Re: [nfsv4] NFS over TLS for floating clients

[Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2020 at 07:26:09PM +0000, Rick Macklem wrote:
> Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
> >On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 02:16:46AM +0000, Rick Macklem wrote:
> >> Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
> >> >
> >> >There's a little bit of a mismatch between what TLS client certificates say
> >> >and what TLS server certificate say, at least in the common class of usage.
> >> >If you read RFC 6125, you note that it *only* talks about naming TLS server
> >> >certificates, because the process for that is along the lines of "the
> >> >client figures out in some mechanism specified by the application protocol
> >> >a name that it's trying to contact, and the server has to present a
> >> >certificate that matches that desired name".  For client certificates, on
> >> >the other hand, the server may not have some preconceived notion of what
> >> >identity the client should be proving, and so the X.509 certificate serves
> >> >solely as an identifier, not a verification of identity.  In this sense,
> >> >depending on the server's authentication policy, there's not necessarily a
> >> >need for the client to have a well-known IP address or DNS name to validate
> >> >against.
> >> A case I've coded up that may or may not be allowed by the current draft is:
> >> - Optionally, if the client presents a certificate to the server that verifies and
> >>    where the CN is of the form "user@dns_domain", then this "user" is translated
> >
> >Oof, could I persuade you to go with a subjectAltName instead?  Putting
> >structure within (or really, using at all) the legacy subject CN is
> >generally disrecommended.
> I've changed it to use the otherName field of subjectAltName.
> I haven't figured out a nice way to input this to openssl, but inputting:
> DNS:mylaptop.my.domain,otherName:1.2.4.5.6;UTF8:[e-mail]
> works.
> 
> >>    to a set of credentials used for all RPCs on the TCP connection instead of
> >>    what is   provided in the RPC request header. I put "user" in quotes because
> >>    I think you can argue that this is the identity of the client host and the server
> >>    chooses to assign credentials to that client identity.
> >>    (Basically, I'd argue that, for laptops, the line between "user" and "host" is fuzzy
> >>     and normally one and the same.)
> >
> >This is a unique-enough usage that I'd recommend a dedicated OID for the
> "otherName" SAN type.
> 
> Any quick hints on how I get an OID?

Well, it's a distributed (hierarchical) assignment policy, so in theory
it's supposed to be pretty easy, in that you know someone who controls a
sub-arc of numbers and can assign you one from that.  There are several
subtrees that are managed by IANA that a final RFC could get an allocation
from, but that doesn't help you for your experimental/local use.
I expect there's a few folks on this list that could find someone to make
an allocation if needed.

-Ben