How to configure Dovecot to disable NIST's curves and still rertain EECDH?

Kurt Fitzner kurt+dove at va1der.ca
Wed Dec 19 05:39:55 EET 2018


I am interested in configuring Dovecot's TLS so as to retain forward
secrecy, but eliminate all of NIST's elliptic curves. 

Besides being subject to side channel attacks [1], in some quarters
there is a general distrust of NIST's curves and any of their other
cryptographic primitives after the Dual EC DRBG debacle. 

>From what I can tell, the following will prevent the use of NIST's
curves (along with other dangerous primitives) in Dovecot, but this is
accomplished by simply disabling EECDH entirely.

ssl_cipher_list = HIGH:!DSS:!EECDH:!ECDH:!SHA1:!aNULL:!eNULL:@STRENGTH

This should still retain forward secrecy through the use of EDH, but
this doesn't leave much in the way of allowable algorithms on my server:

$ openssl ciphers -V
'HIGH:!DSS:!EECDH:!ECDH:!SHA1:!aNULL:!eNULL:@STRENGTH'
  0x00,0x9F - DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=DH       Au=RSA 
Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD
  0x00,0x6B - DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256   TLSv1.2 Kx=DH       Au=RSA 
Enc=AES(256)  Mac=SHA256
  0x00,0x9D - AES256-GCM-SHA384       TLSv1.2 Kx=RSA      Au=RSA 
Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD
  0x00,0x3D - AES256-SHA256           TLSv1.2 Kx=RSA      Au=RSA 
Enc=AES(256)  Mac=SHA256
  0x00,0x9E - DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 TLSv1.2 Kx=DH       Au=RSA 
Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD
  0x00,0x67 - DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256   TLSv1.2 Kx=DH       Au=RSA 
Enc=AES(128)  Mac=SHA256
  0x00,0x9C - AES128-GCM-SHA256       TLSv1.2 Kx=RSA      Au=RSA 
Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD
  0x00,0x3C - AES128-SHA256           TLSv1.2 Kx=RSA      Au=RSA 
Enc=AES(128)  Mac=SHA256

Is there a better way to do this? Is there a way to disable only the
suspect NIST curves and still retain EECDH but with side-channel safe
curves like X25519? 

Thanks, 

       Kurt Fitzner 

  

Links:
------
[1] https://blog.cr.yp.to/20140323-ecdsa.html
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