[secdir] SECDIR review of draft-igoe-secsh-x509v3-06

David McGrew <mcgrew@cisco.com> Thu, 18 November 2010 20:18 UTC

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From: David McGrew <mcgrew@cisco.com>
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Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:19:01 -0800
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Cc: douglas@stebila.ca, "Kevin M. Igoe" <kmigoe@nsa.gov>
Subject: [secdir] SECDIR review of draft-igoe-secsh-x509v3-06
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I have reviewed this document as part of the security directorate's  
ongoing effort to review all IETF documents being processed by the   
IESG.  These comments were written primarily for the benefit of the  
security area directors. Document editors and WG chairs should treat  
these comments just like any other review comments.

The document describes how to use X509 and OCSP within SSH.  It is  
clearly written, and the security considerations section is  
appropriate (it mostly points to the relevant sections in the SSH,  
X509, and OCSP RFCs).

I have one nit, which is wording that authors might want to change for  
clarity.  Section 4 says "The mapping between certificates and host  
names is left as an implementation and configuration issue for  
implementers and system administrators."   I believe that what is  
meant is that "The method that the server uses to verify that the host  
certificate and key actually belongs to the client host named in the  
message is out of scope of this note", to use language from RFC 4252.

regards,

David