Re: [websec] [saag] Pinning

[Yoav Nir <[e-mail]>]

Hi Chris

I've removed SAAG from CC, trimmed most of your message, and re-arranged the rest. Hope you don't mind…

On Aug 11, 2012, at 1:20 AM, Chris Palmer wrote:

> Additionally, HPKP and TACK might converge, more or less. I have plans
> to publish a new HPKP I-D that borrows some of TACK's pin activation
> and expiration ideas, for example.

<hat type="chair">

Just as a reminder, HPKP is now a working group draft. As such, change control is with the WG. Changes that change the rules for activation and expiration should be proposed and discussed on the list first. 

Having said that, we are pretty far from last call on key-pinning, so I think it would be OK to publish a version -03 with such proposed changes, as long as those changes are clearly marked as not being the result of WG consensus.
</hat>

As an individual, I understand the limitations of the "spare public key" approach of the current HPKP. It's an administrative hassle to generate n spare keys and keep them safe, and if you have n+1 key compromise events within the max-age time, your site is blocked. But it does have the big advantage that the server side can be deployed *now* with no additional software. Until I see how those borrowed ideas can help with these issues, I prefer HPKP.

> So ultimately I do think we should decide on either HPKP or TACK, but
> that we should make that decision after there has been some real-world
> deployment experience with both (or, sadly, real-world non-deployment
> of one or both).

Well, there's WG deciding, and there's the market deciding. The IETF can publish both approaches (as either proposed standard or experimental) and the one (if any) that the market prefers can later be upgraded to standard (or it can stay at proposed anyway)

Yoav