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[Acme] Specify which JWS serialization is used

Jörn Heissler <acme-specs@joern.heissler.de> Wed, 03 January 2018 23:07 UTC

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Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2018 00:07:34 +0100
From: Jörn Heissler <acme-specs@joern.heissler.de>
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Subject: [Acme] Specify which JWS serialization is used
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Hello and happy new Year!

I've found an inaccuracy in the ACME specs.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7515#section-7 states:

    Applications using this specification need to specify what serialization
    and serialization features are used for that application.

Although this is neither a "SHOULD" nor a "MUST", I think ACME should specify
which serialization formats need to be supported by server implementations.

RFC7515 defines four serialization formats:

* JWS Compact Serialization
* General JWS JSON Serialization Syntax
  * One signature only
  * Multiple signatures
* Flattened JWS JSON Serialization Syntax

https://ietf-wg-acme.github.io/acme/draft-ietf-acme-acme.html#rfc.section.6.2
states:

    In the examples below, JWS objects are shown in the JSON or
    flattened JSON serialization

All examples in the ACME specification use only the flattened serialization.
Depending on the clarification above, this might need to be amended too.

Best regards
Jörn Heissler

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