[Cryptography] The TLS-LTS draft expires in August 2026

[Ralf Senderek]

On Sun, 7 Jun 2026, Salz, Rich wrote:

> I’ve been involved with the IETF for a long
> time, I am one of the maintainers (“designated experts”) of the TLS registry, 
> and I spent some time with Peter trying to move his document forward. 
> Because there is a (slight) incompatibility with the version on which it is 
> based, no standards-track work is possible.

Thank you Rich for your comments. For those who are not that familiar with
the inner workings of the IETF can you say what incompatibility is blocking the 
progress?

This draft is full of very good ideas and an excellent proposal to reduce the 
complexity that haunts TLS. In my opinion the approach in this draft shows the
way, how complexity can effectively been tackled. And even though the draft
focuses on systems that cannot easily been updated, Long Term Support for TLS
should also be as valuable for server software we are using every day.

Actually, TLS-LTS provides an extension that signals the client's request
for a limitation of TLS cipher suites to a known-good subset during the
initial handshake (Client Hello). And because IANA has already assigned the
extension type 0x1A for this extension, a server software willing to comply
just needs to reply with 0x1A in its Server Hello and stick to the draft's
requirements. So TLS-LTS does not add complexity, but on the contrary it
allows the server to reduce the attack surface considerably, making TLS
connections more reliable and secure.

> The only way to move this forward within the IETF is to publish it as an individual RFC. 
> I believe the editor of that series is willing to do so. 

I think, it would be worth trying, to ensure that this work is no longer locked
in an endless time loop.

Ralf