[Cryptography] Heartbleed and fundamental crypto programming practices

[Judson Lester]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 2:34 PM, John Kemp <john at jkemp.net> wrote:
> On 04/17/2014 05:29 PM, Judson Lester wrote:
>>
>> I have to say, I'm really taking by the langsec formal approach to
>> input recognition. But regarding TLS in particular, I'm unclear on
>> their specifics. My understanding is that TLS mandates DER for ASN.1,
>> which is unambiguous. Further it seems to me that DER is isomorphic
>> with CER, which should be context-free, right? (This is leaving aside
>> the issue of x.509 CNs)
>
>
> Yes, good point. I didn't make myself clear enough.
>
> What got me started on thinking about this in relation to OpenSSL is that
> there was a sense that the protocol doesn't adequately define the heartbeat
> interaction. I got that sense from this email:
> http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2014-April/006378.html and
> the IETF discussion referenced therein.
>
> - johnk
>

Related (from the IETF discussion):
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg11893.html

The point being: the actual TLS wire protocol uses an ad hoc
definition rather than e.g. ASN.1.

Judson