Re: 7.3.1 stamped

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002, Nathan Mueller wrote:

> > At this point, all the SSL2 problems are conjecture on my part, which
> > I
> > don't understand. I hesitate to do anything until someone really
> > knowledgeable can comment. Re-enabling SSL2 as part of 7.3.1 makes
> > sense until we can get a definative answer on the risks involved.
>
> I'm not an expert, but as far as I know the only real differences
> between SSLv2 and v3 (which isn't different from TLSv1 from a security
> standpoint) are some things to prevent some man in the middle attacks.
>
> Thing is, most man in the middle attacks aren't that advanced. The
> attacker will intercept your attempt to connect to the server, do
> a handshake with you, do a handshake with the server and just sit
> in between. The only way (that I know of) to defend against this
> is to use certified public keys and I don't know of a way to do
> that with postgres.
>
> In short, I wouldn't call SSLv2 insecure, just less secure then v3. I
> think it's perfectly reasonable to phase it out, just not right now.
> It'd be nice to have some sort of transition version so you wouldn't
> have to switch over all your different client programs at the same time
> you switch all the servers. My preference would be for backwords
> compatibility in 7.3 and then eliminate it or provide a compile time
> option in 7.4. If the client stays with TLSv1 newer clients will only
> use the more secure protocols and older clients will still have the same
> problems they did before. I don't think that's too much of a problem.

Actually, would be nice if someone submit'd a patch that make choosing
which method a configure option :)

If nobody else does it, I'll try after I get back from my folks after the
holidays ...