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BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

#2
Note that this happens even when using a BlueCoat proxy in non-MITM mode. BlueCoat tries to "analyze" TLS connections, and rejects anything it doesn't understand. This exact issue occurred with TLS 1.2 back when BlueCoat only understood 1.1/1.0.

In this case, it doesn't sound like they're reverting it because of overall breakage, but rather because it breaks the tool that would otherwise be used to control TLS 1.3 trials and other configuration. Firefox had a similar issue, where they temporarily used more conservative settings for their updater than for the browser itself, to ensure that people could always obtain updates that might improve the situation.

Re: BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

#3

Note that this happens even when using a BlueCoat proxy in non-MITM mode. BlueCoat tries to "analyze" TLS connections, and rejects anything it doesn't understand. This exact issue occurred with TLS 1.2 back when BlueCoat only understood 1.1/1.0. In this case, it doesn't sound like they're reverting it because of overall breakage, but rather because it breaks the tool that would otherwise be used to control TLS 1.3 tr…

Rejecting anything it doesn't understand sounds like a bug to me. If it sees that it's TLS, it should attempt a protocol downgrade. There's absolutely no reason for this to break, as TLS 1.3 exists alongside TLS 1.2 (For now).

Re: BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

#4

Note that this happens even when using a BlueCoat proxy in non-MITM mode. BlueCoat tries to "analyze" TLS connections, and rejects anything it doesn't understand. This exact issue occurred with TLS 1.2 back when BlueCoat only understood 1.1/1.0. In this case, it doesn't sound like they're reverting it because of overall breakage, but rather because it breaks the tool that would otherwise be used to control TLS 1.3 tr…

Ridiculously conservative middleboxes are why we can't have nice things and why we need to encrypt all new protocols, security properties aside.

Re: BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

#5
post #3

Note that this happens even when using a BlueCoat proxy in non-MITM mode. BlueCoat tries to "analyze" TLS connections, and rejects anything it doesn't understand. This exact issue occurred with TLS 1.2 back when BlueCoat only understood 1.1/1.0. In this case, it doesn't sound like they're reverting it because of overall breakage, but rather because it breaks the tool that would otherwise be used to control TLS 1.3 tr…

Rejecting anything it doesn't understand sounds like a bug to me. If it sees that it's TLS, it should attempt a protocol downgrade. There's absolutely no reason for this to break, as TLS 1.3 exists alongside TLS 1.2 (For now).

The surprising part (or maybe not) is that BlueCoat had been made aware of this change months ago and never got around properly testing it. This one of the softwares main purpose, and the fact that they didn't even make sure it works on the newest Chrome, leading to such a mess, is pretty sad.

Re: BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

#6

Note that this happens even when using a BlueCoat proxy in non-MITM mode. BlueCoat tries to "analyze" TLS connections, and rejects anything it doesn't understand. This exact issue occurred with TLS 1.2 back when BlueCoat only understood 1.1/1.0. In this case, it doesn't sound like they're reverting it because of overall breakage, but rather because it breaks the tool that would otherwise be used to control TLS 1.3 tr…

BlueCoat are an incredibly evil company that are breaking the internet.

Re: BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

#7
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rejecting anything it doesn't understand sounds like a bug to me. If it sees that it's TLS, it should attempt a protocol downgrade. There's absolutely no reason for this to break, as TLS 1.3 exists alongside TLS 1.2 (For now).

The surprising part (or maybe not) is that BlueCoat had been made aware of this change months ago and never got around properly testing it. This one of the softwares main purpose, and the fact that they didn't even make sure it works on the newest Chrome, leading to such a mess, is pretty sad.

[deleted]

Re: BlueCoat and other proxies hang up during TLS 1.3

#8

Note that this happens even when using a BlueCoat proxy in non-MITM mode. BlueCoat tries to "analyze" TLS connections, and rejects anything it doesn't understand. This exact issue occurred with TLS 1.2 back when BlueCoat only understood 1.1/1.0. In this case, it doesn't sound like they're reverting it because of overall breakage, but rather because it breaks the tool that would otherwise be used to control TLS 1.3 tr…

This exact issue occurred with TLS 1.2 back when BlueCoat only understood 1.1/1.0.

Good grief! From David Benjamin's final comment:

Note these issues are always bugs in the middlebox products. TLS version negotiation is backwards compatible, so a correctly-implemented TLS-terminating proxy should not require changes to work in a TLS-1.3-capable ecosystem. It can simply speak TLS 1.2 at both client proxy and proxy server TLS connections. That these products broke is an indication of defects in their TLS implementations.

It's understandable that I've never heard of BlueCoat: clearly this product's success is based more on selling to executives than on quality, and it has been some time since I worked in an organization that had executives to sell to.

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