User interface, security, and "simplicity"

[Perry E. Metzger]

Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net> writes:
> Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>> Until then, OpenVPN let me get started in about five minutes, and the
>> fact that it is less than completely secure doesn't matter much to me
>> as I'm running SSH under it anyway.
[...]
> I'm always curious to hear what designers of protocols actually use on a
> daily basis. I'm also really curious how said designers evaluate their
> choices.
>
> I really like OpenVPN. It's really smooth to setup, it's very easy to
> use on the Big Three Platforms.
>
> Have you read the source to OpenVPN? Do you think that it's
> cryptographically sound? Is it properly implemented?
>
> I've found some stuff I wonder about and I'm curious if anyone else has?

I can't claim to like the innards, and it seems bizarre to me that the
designers didn't simply use IPSec encapsulated in UDP as the
underlying protocol. (Were I writing such a thing today, I might use
DTLS.)

That said, in my usage pattern, I don't care much about the possible
security flaws. I would not recommend the package to clients, however.

It is obvious to anyone using modern IPSec implementations that their
configuration files are a major source of pain. In spite of this, the
designers don't seem to see any problem. The result has been that
people see IPSec as unpleasant and write things like OpenVPN when the
underlying IPSec protocol is just fine and it is the implementations
that are unpleasant.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com

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