Re: [OAUTH-WG] Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-campbell-oauth-mtls-00.txt

[Dave Tonge <[e-mail]>]

Hi Brian

Thanks for this - it will be very useful for open banking in Europe where
cert based auth is required by law.

I have a few suggestions around wording.
Happy to submit these via pull request if it's helpful.

1. Typo - remove can from 1:

 Mutual TLS sender constrained access tokens and mutual TLS client
authentication are distinct mechanisms that *can* don't necessarily
need to be deployed together.


2. Consistency of terminology in 2 (and throughout the document).
In section 2 the following phrases are used:

   - Mutual TLS for Client Authentication
   - Mutual TLS Client Authentication to the Token Endpoint
   - mutual TLS as client credentials
   - mutual X.509 certificate authentication

Interestingly RFC5246 does not refer to "mutual authentication" at all, but
does refer to "client authentication".
>From an OAuth perspective, surely we are more interested in the fact that
it is TLS client auth - than the fact that it is mutual. However referring
to TLS Client Authentication would bring confusion as we would have two
client definitions in play: the TLS Client and the OAuth Client

"TLS Mutual Auth" and "Mutual TLS" are established phrases in the industry
- even though they don't seem to be defined in any of the relevant specs,
however, "Mutual TLS Client Auth" isn't.

I'm not sure of the best solution for this, but would be interested as to
whether the authors considered this phrasing to be clearer?

   - Mutual TLS for Client Authentication
   -> TLS Mutual Auth for Client Authentication

   - Mutual TLS Client Authentication to the Token Endpoint
   -> TLS Mutual Auth for Client Authentication to the Token Endpoint

   - mutual TLS as client credentials
   -> TLS X509 client certificate as client credentials

Or alternatively, a definition of "Mutual TLS" could be provided earlier on
in the document.

Thanks again for your work on this spec.

Dave Tonge