[Operators] Fwd: [jdev] TLS Everywhere

[Jesse Thompson]

On 10/29/2013 12:59 PM, Dave Cridland wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter at stpeter.im
> <mailto:stpeter at stpeter.im>> wrote:
>
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>     On 10/29/13 11:40 AM, Jesse Thompson wrote:
>      > On 10/28/2013 2:52 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>      >> On 10/28/13 1:41 PM, Jesse Thompson wrote:
>      >>> Are there more details?  Specifically, does "hop-by-hop
>      >>> encryption using SSL/TLS" require strong association between a
>      >>> domain name and an XML stream as described in
>      >>> draft-ietf-xmpp-dna-04?
>      >>
>      >> We, as a community, need to figure out what we can do.
>      >>
>      >> Realistically, I think we need to prefer authenticated encryption
>      >> via PKI, POSH, or DNSSEC/DANE and fall back to opportunistic
>      >> encryption via TLS + dialback.
>      >
>      > So, the presumption is that servers which aren't capable of at
>      > least TLS+dialback will be cut off?
>
>     Yes.
>
>     Now, this is a proposal, not an ultimatum. We, as a community, need to
>     come to a decision about whether this is a reasonable course of
>     action. However, I do think we owe it to the users of our services to
>     provide a higher level of security.
>
>
> Also, if phrased right, we could say that the Good Servers talk with
> each other securely, but they may also have exceptions to deal with
> legacy services which do not yet perform full security.

If being an exception is the past of least resistance - for both the 
operator needing to change as well as the operator who is compelled to 
enforce the change - then how do you prevent everyone from being an 
exception?

I like the proposal to "provide user or administrative interfaces 
showing [TLS details]" because that has the potential to cause end-users 
to bug their service operators to implement better security, which will 
cause service operators to bug server developers to implement new 
security features.

That seems like something that can start phasing in right away.

Is it reasonable to expect the popular XMPP clients to begin showing TLS 
information to end-users earlier in the proposed timeline?

Jesse