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ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

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Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#21

Post by KingMachiavelli »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9
hsk0823 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole IT market segment around TLS decryption for corporate LAN. Basically corporate MITM that will decrypt TLS at the gateway / firewall, and with currently used TLS standards, will then re encrypt the traffic back to the client so the browser thinks it has a legit connection. It's used to scan packets for intrusion detection, for malware, to track for data loss like the article talks about.

All of those require your computer to trust a new Certificate Authority or you will get warnings all over the place. If there is a company that claims to be able to do it without trusting the CA or producing warnings I would love to see it. (seriously, I actually would love to see that). And if you are in a corporate environment using a company computer you forfeit your privacy anyway. You can always go somewhere els…

Why? If you have the private key you can decrypt TLS traffic if forward secrecy is off. Which is why forward secrecy exists, to prevent captured encrypted sessions form being decrypted out-of-band with, presumably, comprimised private keys.

The issue is that TLS 1.3 deprecates the key exchange that makes this possible, essentially making (perfect) forward secrecy a requirement since the only inlcuded ciphers do so. The only way to monitor/inspect TLS traffic in this situation is to MITM the traffic rather than simply record encrypted sessions.

Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#22

Post by aidenn0 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9
hsk0823 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole IT market segment around TLS decryption for corporate LAN. Basically corporate MITM that will decrypt TLS at the gateway / firewall, and with currently used TLS standards, will then re encrypt the traffic back to the client so the browser thinks it has a legit connection. It's used to scan packets for intrusion detection, for malware, to track for data loss like the article talks about.

All of those require your computer to trust a new Certificate Authority or you will get warnings all over the place. If there is a company that claims to be able to do it without trusting the CA or producing warnings I would love to see it. (seriously, I actually would love to see that). And if you are in a corporate environment using a company computer you forfeit your privacy anyway. You can always go somewhere els…

For client-side it does require a new CA, but for server side it does not (since you have access to all of the private keys in use). Given that banks are pushing for this standard, that would make a lot of sense.

Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#23

Post by tinus_hn »

rocqua wrote: post #14
Spivak wrote: post #2

So what's the argument from the other side? Going through all this effort to allow PFS to be disabled seems like a ton of work? What's their use-case?

If your stance is: No opaque data leaves my network Then this is the only way you can have outbound HTTPS connections. And for e.g. a bank, certain legal firms, or any company that has a lot of sensitive data they either don't want to be leaked, or at least want the option of detecting when it is leaked, that is a somewhat reasonable stance. In the case of banks, this is needed for regulatory compliance regarding ins…

It’s a pipe dream. The webpage or application can easily include its own encryption that can’t be broken by these proxies.

If your stance is ‘no opaque data leaves my network’ your only option is an air gap.

Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#24

Post by tinus_hn »

hsk0823 wrote: post #5
Spivak wrote: post #2

So what's the argument from the other side? Going through all this effort to allow PFS to be disabled seems like a ton of work? What's their use-case?

There's a whole IT market segment around TLS decryption for corporate LAN. Basically corporate MITM that will decrypt TLS at the gateway / firewall, and with currently used TLS standards, will then re encrypt the traffic back to the client so the browser thinks it has a legit connection. It's used to scan packets for intrusion detection, for malware, to track for data loss like the article talks about.

The original purpose was governments spying on their citizens, which is why a lot of software uses certificate pinning to block this intrusion. These MITM solution just let through the big players’ traffic so you don’t get too much of a fuss while still retaining the ability to ‘check for malware’.

Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#25

Post by rev_null »

propter_hoc wrote: post #3

This is a remarkable story. Fortunately, this ETSI-backed "ETS" standard appears to have just about zero uptake or internet presence, let alone vendor acceptance. So although this is fairly outrageous based on the EFF article, it doesn't look like something that's a big threat to TLS at this point. PS. I can't even get ETSI's website to load! https://www.etsi.org/

If you're having trouble getting etsi.org to load, try using their static key for diffie-hellman: 0x00000000.

Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#26

Post by cesarb »

propter_hoc wrote: post #3

This is a remarkable story. Fortunately, this ETSI-backed "ETS" standard appears to have just about zero uptake or internet presence, let alone vendor acceptance. So although this is fairly outrageous based on the EFF article, it doesn't look like something that's a big threat to TLS at this point. PS. I can't even get ETSI's website to load! https://www.etsi.org/

It could be a threat to TLS if they manage to convince NIST to recommend their variant instead of the TLS standard.

Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#27

Post by excalibur »

hsk0823 wrote: post #5
Spivak wrote: post #2

So what's the argument from the other side? Going through all this effort to allow PFS to be disabled seems like a ton of work? What's their use-case?

There's a whole IT market segment around TLS decryption for corporate LAN. Basically corporate MITM that will decrypt TLS at the gateway / firewall, and with currently used TLS standards, will then re encrypt the traffic back to the client so the browser thinks it has a legit connection. It's used to scan packets for intrusion detection, for malware, to track for data loss like the article talks about.

But you don't NEED to kill forward secrecy to do that. TLS 1.3 doesn't seem to be a problem for the anti-malware, IPS, or even DLP use cases. You just need to decrypt, inspect, and re-encrypt traffic at the firewall, using a CA cert trusted by your clients. The problem is lazy organizations that just want to passively collect all of the encrypted traffic and then decrypt it later at their leisure, which smells much more like surveillance than security.

Re: ETS Isn't TLS and You Shouldn't Use It

#28

Post by trhway »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #13

Funny how word 'Enterprise' picks up more and more negative connotation in modern software world. These days, 'enterprise' means outdated, inflexible and intentionally flawed monster of technology.

dont forget the enterprise processes (in software for example it would be Agile/Scrum/Lean/Six Sigma/etc.) and the enterprise people deformed by them. Archaeologically speaking it is a whole culture layer :)
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