RFR: 8262880: Add support for the NSS Key Log Format for SSL/TLS keys

[raell at web.de]

Hi all, 

I very much appreciate @SalusaSecondus' idea for providing a key logger. 

For, when working with networks, it's quite natural to analyze message flow 
with help of wireshark. In TLS 1.3 this isn't possible without a key log 
because most parts of the handshake messages are encrypted. So, if both, 
client and server, are Java apps, it isn't possible to trace the message flow 
with wireshark. That's a great disadvantage. 

To give an example: I'm running a https client based on SSLEngine and an 
AsynchronousSocketChannel. The entries in the log provided by javax.net.debug=ssl 
arise from SSLEngine, but the messages itself are sent by the channel. So it is 
not possible to check what messages are actually sent over the network 
(I could have made a programming error in using the data provided by 
the SSLEngine or something could go wrong within the channel). 
Therefore, being able to produce a key log on the Java client side and 
to observe the messages and their content in wireshark, would be very 
helpful.

Concerning the security issue: Of course, holding keys is always a risk. 
But if one stores the output of javax.net.debug in a file, then an attacker 
who has access to the system could read decrypted messages as well. But, of 
course, the implementation of a key logger in Java has to ensure that no 
key log is produced by default but only if it is explicitly enabled 
(similar to javax.net.debug). 

I would be very glad if there would be a chance to implement @SalusaSecondus' 
proposal in some way because a key logger would be really helpful for 
doing networking with Java. 

Regards, 

Ralph 

 
 
 

Gesendet: Freitag, 19. März 2021 um 13:48 Uhr
Von: "Sean Mullan" <mullan at openjdk.java.net>
An: security-dev at openjdk.java.net
Betreff: Re: RFR: 8262880: Add support for the NSS Key Log Format for SSL/TLS keys
On Thu, 18 Mar 2021 21:26:28 GMT, SalusaSecondus <github.com+829871+SalusaSecondus at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> It is not good practice to leave secret information in debug log. Also, it may be not a good practice to introduce new logger format, including file and NSS format, into the SSLLogger. Someone also may want to introduce log format for MSS or XSS as well. Instead, please consider to make use of the features of Java Logger if you want to write the log to files, or use any special format.
>
> @XueleiFan I'd really like to move this forward but I'm uncertain what changes you want me to make. This extra debugging information will be very valuable to those of us debugging Java TLS connections.

I am also not comfortable adding this feature to the JDK, especially since every build of the JDK would by default have this feature enabled. Logging sensitive information to log files is not good security practice (there are many references I could cite). I also think it would be too easy to accidentally leave the system property enabled or forget to remove the file.

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PR: https://git.openjdk.java.net/jdk/pull/2896