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[ietf-smtp] When using TLS, would randomizing the order of the EHLO response be helpful?

2013-03-21 02:46:58
This is a question for folks that actually know crypto, and also know SMTP.

A common theme of many of the recent statistical attacks on TLS (BEAST, Lucky 13, the ABPPS RC4 attack) has been knowing that some early part of the plaintext was constant. Knowing that some of the early bytes are limited to a range, or even fully known, was even more helpful.

On every SMTP server in the world, the first 100 to 250 bytes send by the server after TLS negotiation completes are both constant and known: they're the EHLO response. So that got me wondering if randomizing the EHLO response could be helpful in mitigating statistical attacks. Obviously the degree of "randomizing" is limited; RFC 5321 requires the first line to be the FQDN of the receiver, and every line will contain "\r\n\220-". The most I can do is randomize whole lines. But I don't have an intuitive feel for what might be effective in disrupting these statistical code-breaking techniques; hence the question.

I fully understand that fixing the vulnerabilities is much more important, but with RC4 in particular I'm wondering about hacks that might keep it a little more secure, a little bit longer.

<csg>
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