[Standards] Re: LAST CALL: XEP-0440 (SASL Channel-Binding Type Capability)

Sorry for not chiming in earlier. I've been very busy lately. Channel-binding in the xmpp-ecosystem is currently only widely deployed through SCRAM (even though some PAKE mechanism could be used with channel- binding, too). So I will only cover the SCRAM case here. In SCRAM (RFC 5802) the client-first-message contains 3 possible values in the GSS-header part: 1. y - The client would have used channel-binding, but the server did not offer any. 2. n - The client does not support channel-binding (even if the server offered any). 3. p=<cb-name> - The name of the channel-binding, the client wants to use. The RFC explains, that sending "y" when the server advertised channel-binding support is to be used as a MITM-detection: An attacker stripping out all *-PLUS variants can be detected this way (the server knows it advertised them and the client says via "y", that it would have used them if it saw them, so the server can abort the authentication in this case). This works reasonably well, if there is only one single channel-binding possible. But that's the exact assumption this XEP is going to change: it is possible to advertise a list of different channel-bindings for the client to choose. That's good for protocol agility, something that's important enough to have algorithm negotiation in TLS, for example. I think we all can agree here, that protocol agility is important and so this XEP is needed. So now we have a problem: what to do if the server advertised a list of channel-binding algorithms, but the client doesn't support any of these? In the non-attacker case, the client can't send "y" in the GSS-header, because the server would then abort the authentication because it advertised channel- bindings. But sending "n" and continuing without channel-binding is fine in this case. This isn't fully hypothetical. An older client might only support tls-unique, while the server only advertises tls-exporter (which can be used for tls 1.2, too, if the extended master secret is used). Blocking the connection entirely is of course at the discretion of the client developer, but it hinders interoperability, especially while phasing out one channel-binding-type and introducing a new one. Now the attacker case: Any MITM-attacker could just manipulate the list of channel-bindings advertised using this XEP to just list some dummy mechanisms (or mechanisms they know the client doesn't support). That would successfully downgrade the client to non-channel-binding, if the client still sent "n" as above. The client won't be able to distinguish the attacker case from the non- attacker one. How to fix this while not hindering interoperability? Implementing XEP-0474 is one option (and an even better one). But for defence-in-depth and to support cases when this isn't possible (for example when the SCRAM library used doesn't support adding optional attributes), a few years back I proposed to add a countermeasure to this XEP (the part we are discussing in this thread): Having a MUST to implement and advertise tls-server-end-point when advertising channel-binding types using this XEP. Tls-server-end-point is the lowest denominator that can be implemented by virtually everyone and even though it isn't as strong as tls-exporter or tls- unique, it still catches many attacks (it would have detected the jabber.ru one, for example). Now with this MUST in place, a client seeing a list without tls-sever-end- point advertised, immediately knows, that some attacker tampered with the list of channel-bindings and can abort the authentication. It never needs to send "n" even though it supports channel-binding and can still safely send "y" if it doesn't see any *-PLUS variants and channel-bindings announced. (Short note: making this a SHOULD or MAY contradicts this, it has to be a MUST here.) Note: I do not have any objection to move that MUST into another section of the XEP if you think, that the Security Considerations section is the wrong place for this. And I equally don't object adding more explanation why this MUST is necessary to the XEP as well. Additional note: no, I completely disagree with Daniel's opinion that we will eventually be able to have channel binding enabled by default at all times for the same reasons Holger has, but that's off-topic. -tmolitor Am Mittwoch, 22. Oktober 2025, 13:29:38 CEST schrieb Florian Schmaus: