Change:
a RECOMMENDED padding mechanism for clients aimed at reducing potential information leakage. <ins> 10.8. This section describes the rationale for ECHO properties and mechanics as defenses against active attacks.  In all the attacks below, the attacker is on-path between the target client and server. The goal of the attacker is to learn private information about the inner ClientHello, such as the true SNI value. 10.8.1. This attack uses the client's reaction to an incorrect certificate as an oracle.  The attacker intercepts a legitimate ClientHello and replies with a ServerHello, Certificate, CertificateVerify, and Finished messages, wherein the Certificate message contains a "test" certificate for the domain name it wishes to query.  If the client decrypted the Certificate and failed verification (or leaked information about its verification process by a timing side channel), the attacker learns that its test certificate name was incorrect.  As an example, suppose the client's SNI value in its inner ClientHello is "example.com," and the attacker replied with a Certificate for "test.com".  If the client produces a verification failure alert because of the mismatch faster than it would due to the Certificate signature validation, information about the name leaks.  Note that the attacker can also withhold the CertificateVerify message.  In that scenario, a client which first verifies the Certificate would then respond similarly and leak the same information. The "echo_nonce" extension in the inner ClientHello prevents this attack.  In particular, since the attacker does not have access to this value, it cannot produce the right transcript and handshake keys needed for encrypting the Certificate message.  Thus, the client will fail to decrypt the Certificate and abort the connection. 10.8.2. This attack aims to exploit server HRR state management to recover information about a legitimate ClientHello using its own attacker- controlled ClientHello.  To begin, the attacker intercepts and forwards a legitimate ClientHello with an "encrypted_client_hello" (echo) extension to the server, which triggers a legitimate HelloRetryRequest in return.  Rather than forward the retry to the client, the attacker, attempts to generate its own ClientHello in response based on the contents of the first ClientHello and HelloRetryRequest exchange with the result that the server encrypts the Certificate to the attacker.  If the server used the SNI from the first ClientHello and the key share from the second (attacker- controlled) ClientHello, the Certificate produced would leak the client's chosen SNI to the attacker. This attack is mitigated by binding the first and second ClientHello messages together.  In particular, since the attacker does not possess the echo_hrr_key, it cannot generate a valid encryption of the second inner ClientHello.  The server will attempt decryption using echo_hrr_key, detect failure, and fail the connection. If the second ClientHello were not bound to the first, it might be possible for the server to act as an oracle if it required parameters from the first ClientHello to match that of the second ClientHello. For example, imagine the client's original SNI value in the inner ClientHello is "example.com", and the attacker's hijacked SNI value in its inner ClientHello is "test.com".  A server which checks these for equality and changes behavior based on the result can be used as an oracle to learn the client's SNI. 10.8.3. This attack uses resumption PSKs as an oracle for dictionary attacks against a given ClientHello's true SNI.  To begin, the attacker first interacts with a server to obtain a resumption ticket for a given test domain, such as "test.com".  Later, upon receipt of a legitimate ClientHello without a PSK binder, it computes a PSK binder using its own ticket and forwards the resulting ClientHello.  Assume the server then validates the PSK binder on the outer ClientHello and chooses connection parameters based on the inner ClientHello.  A server which then validates information in the outer ClientHello ticket against information in the inner ClientHello, such as the SNI, introduces an oracle that can be used to test the encrypted SNI value of specific ClientHello messages. ECHO mitigates against this attack by requiring servers not mix-and- match information from the inner and outer ClientHello.  For example, if the server accepts the inner ClientHello, it does not validate binders in the outer ClientHello.  This means that ECHO PSKs are used within the HPKE encryption envelope. </ins> 11. 11.1.

Discussion:
Addresses . This is for motivating some of our design decisions (and documenting what we know along the way). I meant to do this a while ago, but never got around to it. In particular, it describes why we have the following three bindings: Transcript to ECHO secret (to prevent client reaction attacks). CH1 to CH2 (to prevent HRR oracles). ClientHello to resumption PSK binder (to prevent resumption oracles). I'm sure the language and presentation can be improved, so suggestions to that effect are very much welcome! cc NAME NAME NAME NAME NAME NAME NAME
Thanks for the feedback! I incorporated your suggestions and clarified a few more things. I'm merging as-is since they seemed mostly editorial.
Addressed in .