Re: [secdir] Secdir last call review of draft-ietf-jmap-core-12

["Neil Jenkins" <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2019, at 9:26 AM, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> And look at making the push protocol have a confirmation step:
> https://github.com/jmapio/jmap/issues/276

I'm not convinced this is necessary and/or helpful. In the current system, the first time a push is triggered the application (JMAP) server sends a request to the push server (the URL registered by the client); if this is not accepted with a reasonable HTTP response, it would automatically disable it. The danger is meant to be DOSing this URL (it's not really a push server); however with a confirmation step, you still need to do that first request so you're not reducing the number of HTTP requests. You are however relying on the push being received by the client in order for it to be able to complete registration, and all common push services do not guarantee delivery, so this becomes much less reliable. (With this in mind, the JMAP push system happily copes with dropped push packets while still guaranteeing full resynchronisation.)

I note this issue doesn't really seem to be specific to JMAP, and yet RFC8030 (which is what the push system is implementing) does not require a confirmation step.

Neil.