Re: [Gen-art] Gen-ART last call review of draft-ietf-mile-rfc6046-bis-05

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

On 1/19/12 10:32 AM, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
> Hi Brian,
> 
> On 19/01/2012 09:48, Brian Trammell wrote:
>> On Jan 18, 2012, at 7:01 PM, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
>>> On 18/01/2012 17:43, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
>>>> Hi Brian,
>>>>
>>>> On 18/01/2012 16:16, Brian Trammell wrote:
>>>>> On Jan 18, 2012, at 3:38 PM, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Actually, since the binding between RID and a PKI is better defined
>>>>> in rfc6045-bis, 6046-bis now refers to it, as follows:
>>>>>
>>>>>     Each RID system SHOULD authenticate its peers via a PKI as
>>>>> detailed
>>>>>     in Section 9.3 of [I-D.ietf-mile-rfc6045-bis].
>>>>>
>>>>> Would this address the concern?
>>>> Let me check.
>>> So the text in rfc6045bis seems to suggest that all server
>>> certificates will be verified based on some prior arrangement. Is my
>>> understanding correct?
>> Yes; in essence, a RID consortium is "closed".
> I think that this approach is unwise, because this wouldn't scale. But
> if nobody else see a problem with this, I will let it go.

I have a problem with it.

Version -05 said:

   Each RID consortium SHOULD use a trusted public key infrastructure
   (PKI) to manage identities for RID systems participating in TLS
   connections.  At minimum, each RID system MUST trust a set of X.509
   Issuer identities ("Certificate Authorities") [RFC5280] to directly
   authenticate RID system peers with which it is willing to exchange
   information, and/or a specific white list of X.509 Subject identities
   of RID system peers.

   RID systems MUST provide for the verification of the identity of a
   RID system peer presenting a valid and trusted certificate, by
   verifying the fully-qualified domain name and service name from the
   DNS SRV record, if available, against that stored in the certificate,
   as in Section 6 of [RFC6125].

In version -06, that was replaced with:

   Each RID system SHOULD authenticate its peers via a PKI as detailed
   in Section 9.3 of [I-D.ietf-mile-rfc6045-bis].

As far as I can see, a RID system is not the same as a RID consortium.
Even if every RID system is a member of such a consortium, it seems like
a bad idea to leave the authentication rules up to the consortium,
without providing any sort of guidance. Version -05 at least pointed to
RFC 6125. Since 6046bis is the HTTPS/TLS binding only, it might be more
appropriate to point to RFC 2818 here instead of RFC 6125, but I think
we need to say *something* about how authentication works (matching of
endpoint identities and such) instead of hoping that consortia get the
security right.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/