On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 01:47:45PM +1100, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be> writes:
> 
> > From what I understand, it is (or was) possible to configure
> > things in such a way that it uses s_client to set up SSL, even
> > when it's configured to use gnutls.  You should never use s_client
> > for that.  s_client is a debug tool.  It does create an SSL
> > connection for you, but in an insecure way.
> 
> Emacs has built-in TLS support these days, so s_client is only used if
> the user (for some weird reason or other) has built or installed a
> version of Emacs without TLS support.
> 
> I think that should probably be removed, because it's less secure than
> users would expect.

This is now a release-blocking bug, but hasn't seen any activity in the
last year or so. It would be good to see this finally fixed!

Obviously, one should never use openssl s_client for stuff like this...
I should also note that even though Emacs 24 supports TLS natively now,
its handling of X509 certificate is really problematic, as documented in
#816063. I would hardly consider it complete.

Emacs 25 doesn't suffer from those issues, but may still allow
s_client...

A.

-- 
Il est sage de nous réconcilier avec notre adolescence ; haїr, mépriser,
nier ou simplement oublier l’adolescent que nous fûmes est en soi une
attitude adolescente.
                        - Daniel Pennac, Comme un roman