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Transport Layer Security Version 1.3 Approved

posted by mrpg on Monday March 26 2018, @11:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the Certificate-verification-failed dept.

takyon writes:

The web will soon be a little safer with the approval of this new security standard

TLS 1.3 makes a few prominent changes that should keep you safe.

  • The "handshake" between client and server has been streamlined and encryption initiated earlier to minimize the amount of data transmitted in the clear.
  • "Forward secrecy," meaning hackers can't skim decryption keys from one exchange and use it to decrypt others later.
  • "Legacy" encryption algorithms have been removed as options, as these could occasionally be forced into use and their shortcomings leveraged to break the cipher on messages.
  • A new "0-RTT," or zero round-trip time, mode in which the server and client that have established some preliminaries before can get right to sending data without introducing themselves to each other again.

The whole standard is 155 pages long, and really only other engineers will want to dig in. But it's available here if you'd like to peruse it or go into detail on one of the new features.

Also at The Register.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @09:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @09:09PM (#658665)

    Both HSTS and HPKP involve the clients saving information that is sent to them by a server (roughly: "have I visited domain X before?"). By design, browsers leak the state of these caches for those domains on subsequent connections.

    Since browsers can be directed to access essentially arbitrary domains by a web server (e.g., by sending a document full of HTTP image references), the server can direct different clients to access a collection of different domains.

    On a subsequent connection, the server can observe which domains were previously cached -- in HSTS, this can be done by directing the client to access a resource over HTTP -- if the domain is in cache, the client will not connect over HTTP but use HTTPS instead.

    With HPKP the server can change public keys and the client will likewise react differently depending on whether or not a key was previously pinned.

    If these features are enabled in a client, a server can craft documents with references to particular domains and use this information to associate that client to an earlier connection from the same client with high reliability. As far as I know all modern browsers wipe the HSTS and HPKP caches on exit if you enable private browsing mode (or if they don't they really should), which seriously limits the usefulness of these features.