Subject: Re: [TLS] [Cfrg] Formal request from TLS WG to CFRG for new elliptic curves

From: Peter Gutmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 10:40:15 +0000

"Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]> writes:
>> TLS 1.2 offered no compelling advantages.
>
>Yes.  TLS 1.3 will offer some good reasons to adopt, from the simplicity,
>security, privacy, and efficiency areas.  The comparison to TLS 1.2 doesn't
>hold.

TLS 1.3 will also offer a really strong reason to defer adoption for as long
as possible: Unlike the previous tweaks of SSL, which did lead to the
frankensteinian implementation we have to deal with now but at least were
close to the original, TLS 1.3 is pretty much an entirely new protocol.  I
have no idea what it'll end up looking like once the design committee has
finished adding every feature everyone's ever wanted in a protocol to it, but
it's most likely going to be TLS 2.0 even if it's called TLS 1.3.  That means
a completely new implementation from scratch rather than trying to add yet
another layer to what started long ago as an SSL implementation, and deploying
a new protocol up against SSL/TLS, even if it's sold as TLS-something, will be
a huge uphill battle.  Look at how long TLS 1.2 adoption took, outside of web
browsers it's still very much the exception rather than the rule (and even for
web browsers there are some amazing calisthenics they perform in order to make
things work for non-TLS 1.2 servers and devices).

Peter.