OpenSSL: discard expired resumption session in client

[exim.git] / doc / doc-txt / experimental-spec.txt

diff --git a/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt b/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt
index 2f1e5c59194a897481784465d4ac9a0184350478..f304cf455127cef1e58afd1510e3fdc6182d0243 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt
+++ b/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt
@@ -951,6 +951,63 @@ Transport configurations should be checked for this.  An example avoidance:
 
 
 
+TLS Session Resumption
+----------------------
+TLS Session Resumption for TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3 connections can be used (defined
+in RFC 5077 for 1.2).  The support for this can be included by building with
+EXPERIMENTAL_TLS_RESUME defined.  This requires GnuTLS 3.6.3 or OpenSSL 1.1.1
+(or later).
+
+Session resumption (this is the "stateless" variant) involves the server sending
+a "session ticket" to the client on one connection, which can be stored by the
+client and used for a later session.  The ticket contains sufficient state for
+the server to reconstruct the TLS session, avoiding some expensive crypto
+calculation and one full packet roundtrip time.
+
+Operational cost/benefit:
+ The extra data being transmitted costs a minor amount, and the client has
+ extra costs in storing and retrieving the data.
+
+ In the Exim/Gnutls implementation the extra cost on an initial connection
+ which is TLS1.2 over a loopback path is about 6ms on 2017-laptop class hardware.
+ The saved cost on a subsequent connection is about 4ms; three or more
+ connections become a net win.  On longer network paths, two or more
+ connections will have an average lower startup time thanks to the one
+ saved packet roundtrip.  TLS1.3 will save the crypto cpu costs but not any
+ packet roundtrips.
+
+ Since a new hints DB is used, the hints DB maintenance should be updated
+ to additionally handle "tls".
+
+Security aspects:
+ The session ticket is encrypted, but is obviously an additional security
+ vulnarability surface.  An attacker able to decrypt it would have access
+ all connections using the resumed session.
+ The session ticket encryption key is not committed to storage by the server
+ and is rotated regularly.  Tickets have limited lifetime.
+
+ There is a question-mark over the security of the Diffie-Helman parameters
+ used for session negotiation. TBD.  q-value; cf bug 1895
+
+Observability:
+ New log_selector "tls_resumption", appends an asterisk to the tls_cipher "X="
+ element.
+
+ Variables $tls_{in,out}_resumption have bits 0-4 indicating respectively
+ support built, client requested ticket, client offered session,
+ server issued ticket, resume used.  A suitable decode list is provided
+ in the builtin macro _RESUME_DECODE for ${listextract {}{}}.
+
+Issues:
+ In a resumed session:
+  $tls_{in,out}_certificate_verified will be set, and verify = certificate
+    will be true, when verify failed but tls_try_verify_hosts allowed the
+    connection (under OpenSSL)
+  $tls_{in,out}_cipher will have values different to the original (under GnuTLS)
+  $tls_{in,out}_ocsp will be "not requested" or "no response", and
+  hosts_require_ocsp will fail
+
+
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