Fwd: [Bug 53219] mod_ssl should allow to disable ssl compression

[Eric Covener <co...@gmail.com>]

Any opinions on the default change?  AIUI current maintenance of
browsers have disabled TLS compression already, because they can be
driven to generate arbitrary traffic that eventually reveals httpOnly
session cookies.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:  <bu...@apache.org>
Date: Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 8:55 PM
Subject: [Bug 53219] mod_ssl should allow to disable ssl compression
To: bugs@httpd.apache.org


https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=53219

--- Comment #10 from Christoph Anton Mitterer <ca...@scientia.net> ---
Hi.

It's good to see this backported...

However,... I'm a bit concerned...

As far as I understood,... _ALL_ versions of SSL/TLS are vulnerable to the
CRIME attack, right?

So why is compression not forcefully disabled? Not with respect to speed (as
originally intended by Björn) but to security.

If newer versions of TLS should fix the attack.... one could allow them to
select whether compression should be used or not.

Ideas?

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-- 
Eric Covener
covener@gmail.com

Re: [Bug 53219] mod_ssl should allow to disable ssl compression

[Stefan Fritsch <sf...@sfritsch.de>]

On Monday 08 October 2012, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> On Oct 7, 2012, at 6:05 PM, Eric Covener wrote:
> > Any opinions on the default change?  AIUI current maintenance of
> > browsers have disabled TLS compression already, because they can
> > be driven to generate arbitrary traffic that eventually reveals
> > httpOnly session cookies.
> 
> Just disable it completely -- adaptive compression of headers is
> inherently incompatible with the goals of TLS.

Is it? I think the main problem is the broken security model of web 
browsers. There are many scenarios where compression does not hurt, 
e.g. with non-browser clients that do not allow chosen plaintext 
attacks, or if authentication is done by client certificate and not by 
header.

Therefore, I would prefer leaving the option available. But defaulting 
to off makes sense.

Cheers,
Stefan

Re: [Bug 53219] mod_ssl should allow to disable ssl compression

["Roy T. Fielding" <fi...@gbiv.com>]

On Oct 7, 2012, at 6:05 PM, Eric Covener wrote:

> Any opinions on the default change?  AIUI current maintenance of
> browsers have disabled TLS compression already, because they can be
> driven to generate arbitrary traffic that eventually reveals httpOnly
> session cookies.

Just disable it completely -- adaptive compression of headers is
inherently incompatible with the goals of TLS.

....Roy