[gnutls-dev] starttls

Nikos Mavroyanopoulos nmav@gnutls.org
Sat Feb 16 00:42:01 2002


On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 07:14:54PM +0000, Andrew McDonald wrote:

> > RSA key exchange. The drawback is that DHE_RSA requires more 
> > calculations, than plain RSA, thus many servers disable it.
> Well, the mutt/gnutls patch gives:
> const int kx_priority[] =
>   {GNUTLS_KX_X509PKI_DHE_RSA, GNUTLS_KX_X509PKI_RSA, 0};
> as the priority, is it worth suggesting he tries swapping them?
They are fine, no need for swap.

> Looking up HOSTNAME...
> Connecting to HOSTNAME...
> *** Keeping ciphersuite: X509PKI_DHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHa
> *** Keeping ciphersuite: X509PKI_DHE_RSA_RIJNDAEL_128_CBC_SHA
> *** Keeping ciphersuite: X509PKI_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA
> *** Keeping ciphersuite: X509PKI_RSA_RIJNDAEL_128_CBC_SHA
> Handshake: CLIENT HELLO was send [52 bytes]
> GNUTLS_ASSERT: gnutls_buffers.c:853
> GNUTLS_ASSERT: gnutls_handshake.c:752
> GNUTLS_ASSERT: gnutls_handshake.c:880
> GNUTLS_ASSERT: gnutls_handshake.c:1757
> GNUTLS Error: recv hello (-12)
> gnutls_handshake: FATAL_ALERT_RECEIVED
Wow that's strange. I can think some reasons though:

1. The server only accepts SSLv2 hellos
  - If this is the case (i wouldn't vote for this), the server
    is broken. Try connecting with openssl s_client -tls1 to
    check this.

2. The server has one certificate with DSS parameters
  - This can be solved only by updating to gnutls 0.4.0 
    (when it's released)

3. The server does not like our extensions.
  - can be solved by disabling SRP and not using the max_record_size
   extension.

4. We send a broken hello message
  - Can be tested by enabling WRITE_DEBUG and sending me the
   output.


> Andrew
> -- 
> Andrew McDonald
> E-mail: andrew@mcdonald.org.uk
> http://www.mcdonald.org.uk/andrew/



-- 
Nikos Mavroyanopoulos
mailto:nmav@gnutls.org