Re: [Trans] Gossip: Unsticking a client caught with potential evidence of log misbehavior

[Tom Ritter <[e-mail]>]

On 20 October 2015 at 08:46, Eran Messeri <[e-mail]> wrote:
> +1 for reporting it backed to the alleged origin - the problem Tom describes
> is significant as the client would want to hold onto these suspicious pieces
> of information until it is confident it has been reported, but has no way of
> knowing if the report has been acknowledged by the 'genuine' origin.
>
> One option is to not prescribe when clients drop such pieces of information,
> so clients are free to re-send it multiple times or even forever, until an
> out-of-band signal (i.e. a client software update) is received to indicate
> to the client that this information has been received and acted upon.

So reporting it back to the origin is an appropriate solution for a
subset of situations.  If I have an SCT+certificate I want to resolve
to a STH, but can't, I can report it up to the origin via SCT
Feedback.  We also (or will) have guidelines for submitting it
multiple times, and ensuring that it's reported on a connection that
'looks okay' (we have some notes in 7.1.1)

There are (at least) two cases that aren't covered by "report it to
the origin". (Maybe more, but I can only think of two right now.)

- The origin doesn't implement SCT Feedback.
- The data I have is an older STH, which is not tied to any specific origin.

-tom