don't know if this warrants a patch. it seems I need to relax reporting this length error to be able to make it through the handshake. might be just a bug in the implementation I'm trying to handshake with (still, I have to work around it to make it through the handshake...), or there is something else happening -- if so, I missed it - ignoring this check makes it work: the length fields of the individual DistinguishedName (cas) read in the while loop are correct in this case. Axel.