Subject: [rtcweb] Encryption consideration: SDES and TLS-SRP

From: "Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2012 23:41:14 +0100

Hi all,

i wanted to ask the WG opinion on the encryption framework for the RTCWEB.

In particular as we know today there is a strong need to have an
encryption-by-default on most new protocols.

Today:
- Email provider encryption by default traffic
- Mobile operators encrypt by default traffic
- Almost all web transaction use encryption

So it's realistic and practical to think that VoIP future is
encrypted-by-default to at least basically protect against the casual
wiretapper. (Can we evaluate this assumption?)

In that case we may have different threat scenario:
- Eavesdropping by third party with access to user's communication line
- Eavesdropping by who is providing the telephony service

A simpler protection scenario would at least provide protection against
third party with access to user's communication line.
A stronger protection scenario would also provide protection against who
is providing the service.

Here we should consider the security of:
- Signaling
- Media

Signaling has to be protected with TLS.
Media has to be protected with SRTP that rely on DTLS or on the new
proposal to use SDES [1] (idea that i like).

So basically in both cases there is the need to rely on a TLS-secured
channel and here we should evaluate the possible weak points.

As you know the TLS based trust model based on "Browser/OS Pre-loaded
Trusted CA" revealed serious risks posed to internet trust model [2] .

So, because we are defining a stack that should look forward the future,
we cannot not-consider seriously the serious issues related with TLS and
way to manage it.

An idea that came to my mind is that the specification, to face a
future-proof approach to the internet trust issues, could mandate to
support the implementation of TLS-SRP.

TLS-SRP is a new standard that let the TLS key exchange be authenticated
by a login/password with no need to trust a specific CA.
Status of implementation of RFC5054 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5054
is available on http://trustedhttp.org/wiki/Main_Page .

If we embrace SDES key exchange and TLS-SRP authentication the overall
protocol stack would be simpler than having to deal with DTLS and
relying only on Trusted-CA architectures.

[1]
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/interim/2012/01/31/rtcweb/slides/rtcweb-7.pdf
[2] http://ritter.vg/p/2012-TLS-Survey.pdf

p.s. I'm quite new to the list, so i may repeat some discussion
elements. In that case i kindly ask to leave to archive pointer to
already made discussion.

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:11:45 +0200

Please read draft-ietf-rtcweb-security and draft-ietf-rtcweb-security-arch.

I'm sorry, but not even checking the names of drafts the working group 
is working on before asking questions is below the minimum bar we expect 
of participants posting long emails.

                 Harald

On 03/24/2012 11:41 PM, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) wrote:
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