TLS-SRP & TLS-PSK support in browsers (Re: Dutch Transport Card Broken)

[Ian G]

Peter Gutmann wrote:
> Victor Duchovni <Victor.Duchovni at MorganStanley.com> writes:
> 
>> While Firefox should ideally be developing and testing PSK now, without
>> stable libraries to use in servers and browsers, we can't yet expect anything
>> to be released.
> 
> Is that the FF devlopers' reason for holding back?  Just wondering... why not
> release it with TLS-PSK/SRP anyway (particularly with 3.0 being in the beta
> stage, it'd be the perfect time to test new features), tested against existing
> implementations, then at least it's ready for when server support appears.  At
> the moment we seem to be in a catch-22, servers don't support it because
> browsers don't, and browsers don't support it because servers don't.


I would say that this would not hold the FF developers back, 
as they were definately capable of implementing TLS/SNI 
extension a year or two back, without any support from 
stable libraries in Apache httpd, Microsoft IIS, etc (still 
waiting...).

I'd also suggest that the TLS/SNI (which will apparently 
turn up one day in Apache) will have a much more dramatic 
effect on phishing than TLS-PSK/SRP ... because of the 
economics of course.  Lowering the barriers on all TLS use 
is far more important than making existing TLS use easier.

Of course, this is not a competition, as the effect adds, 
not competes.  The good thing is that we may actually get to 
see the effects of both fixes to TLS rollout at similar 
times.  In economics, it is a truism that we can't run the 
experiment, we have to watch real life, Heisenberg style, 
and this may give us a chance to do that.

Also, we can observe another significant factor in the mix: 
  the rollout of virtual machine platforms (xen and the 
like) is dramatically changed the economics of IP#s, these 
now becoming more the limiting factor than they were, which 
might also put more pressure on Apache ... to release 
earlier and more often.

iang

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