Client                                               Server

         ClientHello
         + early_data
         + key_share*
         + psk_key_exchange_modes
         + pre_shared_key
         (Application Data*)     -------->
                                                         ServerHello
                                                    + pre_shared_key
                                                        + key_share*
                                               {EncryptedExtensions}
                                                          {Finished}
                                 <--------       [Application Data*]
         (EndOfEarlyData)
         {Finished}              -------->

         [Application Data]      <------->        [Application Data]

               *  Indicates optional or situation-dependent
                  messages/extensions that are not always sent.

               () Indicates messages protected using keys
                  derived from client_early_traffic_secret.

               {} Indicates messages protected using keys
                  derived from a [sender]_handshake_traffic_secret.

               [] Indicates messages protected using keys
                  derived from traffic_secret_N

Figure 4: Message flow for a zero round trip handshake

IMPORTANT NOTE: The security properties for 0-RTT data are weaker than those for other kinds of TLS data. Specifically:

1. This data is not forward secret, as it is encrypted solely under keys derived using the offered PSK.
2. There are no guarantees of non-replay between connections. Unless the server takes special measures outside those provided by TLS, the server has no guarantee that the same 0-RTT data was not transmitted on multiple 0-RTT connections (see Section 4.2.8.3 for more details). This is especially relevant if the data is authenticated either with TLS client authentication or inside the application layer protocol. However, 0-RTT data cannot be duplicated within a connection (i.e., the server will not process the same data twice for the same connection) and an attacker will not be able to make 0-RTT data appear to be 1-RTT data (because it is protected with different keys.)

Protocols MUST NOT use 0-RTT data without a profile that defines its use. That profile needs to identify which messages or interactions are safe to use with 0-RTT. In addition, to avoid accidental misuse, implementations SHOULD NOT enable 0-RTT unless specifically requested. Implementations SHOULD provide special functions for 0-RTT data to ensure that an application is always aware that it is sending or receiving data that might be replayed.

The same warnings apply to any use of the early_exporter_secret.

The remainder of this document provides a detailed description of TLS.

3. Presentation Language

This document deals with the formatting of data in an external representation. The following very basic and somewhat casually defined presentation syntax will be used.

3.1. Basic Block Size

The representation of all data items is explicitly specified. The basic data block size is one byte (i.e., 8 bits). Multiple byte data items are concatenations of bytes, from left to right, from top to bottom. From the byte stream, a multi-byte item (a numeric in the example) is formed (using C notation) by:

   value = (byte[0] << 8*(n-1)) | (byte[1] << 8*(n-2)) |
           ... | byte[n-1];

This byte ordering for multi-byte values is the commonplace network byte order or big-endian format.

3.2. Miscellaneous

Comments begin with “/*” and end with “*/”.

Optional components are denoted by enclosing them in “[[ ]]” double brackets.

Single-byte entities containing uninterpreted data are of type opaque.

3.3. Vectors

A vector (single-dimensioned array) is a stream of homogeneous data elements. The size of the vector may be specified at documentation time or left unspecified until runtime. In either case, the length declares the number of bytes, not the number of elements, in the vector. The syntax for specifying a new type, T’, that is a fixed-length vector of type T is

   T T'[n];

Here, T’ occupies n bytes in the data stream, where n is a multiple of the size of T. The length of the vector is not included in the encoded stream.

In the following example, Datum is defined to be three consecutive bytes that the protocol does not interpret, while Data is three consecutive Datum, consuming a total of nine bytes.

   opaque Datum[3];      /* three uninterpreted bytes */
   Datum Data[9];        /* 3 consecutive 3-byte vectors */

Variable-length vectors are defined by specifying a subrange of legal lengths, inclusively, using the notation <floor..ceiling>. When these are encoded, the actual length precedes the vector’s contents in the byte stream. The length will be in the form of a number consuming as many bytes as required to hold the vector’s specified maximum (ceiling) length. A variable-length vector with an actual length field of zero is referred to as an empty vector.

   T T'<floor..ceiling>;

In the following example, mandatory is a vector that must contain between 300 and 400 bytes of type opaque. It can never be empty. The actual length field consumes two bytes, a uint16, which is sufficient to represent the value 400 (see Section 3.4). On the other hand, longer can represent up to 800 bytes of data, or 400 uint16 elements, and it may be empty. Its encoding will include a two-byte actual length field prepended to the vector. The length of an encoded vector must be an exact multiple of the length of a single element (e.g., a 17-byte vector of uint16 would be illegal).

   opaque mandatory<300..400>;
         /* length field is 2 bytes, cannot be empty */
   uint16 longer<0..800>;
         /* zero to 400 16-bit unsigned integers */

3.4. Numbers

The basic numeric data type is an unsigned byte (uint8). All larger numeric data types are formed from fixed-length series of bytes concatenated as described in Section 3.1 and are also unsigned. The following numeric types are predefined.

   uint8 uint16[2];
   uint8 uint24[3];
   uint8 uint32[4];
   uint8 uint64[8];

All values, here and elsewhere in the specification, are stored in network byte (big-endian) order; the uint32 represented by the hex bytes 01 02 03 04 is equivalent to the decimal value 16909060.

3.5. Enumerateds

An additional sparse data type is available called enum. Each definition is a different type. Only enumerateds of the same type may be assigned or compared. Every element of an enumerated must be assigned a value, as demonstrated in the following example. Since the elements of the enumerated are not ordered, they can be assigned any unique value, in any order.

   enum { e1(v1), e2(v2), ... , en(vn) [[, (n)]] } Te;

Future extensions or additions to the protocol may define new values. Implementations need to be able to parse and ignore unknown values unless the definition of the field states otherwise.

An enumerated occupies as much space in the byte stream as would its maximal defined ordinal value. The following definition would cause one byte to be used to carry fields of type Color.

   enum { red(3), blue(5), white(7) } Color;

One may optionally specify a value without its associated tag to force the width definition without defining a superfluous element.

In the following example, Taste will consume two bytes in the data stream but can only assume the values 1, 2, or 4 in the current version of the protocol.

   enum { sweet(1), sour(2), bitter(4), (32000) } Taste;

The names of the elements of an enumeration are scoped within the defined type. In the first example, a fully qualified reference to the second element of the enumeration would be Color.blue. Such qualification is not required if the target of the assignment is well specified.

   Color color = Color.blue;     /* overspecified, legal */
   Color color = blue;           /* correct, type implicit */

The names assigned to enumerateds do not need to be unique. The numerical value can describe a range over which the same name applies. The value includes the minimum and maximum inclusive values in that range, separated by two period characters. This is principally useful for reserving regions of the space.

   enum { sad(0), meh(1..254), happy(255) } Mood;

3.6. Constructed Types

Structure types may be constructed from primitive types for convenience. Each specification declares a new, unique type. The syntax for definition is much like that of C.

   struct {
       T1 f1;
       T2 f2;
       ...
       Tn fn;
   } [[T]];

The fields within a structure may be qualified using the type’s name, with a syntax much like that available for enumerateds. For example, T.f2 refers to the second field of the previous declaration. Structure definitions may be embedded. Anonymous structs may also be defined inside other structures.

3.7. Constants

Fields and variables may be assigned a fixed value using “=”, as in:

   struct {
       T1 f1 = 8;  /* T.f1 must always be 8 */
       T2 f2;
   } T;

3.8. Variants

Defined structures may have variants based on some knowledge that is available within the environment. The selector must be an enumerated type that defines the possible variants the structure defines. The body of the variant structure may be given a label for reference. The mechanism by which the variant is selected at runtime is not prescribed by the presentation language.

   struct {
       T1 f1;
       T2 f2;
       ....
       Tn fn;
       select (E) {
           case e1: Te1;
           case e2: Te2;
           ....
           case en: Ten;
       } [[fv]];
   } [[Tv]];

For example:

   enum { apple(0), orange(1) } VariantTag;

   struct {
       uint16 number;
       opaque string<0..10>; /* variable length */
   } V1;

   struct {
       uint32 number;
       opaque string[10];    /* fixed length */
   } V2;

   struct {
       VariantTag type;
       select (VariantRecord.type) {
           case apple:  V1;
           case orange: V2;
       };
   } VariantRecord;

3.9. Decoding Errors

TLS defines two generic alerts (see Section 6) to use upon failure to parse a message. Peers which receive a message which cannot be parsed according to the syntax (e.g., have a length extending beyond the message boundary or contain an out-of-range length) MUST terminate the connection with a “decode_error” alert. Peers which receive a message which is syntactically correct but semantically invalid (e.g., a DHE share of p - 1, or an invalid enum) MUST terminate the connection with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

4. Handshake Protocol

The handshake protocol is used to negotiate the secure attributes of a connection. Handshake messages are supplied to the TLS record layer, where they are encapsulated within one or more TLSPlaintext or TLSCiphertext structures, which are processed and transmitted as specified by the current active connection state.

   enum {
       client_hello(1),
       server_hello(2),
       new_session_ticket(4),
       end_of_early_data(5),
       hello_retry_request(6),
       encrypted_extensions(8),
       certificate(11),
       certificate_request(13),
       certificate_verify(15),
       finished(20),
       key_update(24),
       message_hash(254),
       (255)
   } HandshakeType;

   struct {
       HandshakeType msg_type;    /* handshake type */
       uint24 length;             /* bytes in message */
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case client_hello:          ClientHello;
           case server_hello:          ServerHello;
           case end_of_early_data:     EndOfEarlyData;
           case hello_retry_request:   HelloRetryRequest;
           case encrypted_extensions:  EncryptedExtensions;
           case certificate_request:   CertificateRequest;
           case certificate:           Certificate;
           case certificate_verify:    CertificateVerify;
           case finished:              Finished;
           case new_session_ticket:    NewSessionTicket;
           case key_update:            KeyUpdate;
       } body;
   } Handshake;

Protocol messages MUST be sent in the order defined below (and shown in the diagrams in Section 2). A peer which receives a handshake message in an unexpected order MUST abort the handshake with an “unexpected_message” alert. Unneeded handshake messages are omitted, however.

New handshake message types are assigned by IANA as described in Section 10.

4.1. Key Exchange Messages

The key exchange messages are used to exchange security capabilities between the client and server and to establish the traffic keys used to protect the handshake and data.

4.1.1. Cryptographic Negotiation

TLS cryptographic negotiation proceeds by the client offering the following four sets of options in its ClientHello:

• A list of cipher suites which indicates the AEAD algorithm/HKDF hash pairs which the client supports.
• A “supported_groups” (Section 4.2.4) extension which indicates the (EC)DHE groups which the client supports and a “key_share” (Section 4.2.5) extension which contains (EC)DHE shares for some or all of these groups.
• A “signature_algorithms” (Section 4.2.3) extension which indicates the signature algorithms which the client can accept.
• A “pre_shared_key” (Section 4.2.8) extension which contains a list of symmetric key identities known to the client and a “psk_key_exchange_modes” (Section 4.2.6) extension which indicates the key exchange modes that may be used with PSKs.

If the server does not select a PSK, then the first three of these options are entirely orthogonal: the server independently selects a cipher suite, an (EC)DHE group and key share for key establishment, and a signature algorithm/certificate pair to authenticate itself to the client. If there is no overlap in “supported_groups” then the server MUST abort the handshake.

If the server selects a PSK, then it MUST also select a key establishment mode from the set indicated by client’s “psk_key_exchange_modes” extension (PSK alone or with (EC)DHE). Note that if the PSK can be used without (EC)DHE then non-overlap in the “supported_groups” parameters need not be fatal, as it is in the non-PSK case discussed in the previous paragraph.

If the server selects an (EC)DHE group and the client did not offer a compatible “key_share” extension in the initial ClientHello, the server MUST respond with a HelloRetryRequest (Section 4.1.4) message.

If the server successfully selects parameters and does not require a HelloRetryRequest, it indicates the selected parameters in the ServerHello as follows:

• If PSK is being used, then the server will send a “pre_shared_key” extension indicating the selected key.
• If PSK is not being used, then (EC)DHE and certificate-based authentication are always used.
• When (EC)DHE is in use, the server will also provide a “key_share” extension.
• When authenticating via a certificate, the server will send the Certificate (Section 4.4.2) and CertificateVerify (Section 4.4.3) messages. In TLS 1.3 as defined by this document, either a PSK or a certificate is always used, but not both. Future documents may define how to use them together.

If the server is unable to negotiate a supported set of parameters (i.e., there is no overlap between the client and server parameters), it MUST abort the handshake with either a “handshake_failure” or “insufficient_security” fatal alert (see Section 6).

4.1.2. Client Hello

When a client first connects to a server, it is REQUIRED to send the ClientHello as its first message. The client will also send a ClientHello when the server has responded to its ClientHello with a HelloRetryRequest. In that case, the client MUST send the same ClientHello (without modification) except:

• If a “key_share” extension was supplied in the HelloRetryRequest, replacing the list of shares with a list containing a single KeyShareEntry from the indicated group.
• Removing the “early_data” extension (Section 4.2.7) if one was present. Early data is not permitted after HelloRetryRequest.
• Including a “cookie” extension if one was provided in the HelloRetryRequest.
• Updating the “pre_shared_key” extension if present by recomputing the “obfuscated_ticket_age” and binder values and (optionally) removing any PSKs which are incompatible with the server’s indicated cipher suite.

Because TLS 1.3 forbids renegotiation, if a server receives a ClientHello at any other time, it MUST terminate the connection.

If a server established a TLS connection with a previous version of TLS and receives a TLS 1.3 ClientHello in a renegotiation, it MUST retain the previous protocol version. In particular, it MUST NOT negotiate TLS 1.3.

Structure of this message:

   uint16 ProtocolVersion;
   opaque Random[32];

   uint8 CipherSuite[2];    /* Cryptographic suite selector */

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion legacy_version = 0x0303;    /* TLS v1.2 */
       Random random;
       opaque legacy_session_id<0..32>;
       CipherSuite cipher_suites<2..2^16-2>;
       opaque legacy_compression_methods<1..2^8-1>;
       Extension extensions<8..2^16-1>;
   } ClientHello;

All versions of TLS allow extensions to optionally follow the compression_methods field as an extensions field. TLS 1.3 ClientHellos will contain at least two extensions, “supported_versions” and either “key_share” or “pre_shared_key”. The presence of extensions can be detected by determining whether there are bytes following the compression_methods at the end of the ClientHello. Note that this method of detecting optional data differs from the normal TLS method of having a variable-length field, but it is used for compatibility with TLS before extensions were defined. TLS 1.3 servers will need to perform this check first and only attempt to negotiate TLS 1.3 if a “supported_version” extension is present.

legacy_version

In previous versions of TLS, this field was used for version negotiation and represented the highest version number supported by the client. Experience has shown that many servers do not properly implement version negotiation, leading to “version intolerance” in which the server rejects an otherwise acceptable ClientHello with a version number higher than it supports. In TLS 1.3, the client indicates its version preferences in the “supported_versions” extension (Section 4.2.1) and the legacy_version field MUST be set to 0x0303, which was the version number for TLS 1.2. (See Appendix D for details about backward compatibility.)

random

32 bytes generated by a secure random number generator. See Appendix C for additional information.

legacy_session_id

Versions of TLS before TLS 1.3 supported a “session resumption” feature which has been merged with Pre-Shared Keys in this version (see Section 2.2). This field MUST be ignored by a server negotiating TLS 1.3 and MUST be set as a zero length vector (i.e., a single zero byte length field) by clients which do not have a cached session ID set by a pre-TLS 1.3 server.

cipher_suites

This is a list of the symmetric cipher options supported by the client, specifically the record protection algorithm (including secret key length) and a hash to be used with HKDF, in descending order of client preference. If the list contains cipher suites the server does not recognize, support, or wish to use, the server MUST ignore those cipher suites, and process the remaining ones as usual. Values are defined in Appendix B.4. If the client is attempting a PSK key establishment, it SHOULD advertise at least one cipher suite containing a Hash associated with the PSK.

legacy_compression_methods

Versions of TLS before 1.3 supported compression with the list of supported compression methods being sent in this field. For every TLS 1.3 ClientHello, this vector MUST contain exactly one byte set to zero, which corresponds to the “null” compression method in prior versions of TLS. If a TLS 1.3 ClientHello is received with any other value in this field, the server MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert. Note that TLS 1.3 servers might receive TLS 1.2 or prior ClientHellos which contain other compression methods and MUST follow the procedures for the appropriate prior version of TLS.

extensions

Clients request extended functionality from servers by sending data in the extensions field. The actual “Extension” format is defined in Section 4.2. In TLS 1.3, use of certain extensions is mandatory, as functionality is moved into extensions to preserve ClientHello compatibility with previous versions of TLS. Servers MUST ignore unrecognized extensions.

In the event that a client requests additional functionality using extensions, and this functionality is not supplied by the server, the client MAY abort the handshake. Note that TLS 1.3 ClientHello messages always contain extensions (minimally they must contain “supported_versions” or they will be interpreted as TLS 1.2 ClientHello messages). TLS 1.3 servers might receive ClientHello messages from versions of TLS prior to 1.3 that do not contain extensions. If negotiating a version of TLS prior to 1.3, a server MUST check that the message either contains no data after legacy_compression_methods or that it contains a valid extensions block with no data following. If not, then it MUST abort the handshake with a “decode_error” alert.

After sending the ClientHello message, the client waits for a ServerHello or HelloRetryRequest message.

4.1.3. Server Hello

The server will send this message in response to a ClientHello message if it is able to find an acceptable set of parameters and the ClientHello contains sufficient information to proceed with the handshake.

Structure of this message:

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion version;
       Random random;
       CipherSuite cipher_suite;
       Extension extensions<6..2^16-1>;
   } ServerHello;

version

This field contains the version of TLS negotiated for this connection. Servers MUST select a version from the list in ClientHello.supported_versions extension. A client which receives a version that was not offered MUST abort the handshake. For this version of the specification, the version is 0x0304. (See Appendix D for details about backward compatibility.)

random

32 bytes generated by a secure random number generator. See Appendix C for additional information. The last eight bytes MUST be overwritten as described below if negotiating TLS 1.2 or TLS 1.1. This structure is generated by the server and MUST be generated independently of the ClientHello.random.

cipher_suite

The single cipher suite selected by the server from the list in ClientHello.cipher_suites. A client which receives a cipher suite that was not offered MUST abort the handshake.

extensions

A list of extensions. The ServerHello MUST only include extensions which are required to establish the cryptographic context. Currently the only such extensions are “key_share” and “pre_shared_key”. All current TLS 1.3 ServerHello messages will contain one of these two extensions, or both when using a PSK with (EC)DHE key establishment.

TLS 1.3 has a downgrade protection mechanism embedded in the server’s random value. TLS 1.3 servers which negotiate TLS 1.2 or below in response to a ClientHello MUST set the last eight bytes of their Random value specially.

If negotiating TLS 1.2, TLS 1.3 servers MUST set the last eight bytes of their Random value to the bytes:

  44 4F 57 4E 47 52 44 01

If negotiating TLS 1.1, TLS 1.3 servers MUST and TLS 1.2 servers SHOULD set the last eight bytes of their Random value to the bytes:

  44 4F 57 4E 47 52 44 00

TLS 1.3 clients receiving a TLS 1.2 or below ServerHello MUST check that the last eight bytes are not equal to either of these values. TLS 1.2 clients SHOULD also check that the last eight bytes are not equal to the second value if the ServerHello indicates TLS 1.1 or below. If a match is found, the client MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert. This mechanism provides limited protection against downgrade attacks over and above that provided by the Finished exchange: because the ServerKeyExchange, a message present in TLS 1.2 and below, includes a signature over both random values, it is not possible for an active attacker to modify the random values without detection as long as ephemeral ciphers are used. It does not provide downgrade protection when static RSA is used.

Note: This is a change from [RFC5246], so in practice many TLS 1.2 clients and servers will not behave as specified above.

A client that receives a TLS 1.3 ServerHello during renegotiation MUST abort the handshake with a “protocol_version” alert.

RFC EDITOR: PLEASE REMOVE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH Implementations of draft versions (see Section 4.2.1.1) of this specification SHOULD NOT implement this mechanism on either client and server. A pre-RFC client connecting to RFC servers, or vice versa, will appear to downgrade to TLS 1.2. With the mechanism enabled, this will cause an interoperability failure.

4.1.4. Hello Retry Request

The server will send this message in response to a ClientHello message if it is able to find an acceptable set of parameters but the ClientHello does not contain sufficient information to proceed with the handshake.

Structure of this message:

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion server_version;
       CipherSuite cipher_suite;
       Extension extensions<2..2^16-1>;
   } HelloRetryRequest;

The version, cipher_suite, and extensions fields have the same meanings as their corresponding values in the ServerHello. The server SHOULD send only the extensions necessary for the client to generate a correct ClientHello pair. As with ServerHello, a HelloRetryRequest MUST NOT contain any extensions that were not first offered by the client in its ClientHello, with the exception of optionally the “cookie” (see Section 4.2.2) extension.

Upon receipt of a HelloRetryRequest, the client MUST verify that the extensions block is not empty and otherwise MUST abort the handshake with a “decode_error” alert. Clients MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert if the HelloRetryRequest would not result in any change in the ClientHello. If a client receives a second HelloRetryRequest in the same connection (i.e., where the ClientHello was itself in response to a HelloRetryRequest), it MUST abort the handshake with an “unexpected_message” alert.

Otherwise, the client MUST process all extensions in the HelloRetryRequest and send a second updated ClientHello. The HelloRetryRequest extensions defined in this specification are:

• cookie (see Section 4.2.2)
• key_share (see Section 4.2.5)

In addition, in its updated ClientHello, the client SHOULD NOT offer any pre-shared keys associated with a hash other than that of the selected cipher suite. This allows the client to avoid having to compute partial hash transcripts for multiple hashes in the second ClientHello. A client which receives a cipher suite that was not offered MUST abort the handshake. Servers MUST ensure that they negotiate the same cipher suite when receiving a conformant updated ClientHello (if the server selects the cipher suite as the first step in the negotiation, then this will happen automatically). Upon receiving the ServerHello, clients MUST check that the cipher suite supplied in the ServerHello is the same as that in the HelloRetryRequest and otherwise abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

4.2. Extensions

A number of TLS messages contain tag-length-value encoded extensions structures.

   struct {
       ExtensionType extension_type;
       opaque extension_data<0..2^16-1>;
   } Extension;

   enum {
       supported_groups(10),
       signature_algorithms(13),
       key_share(40),
       pre_shared_key(41),
       early_data(42),
       supported_versions(43),
       cookie(44),
       psk_key_exchange_modes(45),
       certificate_authorities(47),
       oid_filters(48),
       (65535)
   } ExtensionType;

Here:

• “extension_type” identifies the particular extension type.
• “extension_data” contains information specific to the particular extension type.

The list of extension types is maintained by IANA as described in Section 10.

Extensions are generally structured in a request/response fashion, though some extensions are just indications with no corresponding response. The client sends its extension requests in the ClientHello message and the server sends its extension responses in the ServerHello, EncryptedExtensions and HelloRetryRequest messages. The server sends extension requests in the CertificateRequest message which a client MAY respond to with a Certificate message. The server MAY also send unsolicited extensions in the NewSessionTicket, though the client does not respond directly to these.

Implementations MUST NOT send extension responses if the remote endpoint did not send the corresponding extension requests, with the exception of the “cookie” extension in HelloRetryRequest. Upon receiving such an extension, an endpoint MUST abort the handshake with an “unsupported_extension” alert.

The table below indicates the messages where a given extension may appear, using the following notation: CH (ClientHello), SH (ServerHello), EE (EncryptedExtensions), CT (Certificate), CR (CertificateRequest), NST (NewSessionTicket) and HRR (HelloRetryRequest). If an implementation receives an extension which it recognizes and which is not specified for the message in which it appears it MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

Extension	TLS 1.3
server_name [RFC6066]	CH, EE
max_fragment_length [RFC6066]	CH, EE
client_certificate_url [RFC6066]	CH, EE
status_request [RFC6066]	CH, CR, CT
user_mapping [RFC4681]	CH, EE
cert_type [RFC6091]	CH, EE
supported_groups [RFC7919]	CH, EE
signature_algorithms [RFC5246]	CH, CR
use_srtp [RFC5764]	CH, EE
heartbeat [RFC6520]	CH, EE
application_layer_protocol_negotiation [RFC7301]	CH, EE
signed_certificate_timestamp [RFC6962]	CH, CR, CT
client_certificate_type [RFC7250]	CH, EE
server_certificate_type [RFC7250]	CH, CT
padding [RFC7685]	CH
key_share [[this document]]	CH, SH, HRR
pre_shared_key [[this document]]	CH, SH
psk_key_exchange_modes [[this document]]	CH
early_data [[this document]]	CH, EE, NST
cookie [[this document]]	CH, HRR
supported_versions [[this document]]	CH
certificate_authorities [[this document]]	CH, CR
oid_filters [[this document]]	CR

When multiple extensions of different types are present, the extensions MAY appear in any order, with the exception of “pre_shared_key” Section 4.2.8 which MUST be the last extension in the ClientHello. There MUST NOT be more than one extension of the same type.

In TLS 1.3, unlike TLS 1.2, extensions are renegotiated with each handshake even when in resumption-PSK mode. However, 0-RTT parameters are those negotiated in the previous handshake; mismatches may require rejecting 0-RTT (see Section 4.2.7).

There are subtle (and not so subtle) interactions that may occur in this protocol between new features and existing features which may result in a significant reduction in overall security. The following considerations should be taken into account when designing new extensions:

• Some cases where a server does not agree to an extension are error conditions, and some are simply refusals to support particular features. In general, error alerts should be used for the former, and a field in the server extension response for the latter.
• Extensions should, as far as possible, be designed to prevent any attack that forces use (or non-use) of a particular feature by manipulation of handshake messages. This principle should be followed regardless of whether the feature is believed to cause a security problem. Often the fact that the extension fields are included in the inputs to the Finished message hashes will be sufficient, but extreme care is needed when the extension changes the meaning of messages sent in the handshake phase. Designers and implementors should be aware of the fact that until the handshake has been authenticated, active attackers can modify messages and insert, remove, or replace extensions.

4.2.1. Supported Versions

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion versions<2..254>;
   } SupportedVersions;

The “supported_versions” extension is used by the client to indicate which versions of TLS it supports. The extension contains a list of supported versions in preference order, with the most preferred version first. Implementations of this specification MUST send this extension containing all versions of TLS which they are prepared to negotiate (for this specification, that means minimally 0x0304, but if previous versions of TLS are supported, they MUST be present as well).

If this extension is not present, servers which are compliant with this specification MUST negotiate TLS 1.2 or prior as specified in [RFC5246], even if ClientHello.legacy_version is 0x0304 or later.

If this extension is present, servers MUST ignore the ClientHello.legacy_version value and MUST use only the “supported_versions” extension to determine client preferences. Servers MUST only select a version of TLS present in that extension and MUST ignore any unknown versions. Note that this mechanism makes it possible to negotiate a version prior to TLS 1.2 if one side supports a sparse range. Implementations of TLS 1.3 which choose to support prior versions of TLS SHOULD support TLS 1.2.

The server MUST NOT send the “supported_versions” extension. The server’s selected version is contained in the ServerHello.version field as in previous versions of TLS.

4.2.1.1. Draft Version Indicator

RFC EDITOR: PLEASE REMOVE THIS SECTION

While the eventual version indicator for the RFC version of TLS 1.3 will be 0x0304, implementations of draft versions of this specification SHOULD instead advertise 0x7f00 | draft_version in ServerHello.version, and HelloRetryRequest.server_version. For instance, draft-17 would be encoded as the 0x7f11. This allows pre-RFC implementations to safely negotiate with each other, even if they would otherwise be incompatible.

4.2.2. Cookie

   struct {
       opaque cookie<1..2^16-1>;
   } Cookie;

Cookies serve two primary purposes:

• Allowing the server to force the client to demonstrate reachability at their apparent network address (thus providing a measure of DoS protection). This is primarily useful for non-connection-oriented transports (see [RFC6347] for an example of this).
• Allowing the server to offload state to the client, thus allowing it to send a HelloRetryRequest without storing any state. The server does this by storing the hash of the ClientHello in the HelloRetryRequest cookie (protected with some suitable integrity algorithm).

When sending a HelloRetryRequest, the server MAY provide a “cookie” extension to the client (this is an exception to the usual rule that the only extensions that may be sent are those that appear in the ClientHello). When sending the new ClientHello, the client MUST echo the value of the extension. Clients MUST NOT use cookies in subsequent connections.

4.2.3. Signature Algorithms

The client uses the “signature_algorithms” extension to indicate to the server which signature algorithms may be used in digital signatures. Clients which desire the server to authenticate itself via a certificate MUST send this extension. If a server is authenticating via a certificate and the client has not sent a “signature_algorithms” extension, then the server MUST abort the handshake with a “missing_extension” alert (see Section 8.2).

The “extension_data” field of this extension in a ClientHello contains a SignatureSchemeList value:

   enum {
       /* RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 algorithms */
       rsa_pkcs1_sha1(0x0201),
       rsa_pkcs1_sha256(0x0401),
       rsa_pkcs1_sha384(0x0501),
       rsa_pkcs1_sha512(0x0601),

       /* ECDSA algorithms */
       ecdsa_secp256r1_sha256(0x0403),
       ecdsa_secp384r1_sha384(0x0503),
       ecdsa_secp521r1_sha512(0x0603),

       /* RSASSA-PSS algorithms */
       rsa_pss_sha256(0x0804),
       rsa_pss_sha384(0x0805),
       rsa_pss_sha512(0x0806),

       /* EdDSA algorithms */
       ed25519(0x0807),
       ed448(0x0808),

       /* Reserved Code Points */
       private_use(0xFE00..0xFFFF),
       (0xFFFF)
   } SignatureScheme;

   struct {
       SignatureScheme supported_signature_algorithms<2..2^16-2>;
   } SignatureSchemeList;

Note: This enum is named “SignatureScheme” because there is already a “SignatureAlgorithm” type in TLS 1.2, which this replaces. We use the term “signature algorithm” throughout the text.

Each SignatureScheme value lists a single signature algorithm that the client is willing to verify. The values are indicated in descending order of preference. Note that a signature algorithm takes as input an arbitrary-length message, rather than a digest. Algorithms which traditionally act on a digest should be defined in TLS to first hash the input with a specified hash algorithm and then proceed as usual. The code point groups listed above have the following meanings:

RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 algorithms

Indicates a signature algorithm using RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 [RFC3447] with the corresponding hash algorithm as defined in [SHS]. These values refer solely to signatures which appear in certificates (see Section 4.4.2.2) and are not defined for use in signed TLS handshake messages.

ECDSA algorithms

Indicates a signature algorithm using ECDSA [ECDSA], the corresponding curve as defined in ANSI X9.62 [X962] and FIPS 186-4 [DSS], and the corresponding hash algorithm as defined in [SHS]. The signature is represented as a DER-encoded [X690] ECDSA-Sig-Value structure.

RSASSA-PSS algorithms

Indicates a signature algorithm using RSASSA-PSS [RFC3447] with mask generation function 1. The digest used in the mask generation function and the digest being signed are both the corresponding hash algorithm as defined in [SHS]. When used in signed TLS handshake messages, the length of the salt MUST be equal to the length of the digest output. This codepoint is also defined for use with TLS 1.2.

EdDSA algorithms

Indicates a signature algorithm using EdDSA as defined in [RFC8032] or its successors. Note that these correspond to the “PureEdDSA” algorithms and not the “prehash” variants.

rsa_pkcs1_sha1, dsa_sha1, and ecdsa_sha1 SHOULD NOT be offered. Clients offering these values for backwards compatibility MUST list them as the lowest priority (listed after all other algorithms in SignatureSchemeList). TLS 1.3 servers MUST NOT offer a SHA-1 signed certificate unless no valid certificate chain can be produced without it (see Section 4.4.2.2).

The signatures on certificates that are self-signed or certificates that are trust anchors are not validated since they begin a certification path (see [RFC5280], Section 3.2). A certificate that begins a certification path MAY use a signature algorithm that is not advertised as being supported in the “signature_algorithms” extension.

Note that TLS 1.2 defines this extension differently. TLS 1.3 implementations willing to negotiate TLS 1.2 MUST behave in accordance with the requirements of [RFC5246] when negotiating that version. In particular:

• TLS 1.2 ClientHellos MAY omit this extension.
• In TLS 1.2, the extension contained hash/signature pairs. The pairs are encoded in two octets, so SignatureScheme values have been allocated to align with TLS 1.2’s encoding. Some legacy pairs are left unallocated. These algorithms are deprecated as of TLS 1.3. They MUST NOT be offered or negotiated by any implementation. In particular, MD5 [SLOTH] and SHA-224 MUST NOT be used.
• ECDSA signature schemes align with TLS 1.2’s ECDSA hash/signature pairs. However, the old semantics did not constrain the signing curve. If TLS 1.2 is negotiated, implementations MUST be prepared to accept a signature that uses any curve that they advertised in the “supported_groups” extension.
• Implementations that advertise support for RSASSA-PSS (which is mandatory in TLS 1.3), MUST be prepared to accept a signature using that scheme even when TLS 1.2 is negotiated. In TLS 1.2, RSASSA-PSS is used with RSA cipher suites.

4.2.3.1. Certificate Authorities

The “certificate_authorities” extension is used to indicate the certificate authorities which an endpoint supports and which SHOULD be used by the receiving endpoint to guide certificate selection.

The body of the “certificate_authorities” extension consists of a CertificateAuthoritiesExtension structure.

   opaque DistinguishedName<1..2^16-1>;

   struct {
       DistinguishedName authorities<3..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateAuthoritiesExtension;

authorities

A list of the distinguished names [X501] of acceptable certificate authorities, represented in DER-encoded [X690] format. These distinguished names specify a desired distinguished name for trust anchor or subordinate CA; thus, this message can be used to describe known trust anchors as well as a desired authorization space.

The client MAY send the “certificate_authorities” extension in the ClientHello message. The server MAY send it in the CertificateRequest message.

The “trusted_ca_keys” extension, which serves a similar purpose [RFC6066], but is more complicated, is not used in TLS 1.3 (although it may appear in ClientHello messages from clients which are offering prior versions of TLS).

4.2.4. Negotiated Groups

When sent by the client, the “supported_groups” extension indicates the named groups which the client supports for key exchange, ordered from most preferred to least preferred.

Note: In versions of TLS prior to TLS 1.3, this extension was named “elliptic_curves” and only contained elliptic curve groups. See [RFC4492] and [RFC7919]. This extension was also used to negotiate ECDSA curves. Signature algorithms are now negotiated independently (see Section 4.2.3).

The “extension_data” field of this extension contains a “NamedGroupList” value:

   enum {
       /* Elliptic Curve Groups (ECDHE) */
       secp256r1(0x0017), secp384r1(0x0018), secp521r1(0x0019),
       x25519(0x001D), x448(0x001E),

       /* Finite Field Groups (DHE) */
       ffdhe2048(0x0100), ffdhe3072(0x0101), ffdhe4096 (0x0102),
       ffdhe6144(0x0103), ffdhe8192(0x0104),

       /* Reserved Code Points */
       ffdhe_private_use(0x01FC..0x01FF),
       ecdhe_private_use(0xFE00..0xFEFF),
       (0xFFFF)
   } NamedGroup;

   struct {
       NamedGroup named_group_list<2..2^16-1>;
   } NamedGroupList;

Elliptic Curve Groups (ECDHE)

Indicates support for the corresponding named curve, defined either in FIPS 186-4 [DSS] or in [RFC7748]. Values 0xFE00 through 0xFEFF are reserved for private use.

Finite Field Groups (DHE)

Indicates support of the corresponding finite field group, defined in [RFC7919]. Values 0x01FC through 0x01FF are reserved for private use.

Items in named_group_list are ordered according to the client’s preferences (most preferred choice first).

As of TLS 1.3, servers are permitted to send the “supported_groups” extension to the client. If the server has a group it prefers to the ones in the “key_share” extension but is still willing to accept the ClientHello, it SHOULD send “supported_groups” to update the client’s view of its preferences; this extension SHOULD contain all groups the server supports, regardless of whether they are currently supported by the client. Clients MUST NOT act upon any information found in “supported_groups” prior to successful completion of the handshake, but MAY use the information learned from a successfully completed handshake to change what groups they use in their “key_share” extension in subsequent connections.

4.2.5. Key Share

The “key_share” extension contains the endpoint’s cryptographic parameters.

Clients MAY send an empty client_shares vector in order to request group selection from the server at the cost of an additional round trip. (see Section 4.1.4)

   struct {
       NamedGroup group;
       opaque key_exchange<1..2^16-1>;
   } KeyShareEntry;

group

The named group for the key being exchanged. Finite Field Diffie-Hellman [DH] parameters are described in Section 4.2.5.1; Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman parameters are described in Section 4.2.5.2.

key_exchange

Key exchange information. The contents of this field are determined by the specified group and its corresponding definition.

The “extension_data” field of this extension contains a “KeyShare” value:

   struct {
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case client_hello:
               KeyShareEntry client_shares<0..2^16-1>;

           case hello_retry_request:
               NamedGroup selected_group;

           case server_hello:
               KeyShareEntry server_share;
       };
   } KeyShare;

client_shares

A list of offered KeyShareEntry values in descending order of client preference. This vector MAY be empty if the client is requesting a HelloRetryRequest. Each KeyShareEntry value MUST correspond to a group offered in the “supported_groups” extension and MUST appear in the same order. However, the values MAY be a non-contiguous subset of the “supported_groups” extension and MAY omit the most preferred groups.

selected_group

The mutually supported group the server intends to negotiate and is requesting a retried ClientHello/KeyShare for.

server_share

A single KeyShareEntry value that is in the same group as one of the client’s shares.

Clients offer an arbitrary number of KeyShareEntry values, each representing a single set of key exchange parameters. For instance, a client might offer shares for several elliptic curves or multiple FFDHE groups. The key_exchange values for each KeyShareEntry MUST be generated independently. Clients MUST NOT offer multiple KeyShareEntry values for the same group. Clients MUST NOT offer any KeyShareEntry values for groups not listed in the client’s “supported_groups” extension. Servers MAY check for violations of these rules and abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert if one is violated.

Upon receipt of this extension in a HelloRetryRequest, the client MUST verify that (1) the selected_group field corresponds to a group which was provided in the “supported_groups” extension in the original ClientHello; and (2) the selected_group field does not correspond to a group which was provided in the “key_share” extension in the original ClientHello. If either of these checks fails, then the client MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert. Otherwise, when sending the new ClientHello, the client MUST replace the original “key_share” extension with one containing only a new KeyShareEntry for the group indicated in the selected_group field of the triggering HelloRetryRequest.

If using (EC)DHE key establishment, servers offer exactly one KeyShareEntry in the ServerHello. This value MUST correspond to the KeyShareEntry value offered by the client that the server has selected for the negotiated key exchange. Servers MUST NOT send a KeyShareEntry for any group not indicated in the “supported_groups” extension and MUST NOT send a KeyShareEntry when using the “psk_ke” PskKeyExchangeMode. If a HelloRetryRequest was received by the client, the client MUST verify that the selected NamedGroup in the ServerHello is the same as that in the HelloRetryRequest. If this check fails, the client MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

4.2.5.1. Diffie-Hellman Parameters

Diffie-Hellman [DH] parameters for both clients and servers are encoded in the opaque key_exchange field of a KeyShareEntry in a KeyShare structure. The opaque value contains the Diffie-Hellman public value (Y = g^X mod p) for the specified group (see [RFC7919] for group definitions) encoded as a big-endian integer and padded with zeros to the size of p in bytes.

Note: For a given Diffie-Hellman group, the padding results in all public keys having the same length.

Peers MUST validate each other’s public key Y by ensuring that 1 < Y < p-1. This check ensures that the remote peer is properly behaved and isn’t forcing the local system into a small subgroup.

4.2.5.2. ECDHE Parameters

ECDHE parameters for both clients and servers are encoded in the the opaque key_exchange field of a KeyShareEntry in a KeyShare structure.

For secp256r1, secp384r1 and secp521r1, the contents are the byte string representation of an elliptic curve public value following the conversion routine in Section 4.3.6 of ANSI X9.62 [X962].

Although X9.62 supports multiple point formats, any given curve MUST specify only a single point format. All curves currently specified in this document MUST only be used with the uncompressed point format (the format for all ECDH functions is considered uncompressed). Peers MUST validate each other’s public value Y by ensuring that the point is a valid point on the elliptic curve.

For the curves secp256r1, secp384r1 and secp521r1, the appropriate validation procedures are defined in Section 4.3.7 of [X962] and alternatively in Section 5.6.2.6 of [KEYAGREEMENT]. This process consists of three steps: (1) verify that Y is not the point at infinity (O), (2) verify that for Y = (x, y) both integers are in the correct interval, (3) ensure that (x, y) is a correct solution to the elliptic curve equation. For these curves, implementers do not need to verify membership in the correct subgroup.

For X25519 and X448, the contents of the public value are the byte string inputs and outputs of the corresponding functions defined in [RFC7748], 32 bytes for X25519 and 56 bytes for X448.

Note: Versions of TLS prior to 1.3 permitted point format negotiation; TLS 1.3 removes this feature in favor of a single point format for each curve.

4.2.6. Pre-Shared Key Exchange Modes

In order to use PSKs, clients MUST also send a “psk_key_exchange_modes” extension. The semantics of this extension are that the client only supports the use of PSKs with these modes, which restricts both the use of PSKs offered in this ClientHello and those which the server might supply via NewSessionTicket.

A client MUST provide a “psk_key_exchange_modes” extension if it offers a “pre_shared_key” extension. If clients offer “pre_shared_key” without a “psk_key_exchange_modes” extension, servers MUST abort the handshake. Servers MUST NOT select a key exchange mode that is not listed by the client. This extension also restricts the modes for use with PSK resumption; servers SHOULD NOT send NewSessionTicket with tickets that are not compatible with the advertised modes; however, if a server does so, the impact will just be that the client’s attempts at resumption fail.

The server MUST NOT send a “psk_key_exchange_modes” extension.

   enum { psk_ke(0), psk_dhe_ke(1), (255) } PskKeyExchangeMode;

   struct {
       PskKeyExchangeMode ke_modes<1..255>;
   } PskKeyExchangeModes;

psk_ke

PSK-only key establishment. In this mode, the server MUST NOT supply a “key_share” value.

psk_dhe_ke

PSK with (EC)DHE key establishment. In this mode, the client and servers MUST supply “key_share” values as described in Section 4.2.5.

4.2.7. Early Data Indication

When a PSK is used, the client can send application data in its first flight of messages. If the client opts to do so, it MUST supply an “early_data” extension as well as the “pre_shared_key” extension.

The “extension_data” field of this extension contains an “EarlyDataIndication” value.

   struct {} Empty;

   struct {
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case new_session_ticket:   uint32 max_early_data_size;
           case client_hello:         Empty;
           case encrypted_extensions: Empty;
       };
   } EarlyDataIndication;

See Appendix B.3.4 for the use of the max_early_data_size field.

For PSKs provisioned via NewSessionTicket, a server MUST validate that the ticket age for the selected PSK identity (computed by subtracting ticket_age_add from PskIdentity.obfuscated_ticket_age modulo 2^32) is within a small tolerance of the time since the ticket was issued (see Section 4.2.8.3). If it is not, the server SHOULD proceed with the handshake but reject 0-RTT, and SHOULD NOT take any other action that assumes that this ClientHello is fresh.

The parameters for the 0-RTT data (symmetric cipher suite, ALPN protocol, etc.) are the same as those which were negotiated in the connection which established the PSK. The PSK used to encrypt the early data MUST be the first PSK listed in the client’s “pre_shared_key” extension.

0-RTT messages sent in the first flight have the same (encrypted) content types as their corresponding messages sent in other flights (handshake, application_data, and alert respectively) but are protected under different keys. After receiving the server’s Finished message, if the server has accepted early data, an EndOfEarlyData message will be sent to indicate the key change. This message will be encrypted with the 0-RTT traffic keys.

A server which receives an “early_data” extension MUST behave in one of three ways:

• Ignore the extension and return a regular 1-RTT response. The server then ignores early data using trial decryption until it is able to receive the client’s second flight and complete an ordinary 1-RTT handshake.
• Request that the client send another ClientHello by responding with a HelloRetryRequest. A client MUST NOT include the “early_data” extension in its followup ClientHello. The server then ignores early data by skipping all records with external content type of “application_data” (indicating that they are encrypted).
• Return its own extension in EncryptedExtensions, indicating that it intends to process the early data. It is not possible for the server to accept only a subset of the early data messages.

In order to accept early data, the server MUST have accepted a PSK cipher suite and selected the first key offered in the client’s “pre_shared_key” extension. In addition, it MUST verify that the following values are consistent with those negotiated in the connection during which the ticket was established.

• The TLS version number and cipher suite.
• The selected ALPN [RFC7301] protocol, if any.

Future extensions MUST define their interaction with 0-RTT.

If any of these checks fail, the server MUST NOT respond with the extension and must discard all the remaining first flight data (thus falling back to 1-RTT). If the client attempts a 0-RTT handshake but the server rejects it, the server will generally not have the 0-RTT record protection keys and must instead trial decrypt each record with the 1-RTT handshake keys until it finds one that decrypts properly, and then pick up the handshake from that point.

If the server chooses to accept the “early_data” extension, then it MUST comply with the same error handling requirements specified for all records when processing early data records. Specifically, if the server fails to decrypt any 0-RTT record following an accepted “early_data” extension it MUST terminate the connection with a “bad_record_mac” alert as per Section 5.2.

If the server rejects the “early_data” extension, the client application MAY opt to retransmit early data once the handshake has been completed. A TLS implementation SHOULD NOT automatically re-send early data; applications are in a better position to decide when re-transmission is appropriate. Automatic re-transmission of early data could result in assumptions about the status of the connection being incorrect. In particular, a TLS implementation MUST NOT automatically re-send early data unless the negotiated connection selects the same ALPN protocol. An application might need to construct different messages if a different protocol is selected. Similarly, if early data assumes anything about the connection state, it might be sent in error after the handshake completes.

4.2.8. Pre-Shared Key Extension

The “pre_shared_key” extension is used to indicate the identity of the pre-shared key to be used with a given handshake in association with PSK key establishment.

The “extension_data” field of this extension contains a “PreSharedKeyExtension” value:

   struct {
       opaque identity<1..2^16-1>;
       uint32 obfuscated_ticket_age;
   } PskIdentity;

   opaque PskBinderEntry<32..255>;

   struct {
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case client_hello:
               PskIdentity identities<7..2^16-1>;
               PskBinderEntry binders<33..2^16-1>;

           case server_hello:
               uint16 selected_identity;
       };

   } PreSharedKeyExtension;

identity

A label for a key. For instance, a ticket defined in Appendix B.3.4, or a label for a pre-shared key established externally.

obfuscated_ticket_age

For each ticket, the time since the client learned about the server configuration that it is using, in milliseconds. This value is added modulo 2^32 to the “ticket_age_add” value that was included with the ticket, see Section 4.6.1. This addition prevents passive observers from correlating connections unless tickets are reused. Note: because ticket lifetimes are restricted to a week, 32 bits is enough to represent any plausible age, even in milliseconds. For identities established externally an obfuscated_ticket_age of 0 SHOULD be used, and servers MUST ignore the value.

identities

A list of the identities that the client is willing to negotiate with the server. If sent alongside the “early_data” extension (see Section 4.2.7), the first identity is the one used for 0-RTT data.

binders

A series of HMAC values, one for each PSK offered in the “pre_shared_keys” extension and in the same order, computed as described below.

selected_identity

The server’s chosen identity expressed as a (0-based) index into the identities in the client’s list.

Each PSK is associated with a single Hash algorithm. For PSKs established via the ticket mechanism (Section 4.6.1), this is the Hash used for the KDF. For externally established PSKs, the Hash algorithm MUST be set when the PSK is established. The server must ensure that it selects a compatible PSK (if any) and cipher suites.

Implementor’s note: the most straightforward way to implement the PSK/cipher suite matching requirements is to negotiate the cipher suite first and then exclude any incompatible PSKs. Any unknown PSKs (e.g., they are not in the PSK database or are encrypted with an unknown key) SHOULD simply be ignored. If no acceptable PSKs are found, the server SHOULD perform a non-PSK handshake if possible.

Prior to accepting PSK key establishment, the server MUST validate the corresponding binder value (see Section 4.2.8.1 below). If this value is not present or does not validate, the server MUST abort the handshake. Servers SHOULD NOT attempt to validate multiple binders; rather they SHOULD select a single PSK and validate solely the binder that corresponds to that PSK. In order to accept PSK key establishment, the server sends a “pre_shared_key” extension indicating the selected identity.

Clients MUST verify that the server’s selected_identity is within the range supplied by the client, that the server selected a cipher suite containing a Hash associated with the PSK and that a server “key_share” extension is present if required by the ClientHello “psk_key_exchange_modes”. If these values are not consistent the client MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

If the server supplies an “early_data” extension, the client MUST verify that the server’s selected_identity is 0. If any other value is returned, the client MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

This extension MUST be the last extension in the ClientHello (this facilitates implementation as described below). Servers MUST check that it is the last extension and otherwise fail the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

4.2.8.1. PSK Binder

The PSK binder value forms a binding between a PSK and the current handshake, as well as between the handshake in which the PSK was generated (if via a NewSessionTicket message) and the handshake where it was used. Each entry in the binders list is computed as an HMAC over a transcript hash (see Section 4.4.1) containing a partial ClientHello up to and including the PreSharedKeyExtension.identities field. That is, it includes all of the ClientHello but not the binders list itself. The length fields for the message (including the overall length, the length of the extensions block, and the length of the “pre_shared_key” extension) are all set as if binders of the correct lengths were present.

The binding_value is computed in the same way as the Finished message (Section 4.4.4) but with the BaseKey being the binder_key derived via the key schedule from the corresponding PSK which is being offered (see Section 7.1).

If the handshake includes a HelloRetryRequest, the initial ClientHello and HelloRetryRequest are included in the transcript along with the new ClientHello. For instance, if the client sends ClientHello1, its binder will be computed over:

   Transcript-Hash(ClientHello1[truncated])

If the server responds with HelloRetryRequest, and the client then sends ClientHello2, its binder will be computed over:

   Transcript-Hash(ClientHello1,
                   HelloRetryRequest,
                   ClientHello2[truncated])

The full ClientHello is included in all other handshake hash computations. Note that in the first flight, ClientHello1[truncated] is hashed directly, but in the second flight, it is hashed and then reinjected as a “handshake_hash” message, as described in Section 4.4.1.

4.2.8.2. Processing Order

Clients are permitted to “stream” 0-RTT data until they receive the server’s Finished, only then sending the EndOfEarlyData message. In order to avoid deadlocks, when accepting “early_data”, servers MUST process the client’s ClientHello and then immediately send the ServerHello, rather than waiting for the client’s EndOfEarlyData message.

4.2.8.3. Replay Properties

As noted in Section 2.3, TLS provides a limited mechanism for replay protection for data sent by the client in the first flight.

The “obfuscated_ticket_age” parameter in the client’s “pre_shared_key” extension SHOULD be used by servers to limit the time over which the first flight might be replayed. A server can store the time at which it sends a ticket to the client, or encode the time in the ticket. Then, each time it receives an “pre_shared_key” extension, it can subtract the base value and check to see if the value used by the client matches its expectations.

The ticket age (the value with “ticket_age_add” subtracted) provided by the client will be shorter than the actual time elapsed on the server by a single round trip time. This difference is comprised of the delay in sending the NewSessionTicket message to the client, plus the time taken to send the ClientHello to the server. For this reason, a server SHOULD measure the round trip time prior to sending the NewSessionTicket message and account for that in the value it saves.

To properly validate the ticket age, a server needs to save at least two items:

• The time that the server generated the session ticket and the estimated round trip time can be added together to form a baseline time.
• The “ticket_age_add” parameter from the NewSessionTicket is needed to recover the ticket age from the “obfuscated_ticket_age” parameter.

There are several potential sources of error that make an exact measurement of time difficult. Variations in client and server clock rates are likely to be minimal, though potentially with gross time corrections. Network propagation delays are most likely causes of a mismatch in legitimate values for elapsed time. Both the NewSessionTicket and ClientHello messages might be retransmitted and therefore delayed, which might be hidden by TCP.

A small allowance for errors in clocks and variations in measurements is advisable. However, any allowance also increases the opportunity for replay. In this case, it is better to reject early data and fall back to a full 1-RTT handshake than to risk greater exposure to replay attacks. In common network topologies for browser clients, small allowances on the order of ten seconds are reasonable. Clock skew distributions are not symmetric, so the optimal tradeoff may involve an asymmetric replay window.

4.3. Server Parameters

The next two messages from the server, EncryptedExtensions and CertificateRequest, contain information from the server that determines the rest of the handshake. These messages are encrypted with keys derived from the server_handshake_traffic_secret.

4.3.1. Encrypted Extensions

In all handshakes, the server MUST send the EncryptedExtensions message immediately after the ServerHello message. This is the first message that is encrypted under keys derived from the server_handshake_traffic_secret.

The EncryptedExtensions message contains extensions which should be protected, i.e., any which are not needed to establish the cryptographic context, but which are not associated with individual certificates. The client MUST check EncryptedExtensions for the presence of any forbidden extensions and if any are found MUST abort the handshake with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

Structure of this message:

   struct {
       Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>;
   } EncryptedExtensions;

extensions

A list of extensions. For more information, see the table in Section 4.2.

4.3.2. Certificate Request

A server which is authenticating with a certificate MAY optionally request a certificate from the client. This message, if sent, MUST follow EncryptedExtensions.

Structure of this message:

   struct {
       opaque certificate_request_context<0..2^8-1>;
       Extension extensions<2..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateRequest;

certificate_request_context

An opaque string which identifies the certificate request and which will be echoed in the client’s Certificate message. The certificate_request_context MUST be unique within the scope of this connection (thus preventing replay of client CertificateVerify messages). This field SHALL be zero length unless used for the post-handshake authentication exchanges described in Section 4.6.2.

extensions

An optional set of extensions describing the parameters of the certificate being requested. The “signature_algorithms” extension MUST be specified. Clients MUST ignore unrecognized extensions.

In prior versions of TLS, the CertificateRequest message carried a list of signature algorithms and certificate authorities which the server would accept. In TLS 1.3 the former is expressed by sending the “signature_algorithms” extension. The latter is expressed by sending the “certificate_authorities” extension (see Section 4.2.3.1).

Servers which are authenticating with a PSK MUST NOT send the CertificateRequest message.

4.3.2.1. OID Filters

The “oid_filters” extension allows servers to provide a set of OID/value pairs which it would like the client’s certificate to match. This extension MUST only be sent in the CertificateRequest message.

   struct {
       opaque certificate_extension_oid<1..2^8-1>;
       opaque certificate_extension_values<0..2^16-1>;
   } OIDFilter;

   struct {
       OIDFilter filters<0..2^16-1>;
   } OIDFilterExtension;

filters

A list of certificate extension OIDs [RFC5280] with their allowed values, represented in DER-encoded [X690] format. Some certificate extension OIDs allow multiple values (e.g., Extended Key Usage). If the server has included a non-empty certificate_extensions list, the client certificate included in the response MUST contain all of the specified extension OIDs that the client recognizes. For each extension OID recognized by the client, all of the specified values MUST be present in the client certificate (but the certificate MAY have other values as well). However, the client MUST ignore and skip any unrecognized certificate extension OIDs. If the client ignored some of the required certificate extension OIDs and supplied a certificate that does not satisfy the request, the server MAY at its discretion either continue the connection without client authentication, or abort the handshake with an “unsupported_certificate” alert. PKIX RFCs define a variety of certificate extension OIDs and their corresponding value types. Depending on the type, matching certificate extension values are not necessarily bitwise-equal. It is expected that TLS implementations will rely on their PKI libraries to perform certificate selection using certificate extension OIDs. This document defines matching rules for two standard certificate extensions defined in [RFC5280]:

• The Key Usage extension in a certificate matches the request when all key usage bits asserted in the request are also asserted in the Key Usage certificate extension.
• The Extended Key Usage extension in a certificate matches the request when all key purpose OIDs present in the request are also found in the Extended Key Usage certificate extension. The special anyExtendedKeyUsage OID MUST NOT be used in the request.

Separate specifications may define matching rules for other certificate extensions.

4.4. Authentication Messages

As discussed in Section 2, TLS generally uses a common set of messages for authentication, key confirmation, and handshake integrity: Certificate, CertificateVerify, and Finished. (The PreSharedKey binders also perform key confirmation, in a similar fashion.) These three messages are always sent as the last messages in their handshake flight. The Certificate and CertificateVerify messages are only sent under certain circumstances, as defined below. The Finished message is always sent as part of the Authentication block. These messages are encrypted under keys derived from [sender]_handshake_traffic_secret.

The computations for the Authentication messages all uniformly take the following inputs:

• The certificate and signing key to be used.
• A Handshake Context consisting of the set of messages to be included in the transcript hash.
• A base key to be used to compute a MAC key.

Based on these inputs, the messages then contain:

Certificate

The certificate to be used for authentication and any supporting certificates in the chain. Note that certificate-based client authentication is not available in the 0-RTT case.

CertificateVerify

A signature over the value Transcript-Hash(Handshake Context, Certificate)

Finished

A MAC over the value Transcript-Hash(Handshake Context, Certificate, CertificateVerify) using a MAC key derived from the base key.

The following table defines the Handshake Context and MAC Base Key for each scenario:

Mode	Handshake Context	Base Key
Server	ClientHello … later of EncryptedExtensions/CertificateRequest	server_handshake_traffic_secret
Client	ClientHello … ServerFinished	client_handshake_traffic_secret
Post-Handshake	ClientHello … ClientFinished + CertificateRequest	client_traffic_secret_N

4.4.1. The Transcript Hash

Many of the cryptographic computations in TLS make use of a transcript hash. This value is computed by hashing the concatenation of each included handshake message, including the handshake message header carrying the handshake message type and length fields, but not including record layer headers. I.e.,

 Transcript-Hash(M1, M2, ... MN) = Hash(M1 || M2 ... MN)

As an exception to this general rule, when the server responds to a ClientHello with a HelloRetryRequest, the value of ClientHello1 is replaced with a special synthetic handshake message of handshake type “message_hash” containing Hash(ClientHello1). I.e.,

 Transcript-Hash(ClientHello1, HelloRetryRequest, ... MN) =
     Hash(message_hash ||                 // Handshake Type
          00 00 Hash.length ||   // Handshake message length
          Hash(ClientHello1) ||  // Hash of ClientHello1
          HelloRetryRequest ... MN)

The reason for this construction is to allow the server to do a stateless HelloRetryRequest by storing just the hash of ClientHello1 in the cookie, rather than requiring it to export the entire intermediate hash state (see Section 4.2.2).

In general, implementations can implement the transcript by keeping a running transcript hash value based on the negotiated hash. Note, however, that subsequent post-handshake authentications do not include each other, just the messages through the end of the main handshake.

4.4.2. Certificate

The server MUST send a Certificate message whenever the agreed-upon key exchange method uses certificates for authentication (this includes all key exchange methods defined in this document except PSK). This message conveys the endpoint’s certificate chain to the peer.

The client MUST send a Certificate message if and only if the server has requested client authentication via a CertificateRequest message (Section 4.3.2). If the server requests client authentication but no suitable certificate is available, the client MUST send a Certificate message containing no certificates (i.e., with the “certificate_list” field having length 0).

Structure of this message:

   opaque ASN1Cert<1..2^24-1>;

   struct {
       ASN1Cert cert_data;
       Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateEntry;

   struct {
       opaque certificate_request_context<0..2^8-1>;
       CertificateEntry certificate_list<0..2^24-1>;
   } Certificate;

certificate_request_context

If this message is in response to a CertificateRequest, the value of certificate_request_context in that message. Otherwise (in the case of server authentication), this field SHALL be zero length.

certificate_list

This is a sequence (chain) of CertificateEntry structures, each containing a single certificate and set of extensions. The sender’s certificate MUST come in the first CertificateEntry in the list. Each following certificate SHOULD directly certify one preceding it. Because certificate validation requires that trust anchors be distributed independently, a certificate that specifies a trust anchor MAY be omitted from the chain, provided that supported peers are known to possess any omitted certificates.

extensions:

A set of extension values for the CertificateEntry. The “Extension” format is defined in Section 4.2. Valid extensions include OCSP Status extensions ([RFC6066] and [RFC6961]) and SignedCertificateTimestamps ([RFC6962]). An extension MUST only be present in a Certificate message if the corresponding ClientHello extension was presented in the initial handshake. If an extension applies to the entire chain, it SHOULD be included in the first CertificateEntry.

Note: Prior to TLS 1.3, “certificate_list” ordering required each certificate to certify the one immediately preceding it; however, some implementations allowed some flexibility. Servers sometimes send both a current and deprecated intermediate for transitional purposes, and others are simply configured incorrectly, but these cases can nonetheless be validated properly. For maximum compatibility, all implementations SHOULD be prepared to handle potentially extraneous certificates and arbitrary orderings from any TLS version, with the exception of the end-entity certificate which MUST be first.

The server’s certificate_list MUST always be non-empty. A client will send an empty certificate_list if it does not have an appropriate certificate to send in response to the server’s authentication request.

4.4.2.1. OCSP Status and SCT Extensions

[RFC6066] and [RFC6961] provide extensions to negotiate the server sending OCSP responses to the client. In TLS 1.2 and below, the server replies with an empty extension to indicate negotiation of this extension and the OCSP information is carried in a CertificateStatus message. In TLS 1.3, the server’s OCSP information is carried in an extension in the CertificateEntry containing the associated certificate. Specifically: The body of the “status_request” extension from the server MUST be a CertificateStatus structure as defined in [RFC6066].

A server MAY request that a client present an OCSP response with its certificate by sending a “status_request” extension in its CertificateRequest message. If the client opts to send an OCSP response, the body of its “status_request” extension MUST be a CertificateStatus structure as defined in [RFC6066].

Similarly, [RFC6962] provides a mechanism for a server to send a Signed Certificate Timestamp (SCT) as an extension in the ServerHello. In TLS 1.3, the server’s SCT information is carried in an extension in CertificateEntry.

4.4.2.2. Server Certificate Selection

The following rules apply to the certificates sent by the server:

• The certificate type MUST be X.509v3 [RFC5280], unless explicitly negotiated otherwise (e.g., [RFC5081]).
• The server’s end-entity certificate’s public key (and associated restrictions) MUST be compatible with the selected authentication algorithm (currently RSA or ECDSA).
• The certificate MUST allow the key to be used for signing (i.e., the digitalSignature bit MUST be set if the Key Usage extension is present) with a signature scheme indicated in the client’s “signature_algorithms” extension.
• The “server_name” and “trusted_ca_keys” extensions [RFC6066] are used to guide certificate selection. As servers MAY require the presence of the “server_name” extension, clients SHOULD send this extension, when applicable.

All certificates provided by the server MUST be signed by a signature algorithm that appears in the “signature_algorithms” extension provided by the client, if they are able to provide such a chain (see Section 4.2.3). Certificates that are self-signed or certificates that are expected to be trust anchors are not validated as part of the chain and therefore MAY be signed with any algorithm.

If the server cannot produce a certificate chain that is signed only via the indicated supported algorithms, then it SHOULD continue the handshake by sending the client a certificate chain of its choice that may include algorithms that are not known to be supported by the client. This fallback chain MAY use the deprecated SHA-1 hash algorithm only if the “signature_algorithms” extension provided by the client permits it. If the client cannot construct an acceptable chain using the provided certificates and decides to abort the handshake, then it MUST abort the handshake with an “unsupported_certificate” alert.

If the server has multiple certificates, it chooses one of them based on the above-mentioned criteria (in addition to other criteria, such as transport layer endpoint, local configuration and preferences).

4.4.2.3. Client Certificate Selection

The following rules apply to certificates sent by the client:

• The certificate type MUST be X.509v3 [RFC5280], unless explicitly negotiated otherwise (e.g., [RFC5081]).
• If the certificate_authorities list in the CertificateRequest message was non-empty, at least one of the certificates in the certificate chain SHOULD be issued by one of the listed CAs.
• The certificates MUST be signed using an acceptable signature algorithm, as described in Section 4.3.2. Note that this relaxes the constraints on certificate-signing algorithms found in prior versions of TLS.
• If the certificate_extensions list in the CertificateRequest message was non-empty, the end-entity certificate MUST match the extension OIDs recognized by the client, as described in Section 4.3.2.

Note that, as with the server certificate, there are certificates that use algorithm combinations that cannot be currently used with TLS.

4.4.2.4. Receiving a Certificate Message

In general, detailed certificate validation procedures are out of scope for TLS (see [RFC5280]). This section provides TLS-specific requirements.

If the server supplies an empty Certificate message, the client MUST abort the handshake with a “decode_error” alert.

If the client does not send any certificates, the server MAY at its discretion either continue the handshake without client authentication, or abort the handshake with a “certificate_required” alert. Also, if some aspect of the certificate chain was unacceptable (e.g., it was not signed by a known, trusted CA), the server MAY at its discretion either continue the handshake (considering the client unauthenticated) or abort the handshake.

Any endpoint receiving any certificate signed using any signature algorithm using an MD5 hash MUST abort the handshake with a “bad_certificate” alert. SHA-1 is deprecated and it is RECOMMENDED that any endpoint receiving any certificate signed using any signature algorithm using a SHA-1 hash abort the handshake with a “bad_certificate” alert. All endpoints are RECOMMENDED to transition to SHA-256 or better as soon as possible to maintain interoperability with implementations currently in the process of phasing out SHA-1 support.

Note that a certificate containing a key for one signature algorithm MAY be signed using a different signature algorithm (for instance, an RSA key signed with an ECDSA key).

4.4.3. Certificate Verify

This message is used to provide explicit proof that an endpoint possesses the private key corresponding to its certificate and also provides integrity for the handshake up to this point. Servers MUST send this message when authenticating via a certificate. Clients MUST send this message whenever authenticating via a certificate (i.e., when the Certificate message is non-empty). When sent, this message MUST appear immediately after the Certificate message and immediately prior to the Finished message.

Structure of this message:

   struct {
       SignatureScheme algorithm;
       opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateVerify;

The algorithm field specifies the signature algorithm used (see Section 4.2.3 for the definition of this field). The signature is a digital signature using that algorithm. The content to be signed is the hash output as described in Section 4.4 namely:

   Transcript-Hash(Handshake Context, Certificate)

The digital signature is then computed over the concatenation of:

• A string that consists of octet 32 (0x20) repeated 64 times
• The context string
• A single 0 byte which serves as the separator
• The content to be signed

This structure is intended to prevent an attack on previous versions of TLS in which the ServerKeyExchange format meant that attackers could obtain a signature of a message with a chosen 32-byte prefix (ClientHello.random). The initial 64-byte pad clears that prefix along with the server-controlled ServerHello.random.

The context string for a server signature is “TLS 1.3, server CertificateVerify” and for a client signature is “TLS 1.3, client CertificateVerify”. It is used to provide separation between signatures made in different contexts, helping against potential cross-protocol attacks.

For example, if the transcript hash was 32 bytes of 01 (this length would make sense for SHA-256), the content covered by the digital signature for a server CertificateVerify would be:

   2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020
   2020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020
   544c5320312e332c207365727665722043657274696669636174655665726966
   79
   00
   0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101

On the sender side the process for computing the signature field of the CertificateVerify message takes as input:

• The content covered by the digital signature
• The private signing key corresponding to the certificate sent in the previous message

If the CertificateVerify message is sent by a server, the signature algorithm MUST be one offered in the client’s “signature_algorithms” extension unless no valid certificate chain can be produced without unsupported algorithms (see Section 4.2.3).

If sent by a client, the signature algorithm used in the signature MUST be one of those present in the supported_signature_algorithms field of the CertificateRequest message.

In addition, the signature algorithm MUST be compatible with the key in the sender’s end-entity certificate. RSA signatures MUST use an RSASSA-PSS algorithm, regardless of whether RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 algorithms appear in “signature_algorithms”. SHA-1 MUST NOT be used in any signatures in CertificateVerify. All SHA-1 signature algorithms in this specification are defined solely for use in legacy certificates, and are not valid for CertificateVerify signatures.

The receiver of a CertificateVerify MUST verify the signature field. The verification process takes as input:

• The content covered by the digital signature
• The public key contained in the end-entity certificate found in the associated Certificate message.
• The digital signature received in the signature field of the CertificateVerify message

If the verification fails, the receiver MUST terminate the handshake with a “decrypt_error” alert.

Note: When used with non-certificate-based handshakes (e.g., PSK), the client’s signature does not cover the server’s certificate directly. When the PSK was established through a NewSessionTicket, the client’s signature transitively covers the server’s certificate through the PSK binder. [PSK-FINISHED] describes a concrete attack on constructions that do not bind to the server’s certificate. It is unsafe to use certificate-based client authentication when the client might potentially share the same PSK/key-id pair with two different endpoints and implementations MUST NOT combine external PSKs with certificate-based authentication.

4.4.4. Finished

The Finished message is the final message in the authentication block. It is essential for providing authentication of the handshake and of the computed keys.

Recipients of Finished messages MUST verify that the contents are correct and if incorrect MUST terminate the connection with a “decrypt_error” alert.

Once a side has sent its Finished message and received and validated the Finished message from its peer, it may begin to send and receive application data over the connection. Early data may be sent prior to the receipt of the peer’s Finished message, per Section 4.2.7.

The key used to compute the finished message is computed from the Base key defined in Section 4.4 using HKDF (see Section 7.1). Specifically:

finished_key =
    HKDF-Expand-Label(BaseKey, "finished", "", Hash.length)

Structure of this message:

   struct {
       opaque verify_data[Hash.length];
   } Finished;

The verify_data value is computed as follows:

   verify_data =
       HMAC(finished_key,
            Transcript-Hash(Handshake Context,
                            Certificate*, CertificateVerify*))

   * Only included if present.

Where HMAC [RFC2104] uses the Hash algorithm for the handshake. As noted above, the HMAC input can generally be implemented by a running hash, i.e., just the handshake hash at this point.

In previous versions of TLS, the verify_data was always 12 octets long. In TLS 1.3, it is the size of the HMAC output for the Hash used for the handshake.

Note: Alerts and any other record types are not handshake messages and are not included in the hash computations.

Any records following a 1-RTT Finished message MUST be encrypted under the appropriate application traffic key as described in Section 7.2. In particular, this includes any alerts sent by the server in response to client Certificate and CertificateVerify messages.

4.5. End of Early Data

   struct {} EndOfEarlyData;

The EndOfEarlyData message is sent by the client to indicate that all 0-RTT application_data messages have been transmitted (or none will be sent at all) and that the following records are protected under handshake traffic keys. Servers MUST NOT send this message and clients receiving it MUST terminate the connection with an “unexpected_message” alert. This message is encrypted under keys derived from the client_early_traffic_secret.

4.6. Post-Handshake Messages

TLS also allows other messages to be sent after the main handshake. These messages use a handshake content type and are encrypted under the appropriate application traffic key.

4.6.1. New Session Ticket Message

At any time after the server has received the client Finished message, it MAY send a NewSessionTicket message. This message creates a pre-shared key (PSK) binding between the ticket value and the resumption master secret.

The client MAY use this PSK for future handshakes by including the ticket value in the “pre_shared_key” extension in its ClientHello (Section 4.2.8). Servers MAY send multiple tickets on a single connection, either immediately after each other or after specific events. For instance, the server might send a new ticket after post-handshake authentication in order to encapsulate the additional client authentication state. Clients SHOULD attempt to use each ticket no more than once, with more recent tickets being used first.

Any ticket MUST only be resumed with a cipher suite that has the same KDF hash as that used to establish the original connection, and only if the client provides the same SNI value as in the original connection, as described in Section 3 of [RFC6066].

Note: Although the resumption master secret depends on the client’s second flight, servers which do not request client authentication MAY compute the remainder of the transcript independently and then send a NewSessionTicket immediately upon sending its Finished rather than waiting for the client Finished. This might be appropriate in cases where the client is expected to open multiple TLS connections in parallel and would benefit from the reduced overhead of a resumption handshake, for example.

   struct {
       uint32 ticket_lifetime;
       uint32 ticket_age_add;
       opaque ticket<1..2^16-1>;
       Extension extensions<0..2^16-2>;
   } NewSessionTicket;

ticket_lifetime

Indicates the lifetime in seconds as a 32-bit unsigned integer in network byte order from the time of ticket issuance. Servers MUST NOT use any value more than 604800 seconds (7 days). The value of zero indicates that the ticket should be discarded immediately. Clients MUST NOT cache tickets for longer than 7 days, regardless of the ticket_lifetime, and MAY delete the ticket earlier based on local policy. A server MAY treat a ticket as valid for a shorter period of time than what is stated in the ticket_lifetime.

ticket_age_add

A securely generated, random 32-bit value that is used to obscure the age of the ticket that the client includes in the “pre_shared_key” extension. The client-side ticket age is added to this value modulo 2^32 to obtain the value that is transmitted by the client.

ticket

The value of the ticket to be used as the PSK identity. The ticket itself is an opaque label. It MAY either be a database lookup key or a self-encrypted and self-authenticated value. Section 4 of [RFC5077] describes a recommended ticket construction mechanism.

extensions

A set of extension values for the ticket. The “Extension” format is defined in Section 4.2. Clients MUST ignore unrecognized extensions.

The sole extension currently defined for NewSessionTicket is “early_data”, indicating that the ticket may be used to send 0-RTT data (Section 4.2.7)). It contains the following value:

max_early_data_size

The maximum amount of 0-RTT data that the client is allowed to send when using this ticket, in bytes. Only Application Data payload (i.e., plaintext but not padding or the inner content type byte) is counted. A server receiving more than max_early_data_size bytes of 0-RTT data SHOULD terminate the connection with an “unexpected_message” alert.

Note that in principle it is possible to continue issuing new tickets which continue to indefinitely extend the lifetime of the keying material originally derived from an initial non-PSK handshake (which was most likely tied to the peer’s certificate). It is RECOMMENDED that implementations place limits on the total lifetime of such keying material; these limits should take into account the lifetime of the peer’s certificate, the likelihood of intervening revocation, and the time since the peer’s online CertificateVerify signature.

4.6.2. Post-Handshake Authentication

The server is permitted to request client authentication at any time after the handshake has completed by sending a CertificateRequest message. The client SHOULD respond with the appropriate Authentication messages. If the client chooses to authenticate, it MUST send Certificate, CertificateVerify, and Finished. If it declines, it MUST send a Certificate message containing no certificates followed by Finished.

Note: Because client authentication may require prompting the user, servers MUST be prepared for some delay, including receiving an arbitrary number of other messages between sending the CertificateRequest and receiving a response. In addition, clients which receive multiple CertificateRequests in close succession MAY respond to them in a different order than they were received (the certificate_request_context value allows the server to disambiguate the responses).

4.6.3. Key and IV Update

   enum {
       update_not_requested(0), update_requested(1), (255)
   } KeyUpdateRequest;

   struct {
       KeyUpdateRequest request_update;
   } KeyUpdate;

request_update

Indicates whether the recipient of the KeyUpdate should respond with its own KeyUpdate. If an implementation receives any other value, it MUST terminate the connection with an “illegal_parameter” alert.

The KeyUpdate handshake message is used to indicate that the sender is updating its sending cryptographic keys. This message can be sent by either peer after it has sent a Finished message. Implementations that receive a KeyUpdate message prior to receiving a Finished message MUST terminate the connection with an “unexpected_message” alert. After sending a KeyUpdate message, the sender SHALL send all its traffic using the next generation of keys, computed as described in Section 7.2. Upon receiving a KeyUpdate, the receiver MUST update its receiving keys.

If the request_update field is set to “update_requested” then the receiver MUST send a KeyUpdate of its own with request_update set to “update_not_requested” prior to sending its next application data record. This mechanism allows either side to force an update to the entire connection, but causes an implementation which receives multiple KeyUpdates while it is silent to respond with a single update. Note that implementations may receive an arbitrary number of messages between sending a KeyUpdate with request_update set to update_requested and receiving the peer’s KeyUpdate, because those messages may already be in flight. However, because send and receive keys are derived from independent traffic secrets, retaining the receive traffic secret does not threaten the forward secrecy of data sent before the sender changed keys.

If implementations independently send their own KeyUpdates with request_update set to “update_requested”, and they cross in flight, then each side will also send a response, with the result that each side increments by two generations.

Both sender and receiver MUST encrypt their KeyUpdate messages with the old keys. Additionally, both sides MUST enforce that a KeyUpdate with the old key is received before accepting any messages encrypted with the new key. Failure to do so may allow message truncation attacks.

5. Record Protocol

The TLS record protocol takes messages to be transmitted, fragments the data into manageable blocks, protects the records, and transmits the result. Received data is verified and decrypted, reassembled, and then delivered to higher-level clients.

TLS records are typed, which allows multiple higher-level protocols to be multiplexed over the same record layer. This document specifies three content types: handshake, application data, and alert. Implementations MUST NOT send record types not defined in this document unless negotiated by some extension. If a TLS implementation receives an unexpected record type, it MUST terminate the connection with an “unexpected_message” alert. New record content type values are assigned by IANA in the TLS Content Type Registry as described in Section 10.

5.1. Record Layer

The record layer fragments information blocks into TLSPlaintext records carrying data in chunks of 2^14 bytes or less. Message boundaries are handled differently depending on the underlying ContentType. Any future content types MUST specify appropriate rules. Note that these rules are stricter than what was enforced in TLS 1.2.

Handshake messages MAY be coalesced into a single TLSPlaintext record or fragmented across several records, provided that:

• Handshake messages MUST NOT be interleaved with other record types. That is, if a handshake message is split over two or more records, there MUST NOT be any other records between them.
• Handshake messages MUST NOT span key changes. Because the ClientHello, EndOfEarlyData, ServerHello, Finished, and KeyUpdate messages can arrive immediately prior to a key change, upon receiving these messages a receiver MUST verify that the end of these messages aligns with a record boundary; if not, then it MUST terminate the connection with an “unexpected_message” alert.

Implementations MUST NOT send zero-length fragments of Handshake types, even if those fragments contain padding.

Alert messages (Section 6) MUST NOT be fragmented across records and multiple Alert messages MUST NOT be coalesced into a single TLSPlaintext record. In other words, a record with an Alert type MUST contain exactly one message.

Application Data messages contain data that is opaque to TLS. Application Data messages are always protected. Zero-length fragments of Application Data MAY be sent as they are potentially useful as a traffic analysis countermeasure.

   enum {
       alert(21),
       handshake(22),
       application_data(23),
       (255)
   } ContentType;

   struct {
       ContentType type;
       ProtocolVersion legacy_record_version;
       uint16 length;
       opaque fragment[TLSPlaintext.length];
   } TLSPlaintext;

type

The higher-level protocol used to process the enclosed fragment.

legacy_record_version

This value MUST be set to 0x0301 for all records generated by a TLS 1.3 implementation. This field is deprecated and MUST be ignored for all purposes. Previous versions of TLS would use other values in this field under some circumstances.

length

The length (in bytes) of the following TLSPlaintext.fragment. The length MUST NOT exceed 2^14 bytes. An endpoint that receives a record that exceeds this length MUST terminate the connection with a “record_overflow” alert.

fragment

The data being transmitted. This value is transparent and is treated as an independent block to be dealt with by the higher-level protocol specified by the type field.

This document describes TLS 1.3, which uses the version 0x0304. This version value is historical, deriving from the use of 0x0301 for TLS 1.0 and 0x0300 for SSL 3.0. In order to maximize backwards compatibility, the record layer version identifies as simply TLS 1.0. Endpoints supporting multiple versions negotiate the version to use by following the procedure and requirements in Appendix D.

When record protection has not yet been engaged, TLSPlaintext structures are written directly onto the wire. Once record protection has started, TLSPlaintext records are protected and sent as described in the following section.

5.2. Record Payload Protection

The record protection functions translate a TLSPlaintext structure into a TLSCiphertext. The deprotection functions reverse the process. In TLS 1.3, as opposed to previous versions of TLS, all ciphers are modeled as “Authenticated Encryption with Additional Data” (AEAD) [RFC5116]. AEAD functions provide an unified encryption and authentication operation which turns plaintext into authenticated ciphertext and back again. Each encrypted record consists of a plaintext header followed by an encrypted body, which itself contains a type and optional padding.

   struct {
       opaque content[TLSPlaintext.length];
       ContentType type;
       uint8 zeros[length_of_padding];
   } TLSInnerPlaintext;

   struct {
       ContentType opaque_type = 23; /* application_data */
       ProtocolVersion legacy_record_version = 0x0301; /* TLS v1.x */
       uint16 length;
       opaque encrypted_record[length];
   } TLSCiphertext;

content

The byte encoding of a handshake or an alert message, or the raw bytes of the application’s data to send.

type

The content type of the record.

zeros

An arbitrary-length run of zero-valued bytes may appear in the cleartext after the type field. This provides an opportunity for senders to pad any TLS record by a chosen amount as long as the total stays within record size limits. See Section 5.4 for more details.

opaque_type

The outer opaque_type field of a TLSCiphertext record is always set to the value 23 (application_data) for outward compatibility with middleboxes accustomed to parsing previous versions of TLS. The actual content type of the record is found in TLSInnerPlaintext.type after decryption.

legacy_record_version

The legacy_record_version field is always 0x0301. TLS 1.3 TLSCiphertexts are not generated until after TLS 1.3 has been negotiated, so there are no historical compatibility concerns where other values might be received. Implementations MAY verify that the legacy_record_version field is 0x0301 and abort the connection if it is not. Note that the handshake protocol including the ClientHello and ServerHello messages authenticates the protocol version, so this value is redundant.

length

The length (in bytes) of the following TLSCiphertext.encrypted_record, which is the sum of the lengths of the content and the padding, plus one for the inner content type, plus any expansion added by the AEAD algorithm. The length MUST NOT exceed 2^14 + 256 bytes. An endpoint that receives a record that exceeds this length MUST terminate the connection with a “record_overflow” alert.

encrypted_record

The AEAD-encrypted form of the serialized TLSInnerPlaintext structure.

AEAD algorithms take as input a single key, a nonce, a plaintext, and “additional data” to be included in the authentication check, as described in Section 2.1 of [RFC5116]. The key is either the client_write_key or the server_write_key, the nonce is derived from the sequence number (see Section 5.3) and the client_write_iv or server_write_iv, and the additional data input is empty (zero length). Derivation of traffic keys is defined in Section 7.3.

The plaintext is the concatenation of TLSInnerPlaintext.fragment, TLSInnerPlaintext.type, and any padding bytes (zeros).

The AEAD output consists of the ciphertext output from the AEAD encryption operation. The length of the plaintext is greater than TLSInnerPlaintext.length due to the inclusion of TLSInnerPlaintext.type and any padding supplied by the sender. The length of the AEAD output will generally be larger than the plaintext, but by an amount that varies with the AEAD algorithm. Since the ciphers might incorporate padding, the amount of overhead could vary with different lengths of plaintext. Symbolically,

   AEADEncrypted =
       AEAD-Encrypt(write_key, nonce, plaintext of fragment)

In order to decrypt and verify, the cipher takes as input the key, nonce, and the AEADEncrypted value. The output is either the plaintext or an error indicating that the decryption failed. There is no separate integrity check. That is:

   plaintext of encrypted_record =
       AEAD-Decrypt(write_key, nonce, AEADEncrypted)

If the decryption fails, the receiver MUST terminate the connection with a “bad_record_mac” alert.

An AEAD algorithm used in TLS 1.3 MUST NOT produce an expansion greater than 255 octets. An endpoint that receives a record from its peer with TLSCipherText.length larger than 2^14 + 256 octets MUST terminate the connection with a “record_overflow” alert. This limit is derived from the maximum TLSPlaintext length of 2^14 octets + 1 octet for ContentType + the maximum AEAD expansion of 255 octets.

5.3. Per-Record Nonce

A 64-bit sequence number is maintained separately for reading and writing records. Each sequence number is set to zero at the beginning of a connection and whenever the key is changed.

The sequence number is incremented by one after reading or writing each record. The first record transmitted under a particular set of traffic keys MUST use sequence number 0.

Because the size of sequence numbers is 64-bit, they should not wrap. If a TLS implementation would need to wrap a sequence number, it MUST either re-key (Section 4.6.3) or terminate the connection.

Each AEAD algorithm will specify a range of possible lengths for the per-record nonce, from N_MIN bytes to N_MAX bytes of input ([RFC5116]). The length of the TLS per-record nonce (iv_length) is set to the larger of 8 bytes and N_MIN for the AEAD algorithm (see [RFC5116] Section 4). An AEAD algorithm where N_MAX is less than 8 bytes MUST NOT be used with TLS. The per-record nonce for the AEAD construction is formed as follows:

1. The 64-bit record sequence number is encoded in network byte order and padded to the left with zeros to iv_length.
2. The padded sequence number is XORed with the static client_write_iv or server_write_iv, depending on the role.

The resulting quantity (of length iv_length) is used as the per-record nonce.

Note: This is a different construction from that in TLS 1.2, which specified a partially explicit nonce.

5.4. Record Padding

All encrypted TLS records can be padded to inflate the size of the TLSCipherText. This allows the sender to hide the size of the traffic from an observer.

When generating a TLSCiphertext record, implementations MAY choose to pad. An unpadded record is just a record with a padding length of zero. Padding is a string of zero-valued bytes appended to the ContentType field before encryption. Implementations MUST set the padding octets to all zeros before encrypting.

Application Data records may contain a zero-length TLSInnerPlaintext.content if the sender desires. This permits generation of plausibly-sized cover traffic in contexts where the presence or absence of activity may be sensitive. Implementations MUST NOT send Handshake or Alert records that have a zero-length TLSInnerPlaintext.content; if such a message is received, the receiving implementation MUST terminate the connection with an “unexpected_message” alert.

The padding sent is automatically verified by the record protection mechanism; upon successful decryption of a TLSCiphertext.encrypted_record, the receiving implementation scans the field from the end toward the beginning until it finds a non-zero octet. This non-zero octet is the content type of the message. This padding scheme was selected because it allows padding of any encrypted TLS record by an arbitrary size (from zero up to TLS record size limits) without introducing new content types. The design also enforces all-zero padding octets, which allows for quick detection of padding errors.

Implementations MUST limit their scanning to the cleartext returned from the AEAD decryption. If a receiving implementation does not find a non-zero octet in the cleartext, it MUST terminate the connection with an “unexpected_message” alert.

The presence of padding does not change the overall record size limitations – the full fragment plaintext may not exceed 2^14 octets.

Selecting a padding policy that suggests when and how much to pad is a complex topic, and is beyond the scope of this specification. If the application layer protocol atop TLS has its own padding, it may be preferable to pad application_data TLS records within the application layer. Padding for encrypted handshake and alert TLS records must still be handled at the TLS layer, though. Later documents may define padding selection algorithms, or define a padding policy request mechanism through TLS extensions or some other means.

5.5. Limits on Key Usage

There are cryptographic limits on the amount of plaintext which can be safely encrypted under a given set of keys. [AEAD-LIMITS] provides an analysis of these limits under the assumption that the underlying primitive (AES or ChaCha20) has no weaknesses. Implementations SHOULD do a key update as described in Section 4.6.3 prior to reaching these limits.

For AES-GCM, up to 2^24.5 full-size records (about 24 million) may be encrypted on a given connection while keeping a safety margin of approximately 2^-57 for Authenticated Encryption (AE) security. For ChaCha20/Poly1305, the record sequence number would wrap before the safety limit is reached.

6. Alert Protocol

One of the content types supported by the TLS record layer is the alert type. Like other messages, alert messages are encrypted as specified by the current connection state.

Alert messages convey a description of the alert and a legacy field that conveyed the severity of the message in previous versions of TLS. In TLS 1.3, the severity is implicit in the type of alert being sent, and can safely be ignored. Some alerts are sent to indicate orderly closure of the connection or the end of early data (see Section 6.1). Upon receiving such an alert, the TLS implementation SHOULD indicate end-of-data to the application, and if appropriate for the alert type, send a closure alert in response.

Error alerts indicate abortive closure of the connection (see Section 6.2). Upon receiving an error alert, the TLS implementation SHOULD indicate an error to the application and MUST NOT allow any further data to be sent or received on the connection. Servers and clients MUST forget keys and secrets associated with a failed connection. Stateful implementations of tickets (as in many clients) SHOULD discard tickets associated with failed connections.

All the alerts listed in Section 6.2 MUST be sent as fatal and MUST be treated as fatal regardless of the AlertLevel in the message. Unknown alert types MUST be treated as fatal.

   enum { warning(1), fatal(2), (255) } AlertLevel;

   enum {
       close_notify(0),
       unexpected_message(10),
       bad_record_mac(20),
       record_overflow(22),
       handshake_failure(40),
       bad_certificate(42),
       unsupported_certificate(43),
       certificate_revoked(44),
       certificate_expired(45),
       certificate_unknown(46),
       illegal_parameter(47),
       unknown_ca(48),
       access_denied(49),
       decode_error(50),
       decrypt_error(51),
       protocol_version(70),
       insufficient_security(71),
       internal_error(80),
       inappropriate_fallback(86),
       user_canceled(90),
       missing_extension(109),
       unsupported_extension(110),
       certificate_unobtainable(111),
       unrecognized_name(112),
       bad_certificate_status_response(113),
       bad_certificate_hash_value(114),
       unknown_psk_identity(115),
       certificate_required(116),
       (255)
   } AlertDescription;

   struct {
       AlertLevel level;
       AlertDescription description;
   } Alert;

6.1. Closure Alerts

The client and the server must share knowledge that the connection is ending in order to avoid a truncation attack.

close_notify

This alert notifies the recipient that the sender will not send any more messages on this connection. Any data received after a closure MUST be ignored.

user_canceled

This alert notifies the recipient that the sender is canceling the handshake for some reason unrelated to a protocol failure. If a user cancels an operation after the handshake is complete, just closing the connection by sending a “close_notify” is more appropriate. This alert SHOULD be followed by a “close_notify”. This alert is generally a warning.

Either party MAY initiate a close by sending a “close_notify” alert. Any data received after a closure alert MUST be ignored. If a transport-level close is received prior to a “close_notify”, the receiver cannot know that all the data that was sent has been received.

Each party MUST send a “close_notify” alert before closing the write side of the connection, unless some other fatal alert has been transmitted. The other party MUST respond with a “close_notify” alert of its own and close down the connection immediately, discarding any pending writes. The initiator of the close need not wait for the responding “close_notify” alert before closing the read side of the connection.

If the application protocol using TLS provides that any data may be carried over the underlying transport after the TLS connection is closed, the TLS implementation MUST receive the responding “close_notify” alert before indicating to the application layer that the TLS connection has ended. If the application protocol will not transfer any additional data, but will only close the underlying transport connection, then the implementation MAY choose to close the transport without waiting for the responding “close_notify”. No part of this standard should be taken to dictate the manner in which a usage profile for TLS manages its data transport, including when connections are opened or closed.

Note: It is assumed that closing a connection reliably delivers pending data before destroying the transport.

6.2. Error Alerts

Error handling in the TLS Handshake Protocol is very simple. When an error is detected, the detecting party sends a message to its peer. Upon transmission or receipt of a fatal alert message, both parties MUST immediately close the connection.

Whenever an implementation encounters a fatal error condition, it SHOULD send an appropriate fatal alert and MUST close the connection without sending or receiving any additional data. In the rest of this specification, when the phrases “terminate the connection” and “abort the handshake” are used without a specific alert it means that the implementation SHOULD send the alert indicated by the descriptions below. The phrases “terminate the connection with a X alert” and “abort the handshake with a X alert” mean that the implementation MUST send alert X if it sends any alert. All alerts defined in this section below, as well as all unknown alerts, are universally considered fatal as of TLS 1.3 (see Section 6).

The following error alerts are defined:

unexpected_message

An inappropriate message (e.g., the wrong handshake message, premature application data, etc.) was received. This alert should never be observed in communication between proper implementations.

bad_record_mac

This alert is returned if a record is received which cannot be deprotected. Because AEAD algorithms combine decryption and verification, and also to avoid side channel attacks, this alert is used for all deprotection failures. This alert should never be observed in communication between proper implementations, except when messages were corrupted in the network.

record_overflow

A TLSCiphertext record was received that had a length more than 2^14 + 256 bytes, or a record decrypted to a TLSPlaintext record with more than 2^14 bytes. This alert should never be observed in communication between proper implementations, except when messages were corrupted in the network.

handshake_failure

Reception of a “handshake_failure” alert message indicates that the sender was unable to negotiate an acceptable set of security parameters given the options available.

bad_certificate

A certificate was corrupt, contained signatures that did not verify correctly, etc.

unsupported_certificate

A certificate was of an unsupported type.

certificate_revoked

A certificate was revoked by its signer.

certificate_expired

A certificate has expired or is not currently valid.

certificate_unknown

Some other (unspecified) issue arose in processing the certificate, rendering it unacceptable.

illegal_parameter

A field in the handshake was incorrect or inconsistent with other fields. This alert is used for errors which conform to the formal protocol syntax but are otherwise incorrect.

unknown_ca

A valid certificate chain or partial chain was received, but the certificate was not accepted because the CA certificate could not be located or could not be matched with a known trust anchor.

access_denied

A valid certificate or PSK was received, but when access control was applied, the sender decided not to proceed with negotiation.

decode_error

A message could not be decoded because some field was out of the specified range or the length of the message was incorrect. This alert is used for errors where the message does not conform to the formal protocol syntax. This alert should never be observed in communication between proper implementations, except when messages were corrupted in the network.

decrypt_error

A handshake cryptographic operation failed, including being unable to correctly verify a signature or validate a Finished message or a PSK binder.

protocol_version

The protocol version the peer has attempted to negotiate is recognized but not supported. (see Appendix D)

insufficient_security

Returned instead of “handshake_failure” when a negotiation has failed specifically because the server requires parameters more secure than those supported by the client.

internal_error

An internal error unrelated to the peer or the correctness of the protocol (such as a memory allocation failure) makes it impossible to continue.

inappropriate_fallback

Sent by a server in response to an invalid connection retry attempt from a client (see [RFC7507]).

missing_extension

Sent by endpoints that receive a hello message not containing an extension that is mandatory to send for the offered TLS version or other negotiated parameters.

unsupported_extension

Sent by endpoints receiving any hello message containing an extension known to be prohibited for inclusion in the given hello message, including any extensions in a ServerHello or Certificate not first offered in the corresponding ClientHello.

certificate_unobtainable

Sent by servers when unable to obtain a certificate from a URL provided by the client via the “client_certificate_url” extension (see [RFC6066]).

unrecognized_name

Sent by servers when no server exists identified by the name provided by the client via the “server_name” extension (see [RFC6066]).

bad_certificate_status_response

Sent by clients when an invalid or unacceptable OCSP response is provided by the server via the “status_request” extension (see [RFC6066]).

bad_certificate_hash_value

Sent by servers when a retrieved object does not have the correct hash provided by the client via the “client_certificate_url” extension (see [RFC6066]).

unknown_psk_identity

Sent by servers when PSK key establishment is desired but no acceptable PSK identity is provided by the client. Sending this alert is OPTIONAL; servers MAY instead choose to send a “decrypt_error” alert to merely indicate an invalid PSK identity.

certificate_required

Sent by servers when a client certificate is desired but none was provided by the client.

New Alert values are assigned by IANA as described in Section 10.

7. Cryptographic Computations

The TLS handshake establishes one or more input secrets which are combined to create the actual working keying material, as detailed below. The key derivation process incorporates both the input secrets and the handshake transcript. Note that because the handshake transcript includes the random values in the Hello messages, any given handshake will have different traffic secrets, even if the same input secrets are used, as is the case when the same PSK is used for multiple connections

7.1. Key Schedule

The key derivation process makes use of the HKDF-Extract and HKDF-Expand functions as defined for HKDF [RFC5869], as well as the functions defined below:

    HKDF-Expand-Label(Secret, Label, HashValue, Length) =
         HKDF-Expand(Secret, HkdfLabel, Length)

    Where HkdfLabel is specified as:

    struct {
        uint16 length = Length;
        opaque label<10..255> = "TLS 1.3, " + Label;
        opaque hash_value<0..255> = HashValue;
    } HkdfLabel;

    Derive-Secret(Secret, Label, Messages) =
         HKDF-Expand-Label(Secret, Label,
                           Transcript-Hash(Messages), Hash.length)

The Hash function and the HKDF hash are the cipher suite hash algorithm. Hash.length is its output length in bytes. Messages are the concatenation of the indicated handshake messages, including the handshake message type and length fields, but not including record layer headers. Note that in some cases a zero-length HashValue (indicated by “”) is passed to HKDF-Expand-Label.

Given a set of n InputSecrets, the final “master secret” is computed by iteratively invoking HKDF-Extract with InputSecret_1, InputSecret_2, etc. The initial secret is simply a string of Hash.length zero bytes. Concretely, for the present version of TLS 1.3, secrets are added in the following order:

• PSK (a pre-shared key established externally or a resumption_master_secret value from a previous connection)
• (EC)DHE shared secret (Section 7.4)

This produces a full key derivation schedule shown in the diagram below. In this diagram, the following formatting conventions apply:

• HKDF-Extract is drawn as taking the Salt argument from the top and the IKM argument from the left.
• Derive-Secret’s Secret argument is indicated by the incoming arrow. For instance, the Early Secret is the Secret for generating the client_early_traffic_secret.

                 0
                 |
                 v
   PSK ->  HKDF-Extract = Early Secret
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(.,
                 |                     "external psk binder key" |
                 |                     "resumption psk binder key",
                 |                     "")
                 |                     = binder_key
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "client early traffic secret",
                 |                     ClientHello)
                 |                     = client_early_traffic_secret
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "early exporter master secret",
                 |                     ClientHello)
                 |                     = early_exporter_secret
                 v
           Derive-Secret(., "derived secret", "")
                 |
                 v
(EC)DHE -> HKDF-Extract = Handshake Secret
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "client handshake traffic secret",
                 |                     ClientHello...ServerHello)
                 |                     = client_handshake_traffic_secret
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "server handshake traffic secret",
                 |                     ClientHello...ServerHello)
                 |                     = server_handshake_traffic_secret
                 v
           Derive-Secret(., "derived secret", "")
                 |
                 v
      0 -> HKDF-Extract = Master Secret
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "client application traffic secret",
                 |                     ClientHello...Server Finished)
                 |                     = client_traffic_secret_0
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "server application traffic secret",
                 |                     ClientHello...Server Finished)
                 |                     = server_traffic_secret_0
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "exporter master secret",
                 |                     ClientHello...Server Finished)
                 |                     = exporter_secret
                 |
                 +-----> Derive-Secret(., "resumption master secret",
                                       ClientHello...Client Finished)
                                       = resumption_master_secret

The general pattern here is that the secrets shown down the left side of the diagram are just raw entropy without context, whereas the secrets down the right side include handshake context and therefore can be used to derive working keys without additional context. Note that the different calls to Derive-Secret may take different Messages arguments, even with the same secret. In a 0-RTT exchange, Derive-Secret is called with four distinct transcripts; in a 1-RTT-only exchange with three distinct transcripts.

The complete transcript passed to Derive-Secret is always taken from the following sequence of handshake messages, starting at the first ClientHello and including only those messages that were sent: ClientHello, HelloRetryRequest, ClientHello, ServerHello, EncryptedExtensions, Server CertificateRequest, Server Certificate, Server CertificateVerify, Server Finished, EndOfEarlyData, Client Certificate, Client CertificateVerify, Client Finished.

If a given secret is not available, then the 0-value consisting of a string of Hash.length zero bytes is used. Note that this does not mean skipping rounds, so if PSK is not in use Early Secret will still be HKDF-Extract(0, 0). For the computation of the binder_secret, the label is “external psk binder key” for external PSKs (those provisioned outside of TLS) and “resumption psk binder key” for resumption PSKs (those provisioned as the resumption master secret of a previous handshake). The different labels prevent the substitution of one type of PSK for the other.

There are multiple potential Early Secret values depending on which PSK the server ultimately selects. The client will need to compute one for each potential PSK; if no PSK is selected, it will then need to compute the early secret corresponding to the zero PSK.

7.2. Updating Traffic Keys and IVs

Once the handshake is complete, it is possible for either side to update its sending traffic keys using the KeyUpdate handshake message defined in Section 4.6.3. The next generation of traffic keys is computed by generating client_/server_traffic_secret_N+1 from client_/server_traffic_secret_N as described in this section then re-deriving the traffic keys as described in Section 7.3.

The next-generation traffic_secret is computed as:

    traffic_secret_N+1 = HKDF-Expand-Label(
                             traffic_secret_N,
                             "application traffic secret", "", Hash.length)

Once client/server_traffic_secret_N+1 and its associated traffic keys have been computed, implementations SHOULD delete client_/server_traffic_secret_N and its associated traffic keys.

7.3. Traffic Key Calculation

The traffic keying material is generated from the following input values:

• A secret value
• A purpose value indicating the specific value being generated
• The length of the key

The traffic keying material is generated from an input traffic secret value using:

    [sender]_write_key = HKDF-Expand-Label(Secret, "key", "", key_length)
    [sender]_write_iv = HKDF-Expand-Label(Secret, "iv", "", iv_length)

[sender] denotes the sending side. The Secret value for each record type is shown in the table below.

Record Type	Secret
0-RTT Application	client_early_traffic_secret
Handshake	[sender]_handshake_traffic_secret
Application Data	[sender]_traffic_secret_N

All the traffic keying material is recomputed whenever the underlying Secret changes (e.g., when changing from the handshake to application data keys or upon a key update).

7.4. (EC)DHE Shared Secret Calculation

7.4.1. Finite Field Diffie-Hellman

For finite field groups, a conventional Diffie-Hellman computation is performed. The negotiated key (Z) is converted to a byte string by encoding in big-endian and padded with zeros up to the size of the prime. This byte string is used as the shared secret, and is used in the key schedule as specified above.

Note that this construction differs from previous versions of TLS which remove leading zeros.

7.4.2. Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman

For secp256r1, secp384r1 and secp521r1, ECDH calculations (including parameter and key generation as well as the shared secret calculation) are performed according to [IEEE1363] using the ECKAS-DH1 scheme with the identity map as key derivation function (KDF), so that the shared secret is the x-coordinate of the ECDH shared secret elliptic curve point represented as an octet string. Note that this octet string (Z in IEEE 1363 terminology) as output by FE2OSP, the Field Element to Octet String Conversion Primitive, has constant length for any given field; leading zeros found in this octet string MUST NOT be truncated.

(Note that this use of the identity KDF is a technicality. The complete picture is that ECDH is employed with a non-trivial KDF because TLS does not directly use this secret for anything other than for computing other secrets.)

ECDH functions are used as follows:

• The public key to put into the KeyShareEntry.key_exchange structure is the result of applying the ECDH function to the secret key of appropriate length (into scalar input) and the standard public basepoint (into u-coordinate point input).
• The ECDH shared secret is the result of applying the ECDH function to the secret key (into scalar input) and the peer’s public key (into u-coordinate point input). The output is used raw, with no processing.

For X25519 and X448, implementations SHOULD use the approach specified in [RFC7748] to calculate the Diffie-Hellman shared secret. Implementations MUST check whether the computed Diffie-Hellman shared secret is the all-zero value and abort if so, as described in Section 6 of [RFC7748]. If implementers use an alternative implementation of these elliptic curves, they SHOULD perform the additional checks specified in Section 7 of [RFC7748].

7.5. Exporters

[RFC5705] defines keying material exporters for TLS in terms of the TLS pseudorandom function (PRF). This document replaces the PRF with HKDF, thus requiring a new construction. The exporter interface remains the same.

The exporter value is computed as:

HKDF-Expand-Label(Derive-Secret(Secret, label, ""),
                  "exporter", Hash(context_value), key_length)

Where Secret is either the early_exporter_secret or the exporter_secret. Implementations MUST use the exporter_secret unless explicitly specified by the application. A separate interface for the early exporter is RECOMMENDED, especially on a server where a single interface can make the early exporter inaccessible.

If no context is provided, the context_value is zero-length. Consequently, providing no context computes the same value as providing an empty context. This is a change from previous versions of TLS where an empty context produced a different output to an absent context. As of this document’s publication, no allocated exporter label is used both with and without a context. Future specifications MUST NOT define a use of exporters that permit both an empty context and no context with the same label. New uses of exporters SHOULD provide a context in all exporter computations, though the value could be empty.

Requirements for the format of exporter labels are defined in section 4 of [RFC5705].

8. Compliance Requirements

8.1. Mandatory-to-Implement Cipher Suites

In the absence of an application profile standard specifying otherwise, a TLS-compliant application MUST implement the TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 cipher suite and SHOULD implement the TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 and TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 cipher suites. (see Appendix B.4)

A TLS-compliant application MUST support digital signatures with rsa_pkcs1_sha256 (for certificates), rsa_pss_sha256 (for CertificateVerify and certificates), and ecdsa_secp256r1_sha256. A TLS-compliant application MUST support key exchange with secp256r1 (NIST P-256) and SHOULD support key exchange with X25519 [RFC7748].

8.2. Mandatory-to-Implement Extensions

In the absence of an application profile standard specifying otherwise, a TLS-compliant application MUST implement the following TLS extensions:

• Supported Versions (“supported_versions”; Section 4.2.1)
• Cookie (“cookie”; Section 4.2.2)
• Signature Algorithms (“signature_algorithms”; Section 4.2.3)
• Negotiated Groups (“supported_groups”; Section 4.2.4)
• Key Share (“key_share”; Section 4.2.5)
• Server Name Indication (“server_name”; Section 3 of [RFC6066])

All implementations MUST send and use these extensions when offering applicable features:

• “supported_versions” is REQUIRED for all ClientHello messages.
• “signature_algorithms” is REQUIRED for certificate authentication.
• “supported_groups” and “key_share” are REQUIRED for DHE or ECDHE key exchange.
• “pre_shared_key” is REQUIRED for PSK key agreement.

A client is considered to be attempting to negotiate using this specification if the ClientHello contains a “supported_versions” extension with a version indicating TLS 1.3. Such a ClientHello message MUST meet the following requirements:

• If not containing a “pre_shared_key” extension, it MUST contain both a “signature_algorithms” extension and a “supported_groups” extension.
• If containing a “supported_groups” extension, it MUST also contain a “key_share” extension, and vice versa. An empty KeyShare.client_shares vector is permitted.

Servers receiving a ClientHello which does not conform to these requirements MUST abort the handshake with a “missing_extension” alert.

Additionally, all implementations MUST support use of the “server_name” extension with applications capable of using it. Servers MAY require clients to send a valid “server_name” extension. Servers requiring this extension SHOULD respond to a ClientHello lacking a “server_name” extension by terminating the connection with a “missing_extension” alert.

9. Security Considerations

Security issues are discussed throughout this memo, especially in Appendix C, Appendix D, and Appendix E.

10. IANA Considerations

This document uses several registries that were originally created in [RFC4346]. IANA has updated these to reference this document. The registries and their allocation policies are below:

• TLS Cipher Suite Registry: Values with the first byte in the range 0-254 (decimal) are assigned via Specification Required [RFC5226]. Values with the first byte 255 (decimal) are reserved for Private Use [RFC5226].
  
  IANA [SHALL add/has added] the cipher suites listed in Appendix B.4 to the registry. The “Value” and “Description” columns are taken from the table. The “DTLS-OK” and “Recommended” columns are both marked as “Yes” for each new cipher suite. [[This assumes [I-D.ietf-tls-iana-registry-updates] has been applied.]]
• TLS ContentType Registry: Future values are allocated via Standards Action [RFC5226].
• TLS Alert Registry: Future values are allocated via Standards Action [RFC5226]. IANA [SHALL update/has updated] this registry to include values for “missing_extension” and “certificate_required”.
• TLS HandshakeType Registry: Future values are allocated via Standards Action [RFC5226]. IANA [SHALL update/has updated] this registry to rename item 4 from “NewSessionTicket” to “new_session_ticket” and to add the “hello_retry_request”, “encrypted_extensions”, “end_of_early_data”, “key_update”, and “handshake_hash” values.

This document also uses a registry originally created in [RFC4366]. IANA has updated it to reference this document. The registry and its allocation policy is listed below:

• IANA [SHALL update/has updated] this registry to include the “key_share”, “pre_shared_key”, “psk_key_exchange_modes”, “early_data”, “cookie”, “supported_versions”, “certificate_authorities”, and “oid_filters” extensions with the values defined in this document and the Recommended value of “Yes”.
• IANA [SHALL update/has updated] this registry to include a “TLS 1.3” column which lists the messages in which the extension may appear. This column [SHALL be/has been] initially populated from the table in Section 4.2 with any extension not listed there marked as “-“ to indicate that it is not used by TLS 1.3.

In addition, this document defines a new registry to be maintained by IANA:

• TLS SignatureScheme Registry: Values with the first byte in the range 0-254 (decimal) are assigned via Specification Required [RFC5226]. Values with the first byte 255 (decimal) are reserved for Private Use [RFC5226]. Values with the first byte in the range 0-6 or with the second byte in the range 0-3 that are not currently allocated are reserved for backwards compatibility. This registry SHALL have a “Recommended” column. The registry [shall be/ has been] initially populated with the values described in Section 4.2.3. The following values SHALL be marked as “Recommended”: ecdsa_secp256r1_sha256, ecdsa_secp384r1_sha384, rsa_pss_sha256, rsa_pss_sha384, rsa_pss_sha512, ed25519.

Finally, this document obsoletes the TLS HashAlgorithm Registry and the TLS SignatureAlgorithm Registry, both originally created in [RFC5246]. IANA [SHALL update/has updated] the TLS HashAlgorithm Registry to list values 7-223 as “Reserved” and the TLS SignatureAlgorithm Registry to list values 4-223 as “Reserved”.

11. References

11.1. Normative References

[AES]	National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Specification for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)", NIST FIPS 197, November 2001.
[DH]	Diffie, W. and M. Hellman, "New Directions in Cryptography", IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, V.IT-22 n.6 , June 1977.
[RFC2104]	Krawczyk, H., Bellare, M. and R. Canetti, "HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication", RFC 2104, DOI 10.17487/RFC2104, February 1997.
[RFC2119]	Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997.
[RFC3447]	Jonsson, J. and B. Kaliski, "Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) #1: RSA Cryptography Specifications Version 2.1", RFC 3447, DOI 10.17487/RFC3447, February 2003.
[RFC5226]	Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226, DOI 10.17487/RFC5226, May 2008.
[RFC5280]	Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley, R. and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008.
[RFC5705]	Rescorla, E., "Keying Material Exporters for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 5705, DOI 10.17487/RFC5705, March 2010.
[RFC5869]	Krawczyk, H. and P. Eronen, "HMAC-based Extract-and-Expand Key Derivation Function (HKDF)", RFC 5869, DOI 10.17487/RFC5869, May 2010.
[RFC6066]	Eastlake 3rd, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066, DOI 10.17487/RFC6066, January 2011.
[RFC6655]	McGrew, D. and D. Bailey, "AES-CCM Cipher Suites for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 6655, DOI 10.17487/RFC6655, July 2012.
[RFC6961]	Pettersen, Y., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Multiple Certificate Status Request Extension", RFC 6961, DOI 10.17487/RFC6961, June 2013.
[RFC6962]	Laurie, B., Langley, A. and E. Kasper, "Certificate Transparency", RFC 6962, DOI 10.17487/RFC6962, June 2013.
[RFC6979]	Pornin, T., "Deterministic Usage of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)", RFC 6979, DOI 10.17487/RFC6979, August 2013.
[RFC7507]	Moeller, B. and A. Langley, "TLS Fallback Signaling Cipher Suite Value (SCSV) for Preventing Protocol Downgrade Attacks", RFC 7507, DOI 10.17487/RFC7507, April 2015.
[RFC7539]	Nir, Y. and A. Langley, "ChaCha20 and Poly1305 for IETF Protocols", RFC 7539, DOI 10.17487/RFC7539, May 2015.
[RFC7748]	Langley, A., Hamburg, M. and S. Turner, "Elliptic Curves for Security", RFC 7748, DOI 10.17487/RFC7748, January 2016.
[RFC7919]	Gillmor, D., "Negotiated Finite Field Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral Parameters for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 7919, DOI 10.17487/RFC7919, August 2016.
[RFC8032]	Josefsson, S. and I. Liusvaara, "Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA)", RFC 8032, DOI 10.17487/RFC8032, January 2017.
[SHS]	National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, "Secure Hash Standard", NIST FIPS PUB 180-4, March 2012.
[X690]	ITU-T, "Information technology - ASN.1 encoding Rules: Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER)", ISO/IEC 8825-1:2002, 2002.
[X962]	ANSI, "Public Key Cryptography For The Financial Services Industry: The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)", ANSI X9.62, 1998.

11.2. Informative References

, "

[AEAD-LIMITS]	Luykx, A. and K. Paterson, "Limits on Authenticated Encryption Use in TLS", 2016.
[BBFKZG16]	Bhargavan, K., Brzuska, C., Fournet, C., Kohlweiss, M., Zanella-Beguelin, S. and M. Green, "Downgrade Resilience in Key-Exchange Protocols", Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2016 , 2016.
[CCG16]	Cohn-Gordon, K., Cremers, C. and L. Garratt, "On Post-Compromise Security", IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium , 2015.
[CHHSV17]	Cremers, C., Horvat, M., Hoyland, J., van der Merwe, T. and S. Scott, "Awkward Handshake: Possible mismatch of client/server view on client authentication in post-handshake mode in Revision 18", 2017.
[CHSV16]	Cremers, C., Horvat, M., Scott, S. and T. van der Merwe, "Automated Analysis and Verification of TLS 1.3: 0-RTT, Resumption and Delayed Authentication", Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2016 , 2016.
[CK01]	Canetti, R. and H. Krawczyk, "Analysis of Key-Exchange Protocols and Their Use for Building Secure Channels", Proceedings of Eurocrypt 2001 , 2001.
[DOW92]	Diffie, W., van Oorschot, P. and M. Wiener, "“Authentication and authenticated key exchanges”", Designs, Codes and Cryptography , 1992.
[DSS]	National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, "Digital Signature Standard, version 4", NIST FIPS PUB 186-4, 2013.
[ECDSA]	American National Standards Institute, "Public Key Cryptography for the Financial Services Industry: The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)", ANSI ANS X9.62-2005, November 2005.
[FGSW16]	Fischlin, M., Guenther, F., Schmidt, B. and B. Warinschi, "Key Confirmation in Key Exchange: A Formal Treatment and Implications for TLS 1.3", Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2016 , 2016.
[FW15]	Florian Weimer, ., "Factoring RSA Keys With TLS Perfect Forward Secrecy", September 2015.
[GCM]	Dworkin, M., "Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC", NIST Special Publication 800-38D, November 2007.
[HGFS15]	Hlauschek, C., Gruber, M., Fankhauser, F. and C. Schanes, "Prying Open Pandora's Box: KCI Attacks against TLS", Proceedings of USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies , 2015.
[I-D.ietf-tls-iana-registry-updates]	Salowey, J. and S. Turner, "D/TLS IANA Registry Updates", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-tls-iana-registry-updates-00, January 2017.
[I-D.ietf-tls-tls13-vectors]	Thomson, M., "Example Handshake Traces for TLS 1.3", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-tls-tls13-vectors-00, January 2017.
[IEEE1363]	IEEE, "Standard Specifications for Public Key Cryptography", IEEE 1363 , 2000.
[KEYAGREEMENT]	Barker, E., Lily Chen, ., Roginsky, A. and M. Smid, "Recommendation for Pair-Wise Key Establishment Schemes Using Discrete Logarithm Cryptography", NIST Special Publication 800-38D, May 2013.
[LXZFH16]	Li, X., Xu, J., Feng, D., Zhang, Z. and H. Hu, "Multiple Handshakes Security of TLS 1.3 Candidates", Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2016 , 2016.
[PKCS6]	RSA Laboratories, "PKCS #6: RSA Extended Certificate Syntax Standard, version 1.5", November 1993.
[PKCS7]	RSA Laboratories, "PKCS #7: RSA Cryptographic Message Syntax Standard, version 1.5", November 1993.
[PSK-FINISHED]	Cremers, C., Horvat, M., van der Merwe, T. and S. Scott, "Revision 10: possible attack if client authentication is allowed during PSK", 2015.
[RECORD]	Bhargavan, K., Delignat-Lavaud, A., Fournet, C., Kohlweiss, M., Pan, J., Protzenko, J., Rastogi, A., Swamy, N., Zanella-Beguelin, S. and J. Zinzindohoue, "Implementing and Proving the TLS 1.3 Record Layer", December 2016.
[REKEY]	Abdalla, M. and M. Bellare, "Increasing the Lifetime of a Key: A Comparative Analysis of the Security of Re-keying Techniques", ASIACRYPT2000 , October 2000.
[RFC3552]	Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552, DOI 10.17487/RFC3552, July 2003.
[RFC4086]	Eastlake 3rd, D., Schiller, J. and S. Crocker, "Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086, DOI 10.17487/RFC4086, June 2005.
[RFC4279]	Eronen, P. and H. Tschofenig, "Pre-Shared Key Ciphersuites for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 4279, DOI 10.17487/RFC4279, December 2005.
[RFC4346]	Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.1", RFC 4346, DOI 10.17487/RFC4346, April 2006.
[RFC4366]	Blake-Wilson, S., Nystrom, M., Hopwood, D., Mikkelsen, J. and T. Wright, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions", RFC 4366, DOI 10.17487/RFC4366, April 2006.
[RFC4492]	Blake-Wilson, S., Bolyard, N., Gupta, V., Hawk, C. and B. Moeller, "Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Cipher Suites for Transport Layer Security (TLS)", RFC 4492, DOI 10.17487/RFC4492, May 2006.
[RFC4507]	Salowey, J., Zhou, H., Eronen, P. and H. Tschofenig, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Session Resumption without Server-Side State", RFC 4507, DOI 10.17487/RFC4507, May 2006.
[RFC4681]	Santesson, S., Medvinsky, A. and J. Ball, "TLS User Mapping Extension", RFC 4681, DOI 10.17487/RFC4681, October 2006.
[RFC5054]	Taylor, D., Wu, T., Mavrogiannopoulos, N. and T. Perrin, "Using the Secure Remote Password (SRP) Protocol for TLS Authentication", RFC 5054, DOI 10.17487/RFC5054, November 2007.
[RFC5077]	Salowey, J., Zhou, H., Eronen, P. and H. Tschofenig, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Session Resumption without Server-Side State", RFC 5077, DOI 10.17487/RFC5077, January 2008.
[RFC5081]	Mavrogiannopoulos, N., "Using OpenPGP Keys for Transport Layer Security (TLS) Authentication", RFC 5081, DOI 10.17487/RFC5081, November 2007.
[RFC5116]	McGrew, D., "An Interface and Algorithms for Authenticated Encryption", RFC 5116, DOI 10.17487/RFC5116, January 2008.
[RFC5246]	Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, DOI 10.17487/RFC5246, August 2008.
[RFC5746]	Rescorla, E., Ray, M., Dispensa, S. and N. Oskov, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Renegotiation Indication Extension", RFC 5746, DOI 10.17487/RFC5746, February 2010.
[RFC5764]	McGrew, D. and E. Rescorla, "Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) Extension to Establish Keys for the Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)", RFC 5764, DOI 10.17487/RFC5764, May 2010.
[RFC5878]	Brown, M. and R. Housley, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Authorization Extensions", RFC 5878, DOI 10.17487/RFC5878, May 2010.
[RFC5929]	Altman, J., Williams, N. and L. Zhu, "Channel Bindings for TLS", RFC 5929, DOI 10.17487/RFC5929, July 2010.
[RFC6091]	Mavrogiannopoulos, N. and D. Gillmor, "Using OpenPGP Keys for Transport Layer Security (TLS) Authentication", RFC 6091, DOI 10.17487/RFC6091, February 2011.
[RFC6176]	Turner, S. and T. Polk, "Prohibiting Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Version 2.0", RFC 6176, DOI 10.17487/RFC6176, March 2011.
[RFC6347]	Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, DOI 10.17487/RFC6347, January 2012.
[RFC6520]	Seggelmann, R., Tuexen, M. and M. Williams, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) Heartbeat Extension", RFC 6520, DOI 10.17487/RFC6520, February 2012.
[RFC7230]	Fielding, R. and J. Reschke, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing", RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014.
[RFC7250]	Wouters, P., Tschofenig, H., Gilmore, J., Weiler, S. and T. Kivinen, "Using Raw Public Keys in Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)", RFC 7250, DOI 10.17487/RFC7250, June 2014.
[RFC7301]	Friedl, S., Popov, A., Langley, A. and E. Stephan, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation Extension", RFC 7301, DOI 10.17487/RFC7301, July 2014.
[RFC7366]	Gutmann, P., "Encrypt-then-MAC for Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)", RFC 7366, DOI 10.17487/RFC7366, September 2014.
[RFC7465]	Popov, A., "Prohibiting RC4 Cipher Suites", RFC 7465, DOI 10.17487/RFC7465, February 2015.
[RFC7568]	Barnes, R., Thomson, M., Pironti, A. and A. Langley, "Deprecating Secure Sockets Layer Version 3.0", RFC 7568, DOI 10.17487/RFC7568, June 2015.
[RFC7627]	Bhargavan, K., Delignat-Lavaud, A., Pironti, A., Langley, A. and M. Ray, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Session Hash and Extended Master Secret Extension", RFC 7627, DOI 10.17487/RFC7627, September 2015.
[RFC7685]	Langley, A., "A Transport Layer Security (TLS) ClientHello Padding Extension", RFC 7685, DOI 10.17487/RFC7685, October 2015.
[RFC7924]	Santesson, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Cached Information Extension", RFC 7924, DOI 10.17487/RFC7924, July 2016.
[RSA]	Rivest, R., Shamir, A. and L. Adleman, "A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems", Communications of the ACM v. 21, n. 2, pp. 120-126., February 1978.
[SIGMA]	Krawczyk, H., "SIGMA: the 'SIGn-and-MAc' approach to authenticated Diffie-Hellman and its use in the IKE protocols", Proceedings of CRYPTO 2003 , 2003.
[SLOTH]	Bhargavan, K. and G. Leurent, "Transcript Collision Attacks: Breaking Authentication in TLS, IKE, and SSH", Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2016) , 2016.
[SSL2]	Hickman, K., "The SSL Protocol", February 1995.
[SSL3]	Freier, A., Karlton, P. and P. Kocher, "The SSL 3.0 Protocol", November 1996.
[TIMING]	Boneh, D. and D. Brumley, Remote timing attacks are practical", USENIX Security Symposium, 2003.
[X501]	Information Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - The Directory: Models", ITU-T X.501, 1993.

Appendix A. State Machine

This section provides a summary of the legal state transitions for the client and server handshakes. State names (in all capitals, e.g., START) have no formal meaning but are provided for ease of comprehension. Messages which are sent only sometimes are indicated in [].

A.1. Client

                           START <----+
            Send ClientHello |        | Recv HelloRetryRequest
         /                   v        |
        |                  WAIT_SH ---+
    Can |                    | Recv ServerHello
   send |                    V
  early |                 WAIT_EE
   data |                    | Recv EncryptedExtensions
        |           +--------+--------+
        |     Using |                 | Using certificate
        |       PSK |                 v
        |           |            WAIT_CERT_CR
        |           |        Recv |       | Recv CertificateRequest
        |           | Certificate |       v
        |           |             |    WAIT_CERT
        |           |             |       | Recv Certificate
        |           |             v       v
        |           |              WAIT_CV
        |           |                 | Recv CertificateVerify
        |           +> WAIT_FINISHED <+
        |                  | Recv Finished
        \                  |
                           | [Send EndOfEarlyData]
                           | [Send Certificate [+ CertificateVerify]]
                           | Send Finished
 Can send                  v
 app data -->          CONNECTED
 after
 here

A.2. Server

                             START <-----+
              Recv ClientHello |         | Send HelloRetryRequest
                               v         |
                            RECVD_CH ----+
                               | Select parameters
                               v
                            NEGOTIATED
                               | Send ServerHello
                               | Send EncryptedExtensions
                               | [Send CertificateRequest]
Can send                       | [Send Certificate + CertificateVerify]
app data -->                   | Send Finished
after                 +--------+--------+
here         No 0-RTT |                 | 0-RTT
                      |                 v
                      |             WAIT_EOED <---+
                      |            Recv |   |     | Recv
                      |  EndOfEarlyData |   |     | early data
                      |                 |   +-----+
                      +> WAIT_FLIGHT2 <-+
                               |
                      +--------+--------+
              No auth |                 | Client auth
                      |                 |
                      |                 v
                      |             WAIT_CERT
                      |        Recv |       | Recv Certificate
                      |       empty |       v
                      | Certificate |    WAIT_CV
                      |             |       | Recv
                      |             v       | CertificateVerify
                      +-> WAIT_FINISHED <---+
                               | Recv Finished
                               v
                           CONNECTED

Appendix B. Protocol Data Structures and Constant Values

This section describes protocol types and constants. Values listed as _RESERVED were used in previous versions of TLS and are listed here for completeness. TLS 1.3 implementations MUST NOT send them but might receive them from older TLS implementations.

B.1. Record Layer

   enum {
       invalid_RESERVED(0),
       change_cipher_spec_RESERVED(20),
       alert(21),
       handshake(22),
       application_data(23),
       (255)
   } ContentType;

   struct {
       ContentType type;
       ProtocolVersion legacy_record_version;
       uint16 length;
       opaque fragment[TLSPlaintext.length];
   } TLSPlaintext;

   struct {
       opaque content[TLSPlaintext.length];
       ContentType type;
       uint8 zeros[length_of_padding];
   } TLSInnerPlaintext;

   struct {
       ContentType opaque_type = 23; /* application_data */
       ProtocolVersion legacy_record_version = 0x0301; /* TLS v1.x */
       uint16 length;
       opaque encrypted_record[length];
   } TLSCiphertext;

B.2. Alert Messages

   enum { warning(1), fatal(2), (255) } AlertLevel;

   enum {
       close_notify(0),
       unexpected_message(10),
       bad_record_mac(20),
       decryption_failed_RESERVED(21),
       record_overflow(22),
       decompression_failure_RESERVED(30),
       handshake_failure(40),
       no_certificate_RESERVED(41),
       bad_certificate(42),
       unsupported_certificate(43),
       certificate_revoked(44),
       certificate_expired(45),
       certificate_unknown(46),
       illegal_parameter(47),
       unknown_ca(48),
       access_denied(49),
       decode_error(50),
       decrypt_error(51),
       export_restriction_RESERVED(60),
       protocol_version(70),
       insufficient_security(71),
       internal_error(80),
       inappropriate_fallback(86),
       user_canceled(90),
       no_renegotiation_RESERVED(100),
       missing_extension(109),
       unsupported_extension(110),
       certificate_unobtainable(111),
       unrecognized_name(112),
       bad_certificate_status_response(113),
       bad_certificate_hash_value(114),
       unknown_psk_identity(115),
       certificate_required(116),
       (255)
   } AlertDescription;

   struct {
       AlertLevel level;
       AlertDescription description;
   } Alert;

B.3. Handshake Protocol

   enum {
       hello_request_RESERVED(0),
       client_hello(1),
       server_hello(2),
       hello_verify_request_RESERVED(3),
       new_session_ticket(4),
       end_of_early_data(5),
       hello_retry_request(6),
       encrypted_extensions(8),
       certificate(11),
       server_key_exchange_RESERVED(12),
       certificate_request(13),
       server_hello_done_RESERVED(14),
       certificate_verify(15),
       client_key_exchange_RESERVED(16),
       finished(20),
       key_update(24),
       message_hash(254),
       (255)
   } HandshakeType;

   struct {
       HandshakeType msg_type;    /* handshake type */
       uint24 length;             /* bytes in message */
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case client_hello:          ClientHello;
           case server_hello:          ServerHello;
           case end_of_early_data:     EndOfEarlyData;
           case hello_retry_request:   HelloRetryRequest;
           case encrypted_extensions:  EncryptedExtensions;
           case certificate_request:   CertificateRequest;
           case certificate:           Certificate;
           case certificate_verify:    CertificateVerify;
           case finished:              Finished;
           case new_session_ticket:    NewSessionTicket;
           case key_update:            KeyUpdate;
       } body;
   } Handshake;

B.3.1. Key Exchange Messages

   uint16 ProtocolVersion;
   opaque Random[32];

   uint8 CipherSuite[2];    /* Cryptographic suite selector */

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion legacy_version = 0x0303;    /* TLS v1.2 */
       Random random;
       opaque legacy_session_id<0..32>;
       CipherSuite cipher_suites<2..2^16-2>;
       opaque legacy_compression_methods<1..2^8-1>;
       Extension extensions<8..2^16-1>;
   } ClientHello;

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion version;
       Random random;
       CipherSuite cipher_suite;
       Extension extensions<6..2^16-1>;
   } ServerHello;

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion server_version;
       CipherSuite cipher_suite;
       Extension extensions<2..2^16-1>;
   } HelloRetryRequest;

   struct {
       ExtensionType extension_type;
       opaque extension_data<0..2^16-1>;
   } Extension;

   enum {
       supported_groups(10),
       signature_algorithms(13),
       key_share(40),
       pre_shared_key(41),
       early_data(42),
       supported_versions(43),
       cookie(44),
       psk_key_exchange_modes(45),
       certificate_authorities(47),
       oid_filters(48),
       (65535)
   } ExtensionType;

   struct {
       NamedGroup group;
       opaque key_exchange<1..2^16-1>;
   } KeyShareEntry;

   struct {
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case client_hello:
               KeyShareEntry client_shares<0..2^16-1>;

           case hello_retry_request:
               NamedGroup selected_group;

           case server_hello:
               KeyShareEntry server_share;
       };
   } KeyShare;

   enum { psk_ke(0), psk_dhe_ke(1), (255) } PskKeyExchangeMode;

   struct {
       PskKeyExchangeMode ke_modes<1..255>;
   } PskKeyExchangeModes;

   struct {} Empty;

   struct {
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case new_session_ticket:   uint32 max_early_data_size;
           case client_hello:         Empty;
           case encrypted_extensions: Empty;
       };
   } EarlyDataIndication;

   struct {
       opaque identity<1..2^16-1>;
       uint32 obfuscated_ticket_age;
   } PskIdentity;

   opaque PskBinderEntry<32..255>;

   struct {
       select (Handshake.msg_type) {
           case client_hello:
               PskIdentity identities<7..2^16-1>;
               PskBinderEntry binders<33..2^16-1>;

           case server_hello:
               uint16 selected_identity;
       };

   } PreSharedKeyExtension;

B.3.1.1. Version Extension

   struct {
       ProtocolVersion versions<2..254>;
   } SupportedVersions;

B.3.1.2. Cookie Extension

   struct {
       opaque cookie<1..2^16-1>;
   } Cookie;

B.3.1.3. Signature Algorithm Extension

   enum {
       /* RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 algorithms */
       rsa_pkcs1_sha1(0x0201),
       rsa_pkcs1_sha256(0x0401),
       rsa_pkcs1_sha384(0x0501),
       rsa_pkcs1_sha512(0x0601),

       /* ECDSA algorithms */
       ecdsa_secp256r1_sha256(0x0403),
       ecdsa_secp384r1_sha384(0x0503),
       ecdsa_secp521r1_sha512(0x0603),

       /* RSASSA-PSS algorithms */
       rsa_pss_sha256(0x0804),
       rsa_pss_sha384(0x0805),
       rsa_pss_sha512(0x0806),

       /* EdDSA algorithms */
       ed25519(0x0807),
       ed448(0x0808),

       /* Reserved Code Points */
       dsa_sha1_RESERVED(0x0202),
       dsa_sha256_RESERVED(0x0402),
       dsa_sha384_RESERVED(0x0502),
       dsa_sha512_RESERVED(0x0602),
       ecdsa_sha1_RESERVED(0x0203),
       obsolete_RESERVED(0x0000..0x0200),
       obsolete_RESERVED(0x0204..0x0400),
       obsolete_RESERVED(0x0404..0x0500),
       obsolete_RESERVED(0x0504..0x0600),
       obsolete_RESERVED(0x0604..0x06FF),
       private_use(0xFE00..0xFFFF),
       (0xFFFF)
   } SignatureScheme;

   struct {
       SignatureScheme supported_signature_algorithms<2..2^16-2>;
   } SignatureSchemeList;

B.3.1.4. Supported Groups Extension

   enum {
       /* Elliptic Curve Groups (ECDHE) */
       obsolete_RESERVED(0x0001..0x0016),
       secp256r1(0x0017), secp384r1(0x0018), secp521r1(0x0019),
       obsolete_RESERVED(0x001A..0x001C),
       x25519(0x001D), x448(0x001E),

       /* Finite Field Groups (DHE) */
       ffdhe2048(0x0100), ffdhe3072(0x0101), ffdhe4096 (0x0102),
       ffdhe6144(0x0103), ffdhe8192(0x0104),

       /* Reserved Code Points */
       ffdhe_private_use(0x01FC..0x01FF),
       ecdhe_private_use(0xFE00..0xFEFF),
       obsolete_RESERVED(0xFF01..0xFF02),
       (0xFFFF)
   } NamedGroup;

   struct {
       NamedGroup named_group_list<2..2^16-1>;
   } NamedGroupList;

Values within “obsolete_RESERVED” ranges were used in previous versions of TLS and MUST NOT be offered or negotiated by TLS 1.3 implementations. The obsolete curves have various known/theoretical weaknesses or have had very little usage, in some cases only due to unintentional server configuration issues. They are no longer considered appropriate for general use and should be assumed to be potentially unsafe. The set of curves specified here is sufficient for interoperability with all currently deployed and properly configured TLS implementations.

B.3.2. Server Parameters Messages

   opaque DistinguishedName<1..2^16-1>;

   struct {
       DistinguishedName authorities<3..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateAuthoritiesExtension;

   struct {
       Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>;
   } EncryptedExtensions;

   struct {
       opaque certificate_request_context<0..2^8-1>;
       Extension extensions<2..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateRequest;

   struct {
       opaque certificate_extension_oid<1..2^8-1>;
       opaque certificate_extension_values<0..2^16-1>;
   } OIDFilter;

   struct {
       OIDFilter filters<0..2^16-1>;
   } OIDFilterExtension;

B.3.3. Authentication Messages

   opaque ASN1Cert<1..2^24-1>;

   struct {
       ASN1Cert cert_data;
       Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateEntry;

   struct {
       opaque certificate_request_context<0..2^8-1>;
       CertificateEntry certificate_list<0..2^24-1>;
   } Certificate;

   struct {
       SignatureScheme algorithm;
       opaque signature<0..2^16-1>;
   } CertificateVerify;

   struct {
       opaque verify_data[Hash.length];
   } Finished;

B.3.4. Ticket Establishment

   struct {
       uint32 ticket_lifetime;
       uint32 ticket_age_add;
       opaque ticket<1..2^16-1>;
       Extension extensions<0..2^16-2>;
   } NewSessionTicket;

B.3.5. Updating Keys

   struct {} EndOfEarlyData;

   enum {
       update_not_requested(0), update_requested(1), (255)
   } KeyUpdateRequest;

   struct {
       KeyUpdateRequest request_update;
   } KeyUpdate;

B.4. Cipher Suites

A symmetric cipher suite defines the pair of the AEAD algorithm and hash algorithm to be used with HKDF. Cipher suite names follow the naming convention:

   CipherSuite TLS_AEAD_HASH = VALUE;

Component	Contents
TLS	The string “TLS”
AEAD	The AEAD algorithm used for record protection
HASH	The hash algorithm used with HKDF
VALUE	The two byte ID assigned for this cipher suite

This specification defines the following cipher suites for use with TLS 1.3.

Description	Value
TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256	{0x13,0x01}
TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384	{0x13,0x02}
TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256	{0x13,0x03}
TLS_AES_128_CCM_SHA256	{0x13,0x04}
TLS_AES_128_CCM_8_SHA256	{0x13,0x05}

The corresponding AEAD algorithms AEAD_AES_128_GCM, AEAD_AES_256_GCM, and AEAD_AES_128_CCM are defined in [RFC5116]. AEAD_CHACHA20_POLY1305 is defined in [RFC7539]. AEAD_AES_128_CCM_8 is defined in [RFC6655]. The corresponding hash algorithms are defined in [SHS].

Although TLS 1.3 uses the same cipher suite space as previous versions of TLS, TLS 1.3 cipher suites are defined differently, only specifying the symmetric ciphers, and cannot be used for TLS 1.2. Similarly, TLS 1.2 and lower cipher suites cannot be used with TLS 1.3.

New cipher suite values are assigned by IANA as described in Section 10.

Appendix C. Implementation Notes

The TLS protocol cannot prevent many common security mistakes. This section provides several recommendations to assist implementors. [I-D.ietf-tls-tls13-vectors] provides test vectors for TLS 1.3 handshakes.

C.1. API considerations for 0-RTT

0-RTT data has very different security properties from data transmitted after a completed handshake: it can be replayed. Implementations SHOULD provide different functions for reading and writing 0-RTT data and data transmitted after the handshake, and SHOULD NOT automatically resend 0-RTT data if it is rejected by the server.

C.2. Random Number Generation and Seeding

TLS requires a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (PRNG). In most cases, the operating system provides an appropriate facility such as /dev/urandom, which should be used absent other (performance) concerns. It is generally preferable to use an existing PRNG implementation in preference to crafting a new one, and many adequate cryptographic libraries are already available under favorable license terms. Should those prove unsatisfactory, [RFC4086] provides guidance on the generation of random values.

C.3. Certificates and Authentication

Implementations are responsible for verifying the integrity of certificates and should generally support certificate revocation messages. Certificates should always be verified to ensure proper signing by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). The selection and addition of trust anchors should be done very carefully. Users should be able to view information about the certificate and trust anchor. Applications SHOULD also enforce minimum and maximum key sizes. For example, certification paths containing keys or signatures weaker than 2048-bit RSA or 224-bit ECDSA are not appropriate for secure applications.

C.4. Implementation Pitfalls

Implementation experience has shown that certain parts of earlier TLS specifications are not easy to understand, and have been a source of interoperability and security problems. Many of these areas have been clarified in this document, but this appendix contains a short list of the most important things that require special attention from implementors.

TLS protocol issues:

• Do you correctly handle handshake messages that are fragmented to multiple TLS records (see Section 5.1)? Including corner cases like a ClientHello that is split to several small fragments? Do you fragment handshake messages that exceed the maximum fragment size? In particular, the Certificate and CertificateRequest handshake messages can be large enough to require fragmentation.
• Do you ignore the TLS record layer version number in all unencrypted TLS records? (see Appendix D)
• Have you ensured that all support for SSL, RC4, EXPORT ciphers, and MD5 (via the “signature_algorithms” extension) is completely removed from all possible configurations that support TLS 1.3 or later, and that attempts to use these obsolete capabilities fail correctly? (see Appendix D)
• Do you handle TLS extensions in ClientHello correctly, including unknown extensions?
• When the server has requested a client certificate, but no suitable certificate is available, do you correctly send an empty Certificate message, instead of omitting the whole message (see Section 4.4.2.3)?
• When processing the plaintext fragment produced by AEAD-Decrypt and scanning from the end for the ContentType, do you avoid scanning past the start of the cleartext in the event that the peer has sent a malformed plaintext of all-zeros?
• Do you properly ignore unrecognized cipher suites (Section 4.1.2), hello extensions (Section 4.2), named groups (Section 4.2.4), and signature algorithms (Section 4.2.3)?
• As a server, do you send a HelloRetryRequest to clients which support a compatible (EC)DHE group but do not predict it in the “key_share” extension? As a client, do you correctly handle a HelloRetryRequest from the server?

Cryptographic details:

• What countermeasures do you use to prevent timing attacks [TIMING]?
• When using Diffie-Hellman key exchange, do you correctly preserve leading zero bytes in the negotiated key (see Section 7.4.1)?
• Does your TLS client check that the Diffie-Hellman parameters sent by the server are acceptable, (see Section 4.2.5.1)?
• Do you use a strong and, most importantly, properly seeded random number generator (see Appendix C.2) when generating Diffie-Hellman private values, the ECDSA “k” parameter, and other security-critical values? It is RECOMMENDED that implementations implement “deterministic ECDSA” as specified in [RFC6979].
• Do you zero-pad Diffie-Hellman public key values to the group size (see Section 4.2.5.1)?
• Do you verify signatures after making them to protect against RSA-CRT key leaks? [FW15]

C.5. Client Tracking Prevention

Clients SHOULD NOT reuse a ticket for multiple connections. Reuse of a ticket allows passive observers to correlate different connections. Servers that issue tickets SHOULD offer at least as many tickets as the number of connections that a client might use; for example, a web browser using HTTP/1.1 [RFC7230] might open six connections to a server. Servers SHOULD issue new tickets with every connection. This ensures that clients are always able to use a new ticket when creating a new connection.

C.6. Unauthenticated Operation

Previous versions of TLS offered explicitly unauthenticated cipher suites based on anonymous Diffie-Hellman. These modes have been deprecated in TLS 1.3. However, it is still possible to negotiate parameters that do not provide verifiable server authentication by several methods, including:

• Raw public keys [RFC7250].
• Using a public key contained in a certificate but without validation of the certificate chain or any of its contents.

Either technique used alone is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and therefore unsafe for general use. However, it is also possible to bind such connections to an external authentication mechanism via out-of-band validation of the server’s public key, trust on first use, or channel bindings [RFC5929]. [[NOTE: TLS 1.3 needs a new channel binding definition that has not yet been defined.]] If no such mechanism is used, then the connection has no protection against active man-in-the-middle attack; applications MUST NOT use TLS in such a way absent explicit configuration or a specific application profile.

Appendix D. Backward Compatibility

The TLS protocol provides a built-in mechanism for version negotiation between endpoints potentially supporting different versions of TLS.

TLS 1.x and SSL 3.0 use compatible ClientHello messages. Servers can also handle clients trying to use future versions of TLS as long as the ClientHello format remains compatible and the client supports the highest protocol version available in the server.

Prior versions of TLS used the record layer version number for various purposes. (TLSPlaintext.legacy_record_version and TLSCiphertext.legacy_record_version) As of TLS 1.3, this field is deprecated. The value of TLSPlaintext.legacy_record_version MUST be ignored by all implementations. The value of TLSCiphertext.legacy_record_version MAY be ignored, or MAY be validated to match the fixed constant value. Version negotiation is performed using only the handshake versions. (ClientHello.legacy_version, ClientHello “supported_versions” extension, and ServerHello.version) In order to maximize interoperability with older endpoints, implementations that negotiate the use of TLS 1.0-1.2 SHOULD set the record layer version number to the negotiated version for the ServerHello and all records thereafter.

For maximum compatibility with previously non-standard behavior and misconfigured deployments, all implementations SHOULD support validation of certification paths based on the expectations in this document, even when handling prior TLS versions’ handshakes. (see Section 4.4.2.2)

TLS 1.2 and prior supported an “Extended Master Secret” [RFC7627] extension which digested large parts of the handshake transcript into the master secret. Because TLS 1.3 always hashes in the transcript up to the server CertificateVerify, implementations which support both TLS 1.3 and earlier versions SHOULD indicate the use of the Extended Master Secret extension in their APIs whenever TLS 1.3 is used.

D.1. Negotiating with an older server

A TLS 1.3 client who wishes to negotiate with servers that do not support TLS 1.3 will send a normal TLS 1.3 ClientHello containing 0x0303 (TLS 1.2) in ClientHello.legacy_version but with the correct version in the “supported_versions” extension. If the server does not support TLS 1.3 it will respond with a ServerHello containing an older version number. If the client agrees to use this version, the negotiation will proceed as appropriate for the negotiated protocol. A client using a ticket for resumption SHOULD initiate the connection using the version that was previously negotiated.

Note that 0-RTT data is not compatible with older servers and SHOULD NOT be sent absent knowledge that the server supports TLS 1.3. See Appendix D.3.

If the version chosen by the server is not supported by the client (or not acceptable), the client MUST abort the handshake with a “protocol_version” alert.

Some legacy server implementations are known to not implement the TLS specification properly and might abort connections upon encountering TLS extensions or versions which they are not aware of. Interoperability with buggy servers is a complex topic beyond the scope of this document. Multiple connection attempts may be required in order to negotiate a backwards compatible connection; however, this practice is vulnerable to downgrade attacks and is NOT RECOMMENDED.

D.2. Negotiating with an older client

A TLS server can also receive a ClientHello indicating a version number smaller than its highest supported version. If the “supported_versions” extension is present, the server MUST negotiate using that extension as described in Section 4.2.1. If the “supported_versions” extension is not present, the server MUST negotiate the minimum of ClientHello.legacy_version and TLS 1.2. For example, if the server supports TLS 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2, and legacy_version is TLS 1.0, the server will proceed with a TLS 1.0 ServerHello. If the server only supports versions greater than ClientHello.legacy_version, it MUST abort the handshake with a “protocol_version” alert.

Note that earlier versions of TLS did not clearly specify the record layer version number value in all cases (TLSPlaintext.legacy_record_version). Servers will receive various TLS 1.x versions in this field, but its value MUST always be ignored.

D.3. Zero-RTT backwards compatibility

0-RTT data is not compatible with older servers. An older server will respond to the ClientHello with an older ServerHello, but it will not correctly skip the 0-RTT data and will fail to complete the handshake. This can cause issues when a client attempts to use 0-RTT, particularly against multi-server deployments. For example, a deployment could deploy TLS 1.3 gradually with some servers implementing TLS 1.3 and some implementing TLS 1.2, or a TLS 1.3 deployment could be downgraded to TLS 1.2.

A client that attempts to send 0-RTT data MUST fail a connection if it receives a ServerHello with TLS 1.2 or older. A client that attempts to repair this error SHOULD NOT send a TLS 1.2 ClientHello, but instead send a TLS 1.3 ClientHello without 0-RTT data.

To avoid this error condition, multi-server deployments SHOULD ensure a uniform and stable deployment of TLS 1.3 without 0-RTT prior to enabling 0-RTT.

D.4. Backwards Compatibility Security Restrictions

Implementations negotiating use of older versions of TLS SHOULD prefer forward secure and AEAD cipher suites, when available.

The security of RC4 cipher suites is considered insufficient for the reasons cited in [RFC7465]. Implementations MUST NOT offer or negotiate RC4 cipher suites for any version of TLS for any reason.

Old versions of TLS permitted the use of very low strength ciphers. Ciphers with a strength less than 112 bits MUST NOT be offered or negotiated for any version of TLS for any reason.

The security of SSL 3.0 [SSL3] is considered insufficient for the reasons enumerated in [RFC7568], and MUST NOT be negotiated for any reason.

The security of SSL 2.0 [SSL2] is considered insufficient for the reasons enumerated in [RFC6176], and MUST NOT be negotiated for any reason.

Implementations MUST NOT send an SSL version 2.0 compatible CLIENT-HELLO. Implementations MUST NOT negotiate TLS 1.3 or later using an SSL version 2.0 compatible CLIENT-HELLO. Implementations are NOT RECOMMENDED to accept an SSL version 2.0 compatible CLIENT-HELLO in order to negotiate older versions of TLS.

Implementations MUST NOT send a ClientHello.legacy_version or ServerHello.version set to 0x0300 or less. Any endpoint receiving a Hello message with ClientHello.legacy_version or ServerHello.version set to 0x0300 MUST abort the handshake with a “protocol_version” alert.

Implementations MUST NOT send any records with a version less than 0x0300. Implementations SHOULD NOT accept any records with a version less than 0x0300 (but may inadvertently do so if the record version number is ignored completely).

Implementations MUST NOT use the Truncated HMAC extension, defined in Section 7 of [RFC6066], as it is not applicable to AEAD algorithms and has been shown to be insecure in some scenarios.

Appendix E. Overview of Security Properties

A complete security analysis of TLS is outside the scope of this document. In this section, we provide an informal description the desired properties as well as references to more detailed work in the research literature which provides more formal definitions.

We cover properties of the handshake separately from those of the record layer.

E.1. Handshake

The TLS handshake is an Authenticated Key Exchange (AKE) protocol which is intended to provide both one-way authenticated (server-only) and mutually authenticated (client and server) functionality. At the completion of the handshake, each side outputs its view of the following values:

• A set of “session keys” (the various secrets derived from the master secret) from which can be derived a set of working keys.
• A set of cryptographic parameters (algorithms, etc.)
• The identities of the communicating parties.

We assume that the attacker has complete control of the network in between the parties [RFC3552]. Even under these conditions, the handshake should provide the properties listed below. Note that these properties are not necessarily independent, but reflect the protocol consumers’ needs.

Establishing the same session keys.

The handshake needs to output the same set of session keys on both sides of the handshake, provided that it completes successfully on each endpoint (See [CK01]; defn 1, part 1).

Secrecy of the session keys.

The shared session keys should be known only to the communicating parties, not to the attacker (See [CK01]; defn 1, part 2). Note that in a unilaterally authenticated connection, the attacker can establish its own session keys with the server, but those session keys are distinct from those established by the client.

Peer Authentication.

The client’s view of the peer identity should reflect the server’s identity. If the client is authenticated, the server’s view of the peer identity should match the client’s identity.

Uniqueness of the session keys:

Any two distinct handshakes should produce distinct, unrelated session keys. Individual session keys produced by a handshake should also be distinct and unrelated.

Downgrade protection.

The cryptographic parameters should be the same on both sides and should be the same as if the peers had been communicating in the absence of an attack (See [BBFKZG16]; defns 8 and 9}).

Forward secret with respect to long-term keys

If the long-term keying material (in this case the signature keys in certificate-based authentication modes or the external/resumption PSK in PSK with (EC)DHE modes) are compromised after the handshake is complete, this does not compromise the security of the session key (See [DOW92]). The forward secrecy property is not satisfied when PSK is used in the “psk_ke” PskKeyExchangeMode.

Key Compromise Impersonation (KCI) resistance

In a mutually-authenticated connection with certificates, peer authentication should hold even if the local long-term secret was compromised before the connection was established (see [HGFS15]). For example, if a client’s signature key is compromised, it should not be possible to impersonate arbitrary servers to that client in subsequent handshakes.

Protection of endpoint identities.

The server’s identity (certificate) should be protected against passive attackers. The client’s identity should be protected against both passive and active attackers.

Informally, the signature-based modes of TLS 1.3 provide for the establishment of a unique, secret, shared, key established by an (EC)DHE key exchange and authenticated by the server’s signature over the handshake transcript, as well as tied to the server’s identity by a MAC. If the client is authenticated by a certificate, it also signs over the handshake transcript and provides a MAC tied to both identities. [SIGMA] describes the analysis of this type of key exchange protocol. If fresh (EC)DHE keys are used for each connection, then the output keys are forward secret.

The external PSK and resumption PSK bootstrap from a long-term shared secret into a unique per-connection set of short-term session keys. This secret may have been established in a previous handshake. If PSK with (EC)DHE key establishment is used, these session keys will also be forward secret. The resumption PSK has been designed so that the resumption master secret computed by connection N and needed to form connection N+1 is separate from the traffic keys used by connection N, thus providing forward secrecy between the connections.

The PSK binder value forms a binding between a PSK and the current handshake, as well as between the session where the PSK was established and the session where it was used. This binding transitively includes the original handshake transcript, because that transcript is digested into the values which produce the Resumption Master Secret. This requires that both the KDF used to produce the resumption master secret and the MAC used to compute the binder be collision resistant. These are properties of HKDF and HMAC respectively when used with collision resistant hash functions and producing output of at least 256 bits. Any future replacement of these functions MUST also provide collision resistance. Note: The binder does not cover the binder values from other PSKs, though they are included in the Finished MAC.

If an exporter is used, then it produces values which are unique and secret (because they are generated from a unique session key). Exporters computed with different labels and contexts are computationally independent, so it is not feasible to compute one from another or the session secret from the exported value. Note: exporters can produce arbitrary-length values. If exporters are to be used as channel bindings, the exported value MUST be large enough to provide collision resistance. The exporters provided in TLS 1.3 are derived from the same handshake contexts as the early traffic keys and the application traffic keys respectively, and thus have similar security properties. Note that they do not include the client’s certificate; future applications which wish to bind to the client’s certificate may need to define a new exporter that includes the full handshake transcript.

For all handshake modes, the Finished MAC (and where present, the signature), prevents downgrade attacks. In addition, the use of certain bytes in the random nonces as described in Section 4.1.3 allows the detection of downgrade to previous TLS versions.

As soon as the client and the server have exchanged enough information to establish shared keys, the remainder of the handshake is encrypted, thus providing protection against passive attackers. Because the server authenticates before the client, the client can ensure that it only reveals its identity to an authenticated server. Note that implementations must use the provided record padding mechanism during the handshake to avoid leaking information about the identities due to length.

A client that has sent authentication data to a server, either in the main handshake or in post-handshake authentication, cannot be sure if the server afterwards considers the client to be authenticated or not. If the client needs to determine if the server considers the connection to be unilaterally or mutually authenticated, this has to be provisioned by the application layer. See [CHHSV17] for details.

The 0-RTT mode of operation generally provides the same security properties as 1-RTT data, with the two exceptions that the 0-RTT encryption keys do not provide full forward secrecy and that the server is not able to guarantee full uniqueness of the handshake (non-replayability) without keeping potentially undue amounts of state. See Section 4.2.7 for one mechanism to limit the exposure to replay.

TLS does not provide security for handshakes which take place after the peer’s long-term secret (signature key or external PSK) is compromised. It therefore does not provide post-compromise security [CCG16], sometimes also referred to as backwards or future security. This is in contrast to KCI resistance, which describes the security guarantees that a party has after its own long-term secret has been compromised.

The reader should refer to the following references for analysis of the TLS handshake [CHSV16] [FGSW16] [LXZFH16].

E.2. Record Layer

The record layer depends on the handshake producing strong traffic secrets which can be used to derive bidirectional encryption keys and nonces. Assuming that is true, and the keys are used for no more data than indicated in Section 5.5 then the record layer should provide the following guarantees:

Confidentiality.

An attacker should not be able to determine the plaintext contents of a given record.

Integrity.

An attacker should not be able to craft a new record which is different from an existing record which will be accepted by the receiver.

Order protection/non-replayability

An attacker should not be able to cause the receiver to accept a record which it has already accepted or cause the receiver to accept record N+1 without having first processed record N.

Length concealment.

Given a record with a given external length, the attacker should not be able to determine the amount of the record that is content versus padding.

Forward security after key change.

If the traffic key update mechanism described in Section 4.6.3 has been used and the previous generation key is deleted, an attacker who compromises the endpoint should not be able to decrypt traffic encrypted with the old key.

Informally, TLS 1.3 provides these properties by AEAD-protecting the plaintext with a strong key. AEAD encryption [RFC5116] provides confidentiality and integrity for the data. Non-replayability is provided by using a separate nonce for each record, with the nonce being derived from the record sequence number (Section 5.3), with the sequence number being maintained independently at both sides thus records which are delivered out of order result in AEAD deprotection failures.

The plaintext protected by the AEAD function consists of content plus variable-length padding. Because the padding is also encrypted, the attacker cannot directly determine the length of the padding, but may be able to measure it indirectly by the use of timing channels exposed during record processing (i.e., seeing how long it takes to process a record). In general, it is not known how to remove this type of channel because even a constant time padding removal function will then feed the content into data-dependent functions.

The re-keying technique in TLS 1.3 (see Section 7.2) follows the construction of the serial generator in [REKEY], which shows that re-keying can allow keys to be used for a larger number of encryptions than without re-keying. This relies on the security of the HKDF-Expand-Label function as a pseudorandom function (PRF). In addition, as long as this function is truly one way, it is not possible to compute traffic keys from prior to a key change (forward secrecy).

TLS does not provide security for data which is communicated on a connection after a traffic secret of that connection is compromised. That is, TLS does not provide post-compromise security/future secrecy/backward secrecy with respect to the traffic secret. Indeed, an attacker who learns a traffic secret can compute all future traffic secrets on that connection. Systems which want such guarantees need to do a fresh handshake and establish a new connection with an (EC)DHE exchange.

The reader should refer to [RECORD] for analysis of the TLS record layer.

Appendix F. Working Group Information

The discussion list for the IETF TLS working group is located at the e-mail address tls@ietf.org. Information on the group and information on how to subscribe to the list is at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls

Archives of the list can be found at: https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/index.html

Appendix G. Contributors

• Martin Abadi
  University of California, Santa Cruz
  abadi@cs.ucsc.edu
• Christopher Allen (co-editor of TLS 1.0)
  Alacrity Ventures
  ChristopherA@AlacrityManagement.com
• Steven M. Bellovin
  Columbia University
  smb@cs.columbia.edu
• David Benjamin
  Google
  davidben@google.com
• Benjamin Beurdouche
  INRIA & Microsoft Research - Joint Center
  benjamin.beurdouche@ens.fr
• Karthikeyan Bhargavan (co-author of [RFC7627])
  INRIA
  karthikeyan.bhargavan@inria.fr
• Simon Blake-Wilson (co-author of [RFC4492])
  BCI
  sblakewilson@bcisse.com
• Nelson Bolyard (co-author of [RFC4492])
  Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  nelson@bolyard.com
• Ran Canetti
  IBM
  canetti@watson.ibm.com
• Pete Chown
  Skygate Technology Ltd
  pc@skygate.co.uk
• Katriel Cohn-Gordon
  University of Oxford
  me@katriel.co.uk
• Cas Cremers
  University of Oxford
  cas.cremers@cs.ox.ac.uk
• Antoine Delignat-Lavaud (co-author of [RFC7627])
  INRIA
  antoine.delignat-lavaud@inria.fr
• Tim Dierks (co-editor of TLS 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2)
  Independent
  tim@dierks.org
• Taher Elgamal
  Securify
  taher@securify.com
• Pasi Eronen
  Nokia
  pasi.eronen@nokia.com
• Cedric Fournet
  Microsoft
  fournet@microsoft.com
• Anil Gangolli
  anil@busybuddha.org
• David M. Garrett
  dave@nulldereference.com
• Alessandro Ghedini
  Cloudflare Inc.
  alessandro@cloudflare.com
• Jens Guballa
  ETAS
  jens.guballa@etas.com
• Vipul Gupta (co-author of [RFC4492])
  Sun Microsystems Laboratories
  vipul.gupta@sun.com
• Chris Hawk (co-author of [RFC4492])
  Corriente Networks LLC
  chris@corriente.net
• Kipp Hickman
• Alfred Hoenes
• David Hopwood
  Independent Consultant
  david.hopwood@blueyonder.co.uk
• Marko Horvat
  MPI-SWS
  mhorvat@mpi-sws.org
• Jonathan Hoyland
  Royal Holloway, University of London
• Subodh Iyengar
  Facebook
  subodh@fb.com
• Benjamin Kaduk
  Akamai
  kaduk@mit.edu
• Daniel Kahn Gillmor
  ACLU
  dkg@fifthhorseman.net
• Hubert Kario
  Red Hat Inc.
  hkario@redhat.com
• Phil Karlton (co-author of SSL 3.0)
• Leon Klingele
  Independent
  mail@leonklingele.de
• Paul Kocher (co-author of SSL 3.0)
  Cryptography Research
  paul@cryptography.com
• Hugo Krawczyk
  IBM
  hugo@ee.technion.ac.il
• Adam Langley (co-author of [RFC7627])
  Google
  agl@google.com
• Olivier Levillain
  ANSSI
  olivier.levillain@ssi.gouv.fr
• Xiaoyin Liu
  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  xiaoyin.l@outlook.com
• Ilari Liusvaara
  Independent
  ilariliusvaara@welho.com
• Atul Luykx
  K.U. Leuven
  atul.luykx@kuleuven.be
• Carl Mehner
  USAA
  carl.mehner@usaa.com
• Jan Mikkelsen
  Transactionware
  janm@transactionware.com
• Bodo Moeller (co-author of [RFC4492])
  Google
  bodo@openssl.org
• Erik Nygren
  Akamai Technologies
  erik+ietf@nygren.org
• Magnus Nystrom
  Microsoft
  mnystrom@microsoft.com
• Kazuho Oku
  DeNA Co., Ltd.
  kazuhooku@gmail.com
• Kenny Paterson
  Royal Holloway, University of London
  kenny.paterson@rhul.ac.uk
• Alfredo Pironti (co-author of [RFC7627])
  INRIA
  alfredo.pironti@inria.fr
• Andrei Popov
  Microsoft
  andrei.popov@microsoft.com
• Marsh Ray (co-author of [RFC7627])
  Microsoft
  maray@microsoft.com
• Robert Relyea
  Netscape Communications
  relyea@netscape.com
• Kyle Rose
  Akamai Technologies
  krose@krose.org
• Jim Roskind
  Netscape Communications
  jar@netscape.com
• Michael Sabin
• Rich Salz
  Akamai
  rsalz@akamai.com
• Sam Scott
  Royal Holloway, University of London
  me@samjs.co.uk
• Dan Simon
  Microsoft, Inc.
  dansimon@microsoft.com
• Nick Sullivan
  Cloudflare Inc.
  nick@cloudflare.com
• Bjoern Tackmann
  University of California, San Diego
  btackmann@eng.ucsd.edu
• Tim Taubert
  Mozilla
  ttaubert@mozilla.com
• Martin Thomson
  Mozilla
  mt@mozilla.com
• Filippo Valsorda
  Cloudflare Inc.
  filippo@cloudflare.com
• Thyla van der Merwe
  Royal Holloway, University of London
  tjvdmerwe@gmail.com
• Tom Weinstein
• Hoeteck Wee
  Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris
  hoeteck@alum.mit.edu
• David Wong
  NCC Group
  david.wong@nccgroup.trust
• Tim Wright
  Vodafone
  timothy.wright@vodafone.com
• Kazu Yamamoto
  Internet Initiative Japan Inc.
  kazu@iij.ad.jp

Author's Address