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Re: [Acme] Concerning alternative formats …

Jörn Heissler <acme-specs@joern.heissler.de> Mon, 05 March 2018 14:35 UTC

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Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2018 15:35:31 +0100
From: Jörn Heissler <acme-specs@joern.heissler.de>
To: Felipe Gasper <felipe@felipegasper.com>
Cc: Martin Thomson <martin.thomson@gmail.com>, Richard Barnes <rlb@ipv.sx>, Logan Widick <logan.widick@gmail.com>, ACME WG <acme@ietf.org>, Fraser Tweedale <frase@frase.id.au>
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Subject: Re: [Acme] Concerning alternative formats …
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On Mon, Mar 05, 2018 at 09:11:02 -0500, Felipe Gasper wrote:
> Regarding alternative formats, I think ACME over WebSocket would be a great thing. Replay-nonce would go away, and clients wouldn’t need to poll for the certificate unless the connection dropped. The server could send the certificate as soon as it’s ready. A simple handshake at the start could take the place of JWS, too.

Moving to websocket would mean having to specify a new websocket based
protocol and reimplementing all servers/clients.
You'd also need to consider MitM (e.g. by CDN or expensive enterprise MitM
appliances). Doing a handshake at the beginning won't be enough to keep
those from taking over a session after the handshake.

If you wanted to eliminate the polling, it would be possible to change
the finalize endpoint to return the certificate directly, even if it
takes a while until the HTTP response is sent.

Anyway, I'm satisfied with the current protocol. Complexity should (and
can) be addressed by client implementors.

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