rustls VS mkcert

The RustTLS project is currently setting up their own CI benchmarking workflow, so I think that you could find some inspiration there: https://github.com/rustls/rustls/issues/1385 and https://github.com/rustls/rustls/issues/1205.

I also studied this question on FFI several weeks ago in terms of "rewrite part of the system in Rust". Unexpected results could be semantic issues (e.g., different error handling methods) or security issues (FFI could be a soundness hole). I suggest going through the issues of libraries that have started rewriting work such as rust-openssl or rustls (This is the one trying to rewrite in whole rust rather than using FFI; however, you will not be able to find the mapping function in the C version and compare them). I hope this helps!

Now for rust implementation of tls. Certificates can be loaded in two ways. * Finds and loads certificates using OS specific tools3 * Uses a rust implementation of webpki4 for loading with certificates5

> Ring is mostly C/Assembly

Crypto needs to be written in Assembly to ensure that operations take a constant time, regardless of input. Writing it in a high level language like C or Rust opens you up to the compiler "optimising" routines and making them no longer constant time.

But you already knew this. And you also knew that the security audit (https://github.com/rustls/rustls/blob/master/audit/TLS-01-re...) of ring was favourable

> No issues were found with regards to the cryptographic engineering of rustls or its underlying ring library. A recommendation is provided in TLS-01-001 to optionally supplement the already solid cryptographic library with another cryptographic provider (EverCrypt) with an added benefit of formally verified cryptographic primitives. Overall, it is very clear that the developers of rustls have an extensive knowledge on how to correctly implement the TLS stack whilst avoiding the common pitfalls that surround the TLS ecosystem. This knowledge has translated reliably into an implementation of exceptional quality.

You said

> a standard library with feature flags and editions would make rust ridiculously much more productive

What's the difference between opting into a library with a feature flag and opting in with a line in Cargo.toml? Let's say you want to use the de-facto regex library. Would it really be ridiculously productive if you said you wanted the "regex" feature flag instead of the "regex" crate?

I do agree that the standard library does need a versioning story so they can remove long deprecated functions. Where it gets complicated is if a new method is reintroduced using the same name in a later edition.

I used the commands listed in the .sh file here: https://github.com/rustls/rustls/tree/main/test-ca to generate keys/certs for a server and a client (with IP.1 records for SANs). I have added the local root CA to the trust store of each VM.

This is great news, this was our single biggest annoyance with rustls. One of our cloud providers choses to issue their hosted postgres instances with TLS certificates with IP addresses. Unusual, but valid per the spec, so why not. Apparently a practise that's also popular in kubernetes settings, so I'm somewhat surprised it took 5 years to close the issue, but now I can finally recommend people to use rustls without mentioning any gotchas.

I believe it is more relevant than you think: servers running in containers, web assembler tasks running in browsers, embedded devices and kernels with total control of the system, all have the ability to do something more sensible than plain out SIGABRT or similar, and in many the case is not that the complete system is falling down. For example RustTLS is looking into allowing fallible allocators and as a pretty general-purpose library that seems like a nice feature. I do wish ulimit -v worked in a sensible manner with applications.

The author mentions difficulties with HTTPS and trying stuff locally.

I've had some success with mkcert [1] to easily create certificates trusted by browsers, I can suggest to look into this. You are your own root CA, I think it can work without an internet connection.

[1] https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert/

Solution: mkcert – Your Zero-Configuration HTTPS Enabler Meet mkcert, a user-friendly, zero-configuration tool designed for creating locally-trusted development certificates. Find it on its GitHub page and follow the instructions tailored for your operating system. For Mac users employing Homebrew, simply execute the following commands in your terminal:

Well, Certifi does not ship with your company's certificates! So requesting internal services may come with additional painful extra steps! Also for a local development environment that uses mkcert for example!

My project, getlocalcert.net[1] may be the one you're thinking of.

Since I'm also building in this space, I'll give my perspective. Local certificate generation is complicated. If you spend the time, you can figure it out, but it's begging for a simpler solution. You can use tools like mkcert[2] for anything that's local to your machine. However, if you're already using ACME in production, maybe you'd prefer to use ACME locally? I think that's what Anchor offers, a unified approach.

There's a couple references in the Anchor blog about solving the distribution problem by building better tooling[3]. I'm eager to learn more, that's a tough nut to crack. My theory for getlocalcert is that the distribution problem is too difficult (for me) to solve, so I layer the tool on top of Let's Encrypt certificates instead. The end result for both tools is a trusted TLS certificate issued via ACME automation.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36674224

2. https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert

3. https://blog.anchor.dev/the-acme-gap-introducing-anchor-part...

Looks like step-ca/step-cli [1] and mkcert [2] have been mentioned. Another related tool is XCA [3] - a gui tool to manage CAs and server/client TLS certificates. It takes off some of the tedium in using openssl cli directly. It also stores the certs and keys in an encrypted database. It doesn't solve the problem of getting the root CA certificate into the system store or of hosting the revocation list. I use XCA to create and store the root CA. Intermediate CAs signed with it are passed to other issuers like vault and step-issuer.

[1] https://smallstep.com/docs/step-ca/

[2] https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert

[3] https://hohnstaedt.de/xca/

We use mkcert for this, it works wonderfully.

https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert

mkcert: This is used to obtain a trusted TLS certificate with a custom domain name for your development machine. You can install mkcert on your development machine following the official instructions.

I've been pretty frustrated with how private CAs are supported. Your private root CA can be maliciously used to MITM every domain on the Internet, even though you intend to use it for only a couple domain names. Most people forget to set Name Constraints when they create these and many helper tools lack support [1][2]. Worse, browser support for Name Constraints has been slow [3] and support isn't well tracked [4]. Public CAs give you certificate transparency and you can subscribe to events to detect mis-issuance. Some hosted private CAs like AWS's offer logs [5], but DIY setups don't.

Even still, there are a lot of folks happily using private CAs, they aren't the target audience for this initial release.

[1] https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert/issues/302

[2] https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/issues/3655

[3] https://alexsci.com/blog/name-non-constraint/

[4] https://github.com/Netflix/bettertls/issues/19

[5] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/privateca/latest/userguide/secur...