A Method for Web Security Policies
draft-foudil-securitytxt-01
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type |
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 9116.
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Edwin Foudil | ||
| Last updated | 2017-12-03 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Reviews | |||
| Additional resources | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | Became RFC 9116 (Informational) | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-foudil-securitytxt-01
Network Working Group E. Foudil
Internet-Draft December 03, 2017
Intended status: Informational
Expires: June 6, 2018
A Method for Web Security Policies
draft-foudil-securitytxt-01
Abstract
When security risks in web services are discovered by independent
security researchers who understand the severity of the risk, they
often lack the channels to properly disclose them. As a result,
security issues may be left unreported. security.txt defines a
standard to help organizations define the process for security
researchers to securely disclose security vulnerabilities.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on June 6, 2018.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. The Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Separate Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3. Contact: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.4. Encryption: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.5. Signature: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.6. Acknowledgement: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.7. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Location of the security.txt file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.1. Web-based services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. File systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3. Internal hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4. Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. File Format Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.1. Well-Known URIs registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.2. Registry for security.txt Header Fields . . . . . . . . . 8
7. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
8.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1. Introduction
1.1. Motivation
Many security researchers encounter situations where they are unable
to responsibly disclose security issues to companies because there is
no course of action laid out. security.txt is designed to help assist
in this process by making it easier for companies to designate the
preferred steps for researchers to take when trying to reach out.
As per section 4 of [RFC2142], there is an existing convention of
using the SECURITY@domain [1] email address for communications
regarding security issues. That convention provides only a single,
email-based channel of communication for security issues per domain,
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and does not provide a way for domain owners to publish information
about their security disclosure policies.
In this document, we propose a richer, machine-parsable and more
extensible way for companies to communicate information about their
security disclosure policies, which is not limited to email and also
allows for additional features such as encryption.
1.2. Terminology
In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
"SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
2. The Specification
security.txt is a text file that should be located under the /.well-
known/ path ("/.well-known/security.txt") [RFC5785] for web
properties. For file systems and version control repositories a
.security.txt file should be placed in the root directory. This text
file contains 4 directives with different values. The "directive" is
the first part of a field all the way up to the colon ("Contact:").
Directives are case-insensitive. The "value" comes after the
directive ("https://example.com/security"). A "field" always
consists of a directive and a value ("Contact: https://example.com/
security"). A security.txt file can have an unlimited number of
fields. It is important to note that you need a separate line for
every field. One MUST NOT chain multiple values for a single
directive. Everything MUST be in a separate field.
A security.txt file only applies to the domain, subdomain, IPv4 or
IPv6 address it is located in.
# The following only applies to example.com.
https://example.com/.well-known/security.txt
# This only applies to subdomain.example.com.
https://subdomain.example.com/.well-known/security.txt
# This security.txt file applies to 192.0.2.0.
http://192.0.2.0/.well-known/security.txt
2.1. Comments
Comments can be added using the # symbol:
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<CODE BEGINS>
# This is a comment.
<CODE ENDS>
You MAY use one or more comments as descriptive text immediately
before the field. Parsers can then associate the comments with the
respective field.
2.2. Separate Fields
A separate line is required for every new value and field. You MUST
NOT chain everything in to a single field. Every line must end with
a line feed character (%x0A).
2.3. Contact:
Add an address that researchers MAY use for reporting security
issues. The value can be an email address, a phone number and/or a
security page with more information. The "Contact:" directive MUST
always be present in a security.txt file. URIs SHOULD be loaded over
HTTPS. Security email addresses SHOULD use the conventions defined
in section 4 of [RFC2142], but there is no requirement for this
directive to be an email address.
The precedence is in listed order. The first field is the preferred
method of contact. In the example below, the e-mail address is the
preferred method of contact.
<CODE BEGINS>
Contact: security@example.com
Contact: +1-201-555-0123
Contact: https://example.com/security
<CODE ENDS>
2.4. Encryption:
This directive allows you to add your key for encrypted
communication. You MUST NOT directly add your key. The value MUST
be a link to a page which contains your key. Keys SHOULD be loaded
over HTTPS.
<CODE BEGINS>
Encryption: https://example.com/pgp-key.txt
<CODE ENDS>
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2.5. Signature:
In order to ensure the authenticty of the security.txt file one
SHOULD use the "Signature:" directive, which allows you to link to an
external signature or to directly include the signature in the file.
External signature files should be named "security.txt.sig" and also
be placed under the /.well-known/ path.
Here is an example of an external signature file.
<CODE BEGINS>
Signature: https://example.com/.well-known/security.txt.sig
<CODE ENDS>
Here is an example inline signature.
<CODE BEGINS>
Signature:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
...
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
<CODE ENDS>
2.6. Acknowledgement:
This directive allows you to link to a page where security
researchers are recognized for their reports. The page should list
individuals or companies that disclosed security vulnerabilities and
worked with you to remediate the issue.
<CODE BEGINS>
Acknowledgement: https://example.com/hall-of-fame.html
<CODE ENDS>
Example security acknowledgements page:
We would like to thank the following researchers:
(2017-04-15) Frank Denis - Reflected cross-site scripting
(2017-01-02) Alice Quinn - SQL injection
(2016-12-24) John Buchner - Stored cross-site scripting
(2016-06-10) Anna Richmond - A server configuration issue
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2.7. Example
<CODE BEGINS>
# Our security address
Contact: security@example.com
# Our PGP key
Encryption: https://example.com/pgp-key.txt
# Our security acknowledgements page
Acknowledgement: https://example.com/hall-of-fame.html
# Verify this security.txt file
Signature: https://example.com/.well-known/security.txt.sig
<CODE ENDS>
3. Location of the security.txt file
3.1. Web-based services
Web-based services SHOULD place the security.txt file under the
/.well-known/ path; e.g. https://example.com/.well-known/
security.txt.
3.2. File systems
File systems SHOULD place the security.txt file under the root
directory; e.g. /.security.txt, C:.security.txt.
<CODE BEGINS>
.
├── .security.txt
├── example-directory-1
├── example-directory-2
├── example-directory-3
└── example-file
<CODE ENDS>
3.3. Internal hosts
A .security.txt file SHOULD be placed in the root directory of an
internal host to trigger incident response.
3.4. Extensibility
Like many other formats and protocols, this format may need to be
extended over time to fit the ever-changing landscape of the
Internet. Therefore, extensibility is provided via an IANA registry
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for headers fields as defined in Section 6.2. Any fields registered
via that process MUST be considered optional. In order to encourage
extensibility and interoperability, implementors MUST ignore any
fields they do not explicitly support.
4. File Format Description
The expected file format of the security.txt file is plain text as
defined in section 4.1.3 of [RFC2046] and encoded in UTF-8.
The following is an ABNF definition of the security.txt format, using
the conventions defined in [RFC5234].
body = *line (contact-field eol) *line
line = *1(field / comment) eol
eol = *WSP [CR] LF
field = contact-field / encryption-field / acknowledgement-field /
ext-field
fs = ":"
comment = "#" *(WSP / VCHAR / %xA0-E007F)
contact-field = "Contact" fs SP (email / uri / phone)
email = <Email address as per [RFC5322]>
phone = "+" *1(DIGIT / "-" / "(" / ")" / SP)
uri = <URI as per [RFC3986]>
encryption-field = "Encryption" fs SP uri
acknowledgement-field = "Acknowledgement" fs SP uri
ext-field = field-name fs SP unstructured
field-name = <as per section 3.6.8 of [RFC5322]>
unstructured = <as per section 3.2.5 of [RFC5322]>
"ext-field" refers to extension fields, which are discussed in
Section 3.4
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5. Security considerations
Companies creating security.txt files will need to take several
security-related issues into consideration. These include exposure
of sensitive information and attacks where limited access to a server
could grant the ability to modify the contents of the security.txt
file or affect how it is served.
As stated in Section 2.4, keys specified using the "Encryption:"
directive SHOULD be loaded over HTTPS.
To ensure the authenticity of the security.txt file one should sign
the file and include the signature using the "Signature:" directive.
6. IANA Considerations
example.com is used in this document following the uses indicated in
[RFC2606].
192.0.2.0 is used in this document following the uses indicated in
[RFC5735].
6.1. Well-Known URIs registry
The "Well-Known URIs" registry should be updated with the following
additional value (using the template from [RFC5785]):
URI suffix: security.txt
Change controller: IETF
Specification document(s): this document
6.2. Registry for security.txt Header Fields
IANA is requested to create the "security.txt Header Fields" registry
in accordance with [RFC8126]. This registry will contain header
fields for use in security.txt files, defined by this specification.
New registrations or updates MUST be published in accordance with the
"Specification Required" guidelines as described in section 4.6 of
[RFC8126]. Any new field thus registered is considered optional by
this specification unless a new version of this specification is
published.
New registrations and updates MUST contain the following information:
1. Name of the field being registered or updated
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2. Short description of the field
3. Whether the field can appear more than once
4. The document in which the specification of the field is published
5. New or updated status, which MUST be one of: current: The field
is in current use deprecated: The field is in current use but its
use is discouraged historic: The field is no longer in current
use
An update may make a notation on an existing registration indicating
that a registered field is historic or deprecated if appropriate.
The initial registry contains these values:
Field Name: Acknowledgment
Description: link to page where security researchers are recognized
Multiple Appearances: Yes
Published in: this document
Status: current
Field Name: Contact
Description: contact information to use for reporting security issues
Multiple Appearances: Yes
Published in: this document
Status: current
Field Name: Encryption
Description: link to a key to be used for encrypted communication
Multiple Appearances: Yes
Published in: this document
Status: current
Field Name: Signature
Description: signature used to verify the authenticity of the file
Multiple Appearances: No
Published in: this document
Status: current
7. Contributors
The editor would like to acknowledge the help provided during the
development of this document by the following individuals:
o Tom Hudson helped writing the "File Format Description" and wrote
several security.txt parsers.
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o Joel Margolis was a big help when it came to wording this document
appropriately.
o Jobert Abma for raising issues and concerns that might arise when
using certain directives.
o Gerben Janssen van Doorn for reviewing this document multiple
times.
o Austin Heap for helping improve the Internet drafts.
o Justin Calmus was always there to answer questions related to
writing this document.
o Casey Ellis had several ideas related to security.txt that helped
shape security.txt itself.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2046, November 1996, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc2046>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC2142] Crocker, D., "Mailbox Names for Common Services, Roles and
Functions", RFC 2142, DOI 10.17487/RFC2142, May 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2142>.
[RFC2606] Eastlake 3rd, D. and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
Names", BCP 32, RFC 2606, DOI 10.17487/RFC2606, June 1999,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2606>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc5234>.
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[RFC5322] Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5322, October 2008, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc5322>.
[RFC5735] Cotton, M. and L. Vegoda, "Special Use IPv4 Addresses",
RFC 5735, DOI 10.17487/RFC5735, January 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5735>.
[RFC5785] Nottingham, M. and E. Hammer-Lahav, "Defining Well-Known
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)", RFC 5785,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5785, April 2010, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc5785>.
8.2. Informative References
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
8.3. URIs
[1] mailto:SECURITY@domain
Author's Address
Edwin Foudil
Email: contact@edoverflow.com
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