Negotiating the SCRAM channel binding type
Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>
From: Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>
To: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2018-07-11T09:27:33Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Currently, there is no negotiation of the channel binding type between client and server. The server advertises that it supports channel binding, or not, and the client decides what channel binding to use. If the server doesn't support the binding type that the client chose, authentication will fail. Based on recent discussions, it looks like there's going to be differences in this area [1]. OpenSSL can support both tls-unique and tls-server-end-point. Java only supports tls-server-end-point, while GnuTLS only supports tls-unique. And Mac OS Secure Transports supports neither one. Furthermore, it's not clear how TLS v1.3 affects this. tls-unique might no longer be available in TLS v1.3, but we might get new channel binding types to replace it. So this is about to get really messy, if there is no way to negotiate. (Yes, it's going to be messy even with negotiation.) I think we must fix that before we release v11, because this affects the protocol. There needs to be a way for the server to advertise what channel binding types it supports. I propose that the server list each supported channel binding type as a separate SASL mechanism. For example, where currently the server lists: SCRAM-SHA-256-PLUS SCRAM-SHA-256 as the supported mechanisms, we change that into: SCRAM-SHA-256-PLUS tls-unique SCRAM-SHA-256-PLUS tls-server-end-point SCRAM-SHA-256 Thoughts? Unfortunately this breaks compatibility with current v11beta clients, but IMHO we must fix this. If we want to alleviate that, and save a few bytes of network traffic, we could decide that plain "SCRAM-SHA-256-PLUS" implies tls-unique, so the list would be: SCRAM-SHA-256-PLUS SCRAM-SHA-256-PLUS tls-server-end-point SCRAM-SHA-256 That would be mostly compatible with current libpq clients. [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/20180122072936.GB1772%40paquier.xyz - Heikki
Commits
-
Remove support for tls-unique channel binding.
- 1b7378b3d689 11.0 landed
- 77291139c7c1 12.0 landed