It is extremely common that a correct implementation also has excellent performance.

Also, even if somebody else can go faster by not being correct, what use is the wrong answer? https://nitter.net/magdraws/status/1551612747569299458

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woodruffw 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It is extremely common that a correct implementation also has excellent performance.

I think that's true in general, but in the case of X.509 path validation it's not a given: the path construction algorithm is non-trivial, and requires quadratic searches (e.g. of name constraints against subjects/SANs). An incorrect implementation could be faster by just not doing those things, which is often fine (for example, nothing really explodes if an EE doesn't have a SAN[1]). I think one of the things that's interesting in the PyCA case is that it commits to doing a lot of cross-checking/policy work that is "extra" on paper but stills comes out on top of OpenSSL.

[1]: https://x509-limbo.com/testcases/webpki/#webpkisanno-san

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jmspring 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’d say correct common path. OpenSSL due to hand waving deals with a lot of edge cases the correct path doesn’t handle. Even libraries like libnss suffers from this.

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nine_k 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Are these edge cases correct to the spec, or not?

	▲	pseudohadamard an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. The spec is often such a confused mess that even the people who wrote it are surprised by what it requires. One example was when someone on the PKIX list spent some time explaining to X.509 standards people what it was that their own standard required, which they had been unaware of until then.