1564509 - Remove support for DH from WebCrypto API (not in spec)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: Web Crypto, task, P1)

Description

[J.C. Jones [:jcj] (he/they)]

Bug 1034856 added support for DH algorithms to WebCrypto, however the final specification did not choose to include them, making Firefox the only browser with support.

Bug 1539578 added telemetry to show usage, and it is extremely low (not appearing on the graphs), which could be expected as Firefox is the only supporting browser.

Since DH is an ongoing maintenance burden -- and overall cryptanalysis of DH is progressing -- let's remove it.

Comment 1

[J.C. Jones [:jcj] (he/they)]

Attachment: Bug 1564509 - Remove DH from WebCrypto r?kjacobs

Bug 1034856 added support for DH algorithms to WebCrypto, however the final
specification did not choose to include them, making Firefox the only browser
with support.

Bug 1539578 added telemetry to show usage, and it is extremely low (not
appearing on the graphs), which could be expected as Firefox is the only
supporting browser.

Since DH is an ongoing maintenance burden -- and overall cryptanalysis of DH
is progressing -- let's remove it.

Notice to unship went to dev-platform on 29 March 2019 with no objections. [0]

[0] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/Ut3-eQmUdWg/O9w1et1aBgAJ

Comment 2

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/5d93cdf79d27
Remove DH from WebCrypto r=kjacobs,bzbarsky,keeler

Comment 3

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/5d93cdf79d27

Comment 4

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Posted a site compatibility note for this.

Comment 5

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Should this have been uplifted to the ESR, especially given:

https://blog.intothesymmetry.com/2020/01/the-curious-case-of-webcrypto-diffie.html

Comment 6

[J.C. Jones [:jcj] (he/they)]

I don't believe this warrants an uplift to ESR; one would have to go out of their way to build a WebCrypto application using FFDH, and then have that application be vulnerable to XSS. The full discussion of that is in Bug 1471684, which will likely be unhidden shortly.