On the Security of TLS 1.3 and QUIC Against Weaknesses in PKCS#1 v1.5 Encryption

Abstract

Encrypted key transport with RSA-PKCS#1 v1.5 is the most commonly deployed key exchange method in all current versions of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, including the most recent version 1.2. However, it has several well-known issues, most importantly that it does not provide forward secrecy, and that it is prone to side channel attacks that may enable an attacker to learn the session key used for a TLS session. A long history of attacks shows that RSA-PKCS#1 v1.5 is extremely difficult to implement securely. The current draft of TLS version 1.3 dispenses with this encrypted key transport method. But is this sufficient to protect against weaknesses in RSA-PKCS#1 v1.5?