[openssl-dev] [PATCH] better ordering of cipher suites, always prefer GCM/AEAD over CBC

[Hanno Böck]

Hi,

Please see attached patch which changes the ordering of the cipher
suites in openssl.
It makes the mac algorithm the main criterion for the cipher sorting,
with the intent to always prefer AEAD ciphersuites over non-AEAD
ciphersuites.

The main reason for that is that right now in a lot of situations a cbc
ciphersuite will be preferred over a gcm cipher suite. This is not
good, because gcm ciphersuites are the only ones that haven't suffered
from attacks in the past.

It may be argued whether another cipher suite ordering is better, but I
think this is definitely much better than the current state. These days
the key size is only a very weak indicator of a cipher's strength.

I just saw yesterday that 1.0.2 is about to be released. I had hoped we
could get something like this patch in before. Is there a chance to do
that? Or could it be considered for one of the follow-up versions
(1.0.2a/b)? I would prefer not having to wait with that till 1.1.0.


cu,
-- 
Hanno Böck
http://hboeck.de/

mail/jabber: hanno at hboeck.de
GPG: BBB51E42
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