RFC 5246, "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", August 2008

Note: This RFC has been obsoleted by RFC 8446

Note: This RFC has been updated by RFC 5746, RFC 5878, RFC 6176, RFC 7465, RFC 7507, RFC 7568, RFC 7627, RFC 7685, RFC 7905, RFC 7919, RFC 8447, RFC 9155

Errata ID: 6244
Status: Held for Document Update
Type: Editorial
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Victor S. Osipov
Date Reported: 2020-07-29
Held for Document Update by: Paul Wouters
Date Held: 2024-03-21

Section 6.2.3.2 says:

IV
The Initialization Vector (IV) SHOULD be chosen at random, and
MUST be unpredictable. Note that in versions of TLS prior to 1.1,
there was no IV field, and the last ciphertext block of the
previous record (the "CBC residue") was used as the IV. This was
changed to prevent the attacks described in [CBCATT]. For block
ciphers, the IV length is of length
SecurityParameters.record_iv_length, which is equal to the
SecurityParameters.block_size.

It should say:

IV
The Initialization Vector (IV) SHOULD be chosen at random, and
MUST be unpredictable. Note that in versions of TLS prior to 1.1,
there was no IV field, and the last ciphertext block of the
previous record (the "CBC residue") was used as the IV. This was
changed to prevent the attacks described in [CBCATT]. For block
ciphers, the IV length is of length
SecurityParameters.record_iv_length, which is equal to the
SecurityParameters.block_length.

Notes:

This is an error here. The structure SecurityParameters hasn't the element block_size.
It has the element block_length.
See in section 6.1:
struct {
ConnectionEnd entity;
PRFAlgorithm prf_algorithm;
BulkCipherAlgorithm bulk_cipher_algorithm;
CipherType cipher_type;
uint8 enc_key_length;
uint8 block_length;
uint8 fixed_iv_length;
uint8 record_iv_length;
MACAlgorithm mac_algorithm;
uint8 mac_length;
uint8 mac_key_length;
CompressionMethod compression_algorithm;
opaque master_secret[48];
opaque client_random[32];
opaque server_random[32];
} SecurityParameters;


Paul Wouters (AD): Note this RFC is obsoleted and all of this text already got removed

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