[Python-Dev] evolving the SSL module API (original) (raw)

Jesse Noller jnoller at gmail.com
Thu Sep 10 21:17:33 CEST 2009

There's also the patch to httplib that Devin Cook has been working on for SSL enhancements, some of which do name checking. He's got most of a patch completed.

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Bill Janssen <janssen at parc.com> wrote:

Heikki, I'm OK with this, too.  would you like to propose an extended API for the SSL module?  That would give us a starting point to talk about.

This should probably be a PEP, just for the sake of writing things down. As you say, the hostname checking feature seems to me possibly appropriate for some application protocols, though it's made the use of HTTPS as a transport-level protocol unnecessarily confusing and buggy. I don't see putting that into the SSL module as a default, but perhaps a utility function in that module, to check a server-side cert against a hostname, is a good idea. Bill

Heikki Toivonen <htoivonen at spikesource.com> wrote: Bill Janssen wrote: > OK, seems reasonable.  Thanks.  In the near term, can you do this with > M2Crypto or PyOpenSSL? > > When I started this update in 2007, we were trying to keep the API > simple to avoid confusing people and avoid competition with the two > full-fledged toolkits out there.  But I don't see any real reason not to > extend the API a bit.

Speaking as the M2Crypto maintainer, I don't mind the stdlib competing with M2Crypto/getting better at SSL. In fact, I would actually like to see the stdlib SSL implementation getting good enough so that people would not need M2Crypto for SSL (except maybe in special circumstances). There is much M2Crypto does besides SSL so this wouldn't even obsolete it. One of the main things IMO missing from stdlib SSL implementation is hostname checking by default (with override option), but I know you and I have different opinions on this. I would be happy to provide patches against the stdlib SSL implementation for some things M2Crypto does that the stdlib SSL module is missing if we could agree on the features/design first. Simple is good, but I'd like the defaults to be secure and commonly overridden things to be overrideable. -- Heikki Toivonen

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