[TLS] [Fwd: WWW-Authenticate challenge for client-certificates]

[Bruno Harbulot <[e-mail]>]

Hello,

Apologies if this is slightly off-topic, but I thought some IETF TLS 
subscribers might find this relevant:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2010JanMar/0047.html

Best wishes,

Bruno.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: WWW-Authenticate challenge for client-certificates
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:35:23 +0000

Hello,

I'd like to suggest ideas towards the potential specification of a
challenge for client-certificate authentication using HTTP over TLS.

The current model of TLS client-certificate challenge doesn't integrate
well with HTTP, as there is no way for a server to tell the client it
requests or accepts a client-certificate at the HTTP layer: this must be
done at the TLS layer, without any proper integration with the HTTP
response status codes. This can lead to confusing behaviour.

For example, most TLS frameworks either "request" or "require" a
client-certificate (using the Apache Httpd terminology).
In 'request' mode, the server asks for a client-certificate, but will
continue the connection if the client doesn't present one
("setWantAuthentication" in Java).
In 'require' mode, the server asks for a client-certificate, but makes
the TLS handshake fail if the client doesn't present one
("setNeedAuthentication" in Java).

This leads to a couple of problems:
- The HTTP application is unable to inform the client it would rather
have another certificate than the one that is presented. Whether-or-not
to accept the certificate is done by the trust management mechanism of
the TLS layer, and it is difficult for the HTTP application to deal
with. Often, once the certificate has been negotiated, browsers usually
keep the TLS connection open and changing certificate can often only be
done by closing the browser or letting the connection time out.
- If a certificate is mandatory, the 'require' mode leads to a handshake
error code on the client side, resulting in an abrupt error message,
which is confusing for most users.


To try to solve this, I would like to suggest the introduction of
something along the lines of a 'transport' challenge, implying that the
authentication mechanism is outside the scope of HTTP itself.
This could be something like:
- WWW-Authenticate: transport
- WWW-Authenticate: transport mode="tls-client-certificate"

To this, could be added parameters describing what kind of certificate
is preferred.


As a side note, I also think that such a mechanism could partly help
with the TLS renegotiation issue (still discussed on the IETF TLS
mailing list). Indeed, if the HTTP framework was able to detect a
renegotiation had occurred, it could make the client re-send the request
post-negotiation (rather than assume that the certificate presented
during the second handshake were also valid for the request sent before).


I realise that the details of what I'm suggesting are still a bit vague,
but I'm wondering whether the general idea would be of interest.


Best wishes,

Bruno.