Re: [DNSOP] Some thoughts on special-use names, from an application standpoint

[George Michaelson <[e-mail]>]

I have a different perspective on this question Mark.

Firstly, I find use of .magic as the extreme RHS of a name, to force
special behaviour architecturally disqueting.

I really do worry about what we think we're building when we encode this
behaviour into name strings. It leads to all kinds of bad places. Some of
them, like the homoglyph problems John Klensin has raised, simply don't
have good answers (the assumption the string .onion is the literal ASCII
'o' 'n' 'i' 'o' 'n' is not well founded)

We were here a long time ago, when we had pre-Internet mail and used things
like .UUCP as magic break-out signals in email. This rapidly becomes the
problem: its bound to applications-level decisions about when to honour
magic, and when not, and it certainly doesn't avoid lower level
gethostbyname() calls everywhere. So the .magic label winds up being
half-true, depending.

Secondly, While I think  I now understand some of the problems you have in
web/apps layer (from talking to Wendy Seltzer) and I have sympathies about
the syntactic constructs welded into code around URL forms, I think these
problems are different to the architectural/layer violation explicit in
forcing .magic names into the namespace.

What really got me floored, was the qualities of cryptographic protection
which a project like TOR needs, and the implication a public/commercial CA
service embedded in the browser TA set is the right path. I'm frankly
horrified, even under certificate pinning, that we've gone to a space where
any TA can claim to sign over .onion, and excluding the pinned
applications, lead people into paths where their assumptions of TLS backed
security are simply not true.

As I understand things, TOR *wanted* .onion to get X509 PKI over the label
in a browser, and the CA community refused unless its TLD status was
confirmed. Is this the kind of rigour in technical process we expect, to
make technical calls to pre-empt the namespace? (which btw, we passed
otherwise to another body, reserving an RFC backed process to get names,
but I think that was a hugely unwise decision)

To protect .onion certs, the TOR developers are going to have to code in
cert pinning behaviour, all kinds of things, which frankly sound to me a
lot like the cost of not having the name, or having a name buried under a
2LD instead.

So I come to a different place. I come to a place where requests for magic
names look like violations of any spirit of an architectural view of the
network, and where retaining some technical basis to reserve them looks
like violations of the separation of functional roles between ICANN and
IETF, absent very very clear, strong reasons to have the name held back.

I don't entirely see these reasons emerging. I see the opposite. I see
expediency from apps communities, seeking to use .magic tricks to avoid
cost explicitly in their layer, but at a cost of polluting the public
commons.

I am pretty firmly in the camp which says the revision of the RFC should be
complete: we stop doing this, and people who want names go into ICANN
process to establish them.

-G


On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 9:59 PM, hellekin <[e-mail]> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA512
>
> On 11/26/2015 06:38 AM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
> >
> > Given this context, I was disturbed to hear the design team presentati
> on
> > in Yokohama
> >
>
> So you mean there's an already working team on the revision of RFC6761,
> and that team had the time to prepare a presentation, while the DNSOP
> chairs didn't have the time to respond to volunteers nor to announce
> this team.  This is simply unacceptable.  I concur that the revision of
> RFC6761 should go to another group where "Internet community" makes some
> sense and corporate dissent is not silenced by ignoring legitimate
> requests.  Please don't expect any apologies from me for telling the
> truth.  This is a carnival of an inclusive process.
>
> Thank you Mark for the heads up.
>
> ==
> hk
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> iQJ8BAEBCgBmBQJWVvQ8XxSAAAAAAC4AKGlzc3Vlci1mcHJAbm90YXRpb25zLm9w
> ZW5wZ3AuZmlmdGhob3JzZW1hbi5uZXRFQ0IyNkIyRTNDNzEyMTc2OUEzNEM4ODU0
> ODA2QzM2M0ZDMTg5ODNEAAoJEEgGw2P8GJg9ewoQALD1dF/Wqyh2Lo5qZ35PUANA
> bvq2k5BZd1UsN488+V4v7PnAHxO7XgR8IQSYYnp1oYNaZl5WbFEPjT6HOSR3O4lr
> 7iSVeSxPux8hssSxorkWtBVk8oAnImGEPyIlYunBLcTyasXLY5+2fzmR1+P4/9Kk
> ahjHvuQa6dOAXhqTMBizwb3kZ2PC2hFlM5LKMIBcf9GfTVmH//fbEalHYPYEwMCY
> AvX9mkMvvWcWhn15OXRi50r3kQl65d0KQA2euQ8mUIe5qafDHASBtZLc81t0rAXv
> fjaWT4REu+KUHexWKgI7NFF3uZ0M0Cm7imYN6+YG+AWFtPrr4SPh1BA0L4td93q8
> bGxGEJrDTWRVaW2c98UO5bFxm3kqcM4oTdBD1Rg4yC1OatvuKzZp6nPrFG09G5rn
> PjorrqoNx0MHxwejrTHkkhnmvmgTfPUTvkT/7zUYLTwRITDrjzOyj932COrZV+A3
> dak5M5hRLhR8jswx/lh+SmY1RFAtCuNDcoFuXTOJygwSpj7WvigIORiT6ATLFlfW
> mxYxkVP/Tc76anRTk5O/AIu87c5K9fr6TPiFRIL/0eKnFBEMn2qbaW7TLvAl6o89
> kgYYp4u59ve0vCL6gE2sn1w1EYnctFVxpzcg9HkFl/MFuQyWdc4yb5OdFWW8sema
> 8hpTT/KiW1/KDHGj0kcB
> =IZoh
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> DNSOP mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dnsop
>