Re: [Iot-onboarding] what can pinned-domain-cert actually pin?

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

Owen Friel (ofriel) <[e-mail]> wrote:
    >> 1) LetsEncrypt does not issue 825 day certificates. (That's 2 1/4 years).

    > I never said LE issued 825 day certs. CA/Brower forum allows public CAs
    > to issue 825 day certs. LE is currently at 90.

I know you didn't :-)
The 90 day limit by LE is a significiant operational challenge.
An 825 day limit is significantly less so, however my understanding is that
the pressure is on to lower that limit significantly; to use ACME to (re-)issue
certificates significantly more often, particilarly in light of the STAR work.

    >> 2) I'm not worried about the LE key rolling, because the RFC8649 will likely
    >> be used.

    > I wouldn’t necessarily say so. Have any CA providers, whether public
    > CAs or private CA implementations (e.g. Microsoft ADCS) committed to
    > supporting this? I'm not aware of a single one that has. Plus, RFC8649
    > requires that the existing root CA includes the hash of the next root
    > CA keys, meaning that when the existing LE root expires in 2035, then
    > the next root CA could include the RFC8649 hash, and then the next root
    > after that can be seamlessly rotated to. In like 2045. I hope to be
    > long retired by then.

They haven't announced anything, but I think that it they will, and I think
that it provides a very nice way to deal with private CA keys rolling over.

    > Regardless, LE root rotation is not at issue here. The issue is what
    > happens if an operator wants to move from GoDaddy to
    > LetsEncrypt. Either (i) all existing vouchers are dead or (ii) we need
    > multiple pinned-domain-cert entries. And maybe (i) is fine and if an
    > operator wants to change root CA providers, then the operator sucks it
    > up and reissues all nonceless vouchers.

We could also consider pinning the public key of the Registrar.
This is how constrained-BRSKI works.  There are crypto-hygiene issues here,
but maybe it's better than putting more fragile logic into a device that
might remain on a shelf for many years.

This is my only real objection to pinning an DNS-ID: the cost of the full
PKI validation that it requires the Pledge to have (in a bug-free way for a
period of decades), and that the rules for validation of chains won't change
during that period of time.

This is core of the tussle.

--
Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-