Decision graph

While this documentation calls the structure traversed by the runner a “decision graph,” as it can contain loops, it’s more precisely described as a directed graph. Older parts of this documentation and object names refer to this structure as a “decision tree”—this name reflects the most common use case in the bundled tests, not the most complex supported one.

Node fields

A decision graph node, a TreeNode, has two pointers, to a child and to a next_sibling. On initialisation nodes set them to None.

Child nodes

When a node matches received message and processes it without errors, Runner continues execution by switching to the child.

If child points to None, runner closes open connections and ends execution.

To create loops the child can point to itself or nodes that point to it, either directly or transitively. You need to use this mechanism to allow receiving arbitrary number of messages.

Sibling nodes

The runner uses nodes pointed to by next_sibling when received message doesn’t match the current node. When sending messages, runner looks into next_sibling when connection got closed.

You can use this mechanism to either break out of loops or to define alternatives in execution.

Advanced decision graph structures

As mentioned before, the decision graph allows for non-linear relationship between nodes.

Loops

Test case runner in tlsfuzzer can accept arbitrary number of messages if the node points to itself as its child.

For example, to accept zero or more NewSessionTicket messages in TLS 1.3 connection, the script needs to include the following code:

cycle = ExpectNewSessionTicket()
node = node.add_child(cycle)
node.add_child(cycle)

Servers that send the NewSessionTicket after Finished and before any other messages, require the preceding code after ExpectFinished. That handles OpenSSL-using servers and others that behave similarly.

Note

TLS standard does allow sending NewSessionTicket messages at arbitrary times after Finished.

Write the following code to make the runner finish the loop once an ApplicationData message is received:

node.next_sibling = ExpectApplicationData()
node = node.next_sibling

Tip

If you want to accept arbitrary number of NewSessionTicket messages, but no fewer than a specified amount, add more ExpectNewSessionTicket nodes before the loop to ensure that server sends them.

You can find a working example of this code in test-tls13-conversation.py.

Alternatives

Servers configured with client certificate based authentication send CertificateRequest message. For a script to interoperate with such servers it needs to expect that message. If a client receives it, it needs to reply with a Certificate message, even if it doesn’t have a certificate (it sends an empty message then). Since a node doesn’t have a limit on the number of parent nodes, script can specify a branch to handle such connections.

Start with specifying the exceptional path, save reference to the fork point:

node = node.add_child(ExpectCertificateRequest())
fork = node
node = node.add_child(ExpectServerHelloDone())
node = node.add_child(CertificateGenerator())

Then specify the usual path, for servers that don’t ask for client certificates:

fork.next_sibling = ExpectServerHelloDone()

In both handshake scenarios the client sends ClientKeyExchange message, this joins the paths:

join = ClientKeyExchangeGenerator()
# join regular path:
fork.next_sibling.add_child(join)
# join CR path:
node = node.add_child(join)

After that, handshake continues as usual with ChangeCipherSpec, Finished, etc.

Note

When specifying alternative messages, you must take care not to allow message exchanges forbidden by the standards. Place all the messages that depend on the branch in the branch to ensure that (but check if using a command line switch to build different graphs doesn’t lead to simpler test scripts).

You can find a working example of this code in test-fuzzed-plaintext.py.

Error handling

If you want to allow the server to abort connection while sending data, use the sibling mechanism too.

To allow the server to close the connection while writing to it, specify the ExpectClose as sibling of the node:

node = node.add_child(CertificateVerifyGenerator(private_key))
node.next_sibling = ExpectClose()
node = node.add_child(ChangeCipherSpecGenerator())
node.next_sibling = ExpectClose()
node = node.add_child(FinishedGenerator())
node.next_sibling = ExpectClose()

Use ExpectAlert the same way.

Note

Runner supports only ExpectAlert and ExpectClose as siblings of generator nodes. Since connection close triggers this path, you can read only already buffered messages.

You can find a working example of this code in test-certificate-verify-malformed-sig.py.