> Tue, 27 September 2016 18:21 UTC
> The various suggestions for creating fixed/static Diffie Hellman keys raise interesting possibilities. We would like to understand these ideas better at a technical level and are initiating research into this potential solution.
The core argument made by BITS is that they need a way to log TLS traffic such that it can be decrypted later, in order to provide data retention in line with regulations. While this could be done by logging all ephemeral keys generated by the servers, BITS argues that this isn’t practical due to their use of dedicated packet logging hardware that is key-ignorant. Instead they want to use non-forward-secret TLS so they can decrypt past messages easily. Their beef with TLS 1.3 is that it removes all non-FS key exchange methods, and further that by explicitly obsoleting TLS 1.2 as a standard pushes them to have to adopt 1.3 in an enterprise environment (or risk current/future regulatory scrutiny over their use of an obsoleted standard). Hence why they want to develop a competing, active standard with non-FS key exchange.