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0 pointssyzzer12y ago0 comments

You don't need another layer of encryption, just another layer of authentication protects you from attacks that require an active mitm adversary (as basically all attacks on TLS do).

OpenVPN has offered such an option for a long time: https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/Hardening#Useof--...

This wraps just the TLS control channel, which has low traffic and thus results in a small overhead. The data channel is separated from TLS in OpenVPN, which is why TLS-auth does not add overhead to the actual network packet encapsulation. TLS-auth is a neat feature and everybody should use it.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

peterwwillis12y ago· 2 in thread

Since tls-auth merely creates an HMAC around all the TLS message types, it makes me wonder if there's still an aspect of initiating a TLS connection (or flaws in the HMAC generation?) that could leave tls-auth vulnerable to future TLS-related flaws. But that could be excessive paranoia.

agwa12y ago

I think that whether tls-auth protects you against CCS Injection will hinge not on the HMAC but on tls-auth's replay protection. An attacker can always replay a previously-sniffed CCS packet with a valid HMAC, so it all comes down to whether that replay will be properly discarded.

JoachimSchipper12y ago

tls-auth does prevent replays: note the "packet-id for replay protection" at http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/secur....

OpenVPN does a pretty good job, as long as you choose a sane configuration (most importantly, use tls-auth and TLS key negotiation). It's definitely less vulnerable than other TLS stuff due to the tls-auth option.

(Full disclosure: my company provides the hardened OpenVPN-NL, and I've done a little work on that.)

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