Re: HTTP2 Expression of Interest

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 9:22 PM, Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]> wrote:
> draft-williams-rest-gss relies on GSSAPI, which has thin adoption even
> after many years. [...]

If you consider that the SSPI is very similar to the GSS-API, and
wire-compatible with it anyways, then that assertion is quite clearly
incorrect.  SSPI is extremely widely used, both in proprietary
application protocols and standard ones (including TLS, since SSPI is
the interface to TLS in Windows).

The GSS-API has had a dearth of mechanisms for it deployed, but this
is beginning to change.  We now have all of these standardized and/or
deployed:

 - Kerberos (including IAKERB)
 - GSS-EAP (see ABFAB WG)
 - SCRAM
 - Microsoft's PKU2U (PKI, based on Kerberos w/ PKINIT)
 - the GSI mechanism that is really just TLS repackaged as GSS

   (See again how SSPI is the interface to TLS in Windows.
    It's also the interface to SASL.)

 - OAuth and SAML-based mechanisms are in the works as well.

It's easy enough to add new GSS-API mechanisms, but between GSS-EAP,
Kerberos (particularly with trust routing and bootstrapping
enhancements), PKU2U, OAuth, and SAML I think we have most needs
covered.  A ZKPP mechanism or three should be added, but unless that's
done in a way that federates then I think it's best to make sure that
GSS-EAP can use ZKPP EAP methods and Kerberos can use ZKPP
pre-authentication mechanisms.

The biggest Internet protocol users of the GSS-API are SSHv2 (yes,
really, SSHv2 w/ GSS and Kerberos is widely deployed in corporate
networks), LDAP (see again Windows), and NFS.  But also IMAP (see
Exchange), DNS (GSS-TSIG, see Active Directory and Windows) and
others.  There's also widely deployed non-Internet standards-track
protocols, such as SMB, as well as many proprietary protocols.  And
then there's HTTP/Negotiate -- how could I forget!  (though to be sure
I don't really like HTTP/Negotiate, otherwise I might just have
proposed that.)

Nico
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