[NNTP] RC4 TLS cipher with NNTP

Julien ÉLIE julien at trigofacile.com
Tue Sep 1 12:46:52 PDT 2015


Hi all,

The recently published RFC 7465 prohibits the use of RC4 cipher suites: 
  "This document requires that TLS clients and servers never negotiate 
the use of RC4 cipher suites."

Yet, our RFC 4642 about the use of TLS with NNTP states:

    NNTP client and server implementations MUST implement the
    TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 cipher suite and SHOULD implement the
    TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA cipher suite.  This is
    important, as it assures that any two compliant implementations can
    be configured to interoperate.  All other cipher suites are OPTIONAL.


There is a discrepancy now between these two RFCs.  Shouldn't something 
be done about that?  Interoperability will be broken in NNTP as 
TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA is not mandatory.  Furthermore, that 
chipher suite may also become unsecure one day...

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« – Nous voyageons plus vite que la lumière !
   – Alors comment y voir clair dans tout ça ? » (Astérix)


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