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Re: StartTLS and referral



Interesting issue. Perhaps servers should not return referrals for startTLS extended ops. and clients should ignore referrals if returned? It seems appropriate to provide some advice in this area.

--
Mark Smith
AOL Strategic Business Solutions
Netscape Directory Product Development
My words are my own, not my employer's.


Kurt D. Zeilenga wrote:
As anyone thought much about the security considerations
of allowing StartTLS to return a referral.  The is no
discussion in RFC2830 that discusses how an attacker,
by injecting a StartTLS response into the stream,
could redirect the client to a server of its choosing
(with a certificate of its choosing).

Give that many clients auto chase referrals... and
auto-verify certificates, the client might even not notice
that it re-connected to a rogue server with a verifiable
certificate.  That is, verifiable with the host name of
the rogue server name.  I don't it would make sense
operationally to require the client to verify using the
host name of the original server, but it might sense
security wise.

Same, I guess, applies to Bind operations... or
initial discovery of security features.

Anyways, food for thought.