreSSL's is the better approach.
- kev009 8y agoIt is supremely unlikely Akamai (via Rich Salz who is leading and has led a lot of post heartbleed fixup) take libressl seriously at all nor do any other large contributing company. People in the FreeBSD community knew libressl would be a flash in the pan given the personalities involved and FreeBSD has legitimate large scale commercial usage.
- gonzo 8y agoOpenVPN also disclaims any interoperability with LibreSSL. "Please note that LibreSSL is not a supported crypto backend. We accept patches and we do test on OpenBSD 6.0 which comes with LibreSSL, but if newer versions of LIbreSSL break API compatibility we do not take responsibility to fix that."
- zdw 8y agoSeeing as LibreSSL is shipped by Apple in MacOS and iOS, I'm not sure your userbase size argument holds water.
- tptacek 8y agoThe Core will implement a property based look-up feature for finding algorithms, e.g. it might allow you find an algorithm where "fips=true", or "keysize=128, constant_time=true". Why? What designer builds a system this way, without knowing precisely what algorithm they're using?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 8y agoThe fips example seems like a good one. "Don't care how, tick this box so I'm compliant with my government contract". Not arguing it's a good idea, just that it might be wanted.
- brians 8y agoWanted the same way HIGH:MEDIUM:LOW was wanted, with a new recipe for late binding of noncomposable abstractions. Same outcome expected.