[Cryptography] Is it time for a revolution to replace TLS?

Judson Lester nyarly at gmail.com
Wed Apr 16 18:01:25 EDT 2014


On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Viktor Dukhovni
<cryptography at dukhovni.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 01:19:09PM -0700, Judson Lester wrote:
>
>> The example they present against X.509
>> specifically has to do with the fact that DER allows for embedded
>> nulls - and that C-related implementations don't properly handle that
>> case.
>
> It is not true that C "does "no handle" names with NUL bytes in
> ASN.1 strings.  ASN.1 strings have a value *and* an explicit length,
> which is all a C programmer needs to use them safely, the rest is
> attention to detail.

Agreed - you'd need to use the length against the char[] - but that's
a very different usage than normal in C and C-like languages.

> I could have published an advisory about potential NUL bytes in
> X.509 peer names a year or two before the eventual public disclosure
> by others, but the issue seemed to obvious to make a big fuss.  So
> I just made sure the Postfix code was correct.

If only! Good to note that no matter how obvious something seems,
someone somewhere will miss it.

Judson


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