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Microsoft brings SMB on QUIC to Windows
Microsoft is working on SMB (Server Message Block) on QUIC technology for use with “Windows, Windows Server and Azure Files”, according to an announcement on Monday.
SMB over QUIC can be used as a virtual private network (VPN) alternative to secure mobile device connections. It can also replace the “TCP / IP and RDMA” (direct remote memory access) protocols, said Ned Pyle, a senior program manager with the Windows Server engineering group. QUIC is considered a more secure protocol than TCP.
“Unlike TCP, QUIC is always encrypted and requires TLS 1.3 [Transport Layer Security 1.3] with tunnel certificate authentication, “added Pyle.
By using SMB on QUIC, Microsoft will simply replace the part of the transport protocol.
“All SMB authentication always takes place normally in the TLS tunnel (as if it were a VPN), so SMB does not rely on identity or certificate-based authentication – it will use always NTLM or Kerberos (with KDC proxy), “said Pyle in the comments section of Microsoft’s announcement. “This model is changing the transport, SMB is unchanged.”
The idea behind SMB on QUIC is to prevent identity theft and man-in-the-middle attacks, including “NTLM [Windows NT LAN Manager] challenges, “said Pyle. He also explained that the user experience will not change. TCP and RDMA are used, but QUIC transport also occurs, and the end result is” transparent to the end user and their applications ” .
Pyle said “QUIC is already in use in Windows 10 via the Edge browser and other apps”, but the arrival time for SMB on QUIC is not yet known. He showed it in the ad.
QUIC, which stands for “Quick UDP Internet Connections”, was developed by Google, which has its own version “gQUIC” which is currently used in Google Chrome web browsers, as described by Wikipedia.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is currently maintaining a QUIC project, but “QUIC” is considered to be the name of the protocol and not an acronym, according to the IETF. Wikipedia further explained that the IETF planned to name “the HTTP to QUIC mapping ‘HTTP / 3’ before making it a global standard.”