Re: [secdir] Secdir review of draft-ietf-sidr-res-certs

[Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]>]

On 3/10/11 9:37 AM, Sam Hartman wrote:
> The document also requires that relying parties reject certificates that
> include unknown extensions. The rationale explained in section 8 is that
> it is undesirable to have a situation where if an RP implemented more
> extensions it would reject certificates that a more minimal RP would
> accept.
> In other words the profile picks security and minimalism over
> extensibility.

This statement is too narrow, and it causes your analysis to come to a 
too narrow conclusion. The profile picks security and minimalism over 
extensibility *of this profile only*. If a flaw is later found that 
requires an extension, that extension will be written up in a 
standards-track document that will obsolete this profile. An 
implementation that conforms to that new profile will use the extension. 
Thus, errors can be corrected with new profiles, and the RPKI will have 
multiple profiles running on it, just as the Internet has multiple 
versions of some protocols running on it.

--Paul Hoffman