Hi all,

We're seeking feedback on our plans regarding support for Finite-Field DHE (also known as FFDH(E), as opposed to the Elliptic Curve version, ECDH(E)).

Currently the PSA Crypto API only supports FFDH with named groups, which aligns well with modern cryptographic practice and the needs of TLS 1.3, but less well with TLS 1.2 where arbitrary parameters can be chosen by the server, leading to various interoperability and security issues (see the introduction of RFC 7919, hence the general move to named groups).

Some data suggests that FFDH is already seeing very little use (less than 1% of TLS 1.2 traffic) on major websites, and presumably this would be even less when constrained devices are involved, since ECDH is less resource-intensive.

So, we are currently planning on removing support for DHE-RSA and DHE-PSK key exchanges in TLS 1.2 in the next major version of Mbed TLS. We would retain support of ECDHE in TLS 1.2, and of DHE (in addition to ECDHE) in TLS 1.3. (Support for FFDH in TLS 1.2 would also be present in the LTS version released around the same time as the next major version.)

If you have any objection to this plan, please let us know about your use case and motivations, either by responding to this email, or by commenting on the corresponding github issue: https://github.com/Mbed-TLS/mbedtls/issues/5278 Thank you!

Best regards,

Manuel for the Mbed TLS team.