[Help-gnutls] client hello refused

[kyle cronan]

Hello,

My question is about how to debug the situation where the TLS server
closes the connection right after the client hello message is sent
(gnutls 1.4.5).  I didn't have much luck searching the list archives
for hello!

Looking at what's in an SSL/TLS hello, perhaps cipher_suites,
compression_methods and client_version are candidates for causing
trouble?  I believe I tried all the different client versions using
--protocols, and I see from gnutls_handshake.c that the extensions are
only sent if we're using a TLS version, not SSL3.  So it shouldn't be
a protocol extension that's causing the problem either.  That just
leaves ciphers and compression methods.  But wouldn't I get an error
like "could not negotiate a supported cipher suite"?  Have servers
been known to just close the connection without giving a handshake
failure?

Unfortunately the server software is some unknown black box type
stuff.  It does work with openssl s_client though (0.9.7a), even when
I select various single ciphers with the -cipher option.

Thanks,
Kyle Cronan
<kyle at pbx.org>