Skip to main content

ACME Challenges Using an Authority Token
draft-ietf-acme-authority-token-02

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 9447.
Authors Jon Peterson , Mary Barnes , David Hancock , Chris Wendt
Last updated 2019-03-11
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state WG Document
Associated WG milestone
Apr 2020
TNAuthlist extension submitted to IESG
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state Became RFC 9447 (Proposed Standard)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to (None)
draft-ietf-acme-authority-token-02
Network Working Group                                        J. Peterson
Internet-Draft                                                   Neustar
Intended status: Informational                                 M. Barnes
Expires: September 12, 2019                                    iconectiv
                                                              D. Hancock
                                                                C. Wendt
                                                                 Comcast
                                                          March 11, 2019

                ACME Challenges Using an Authority Token
                 draft-ietf-acme-authority-token-02.txt

Abstract

   Some proposed extensions to the Automated Certificate Management
   Environment (ACME) rely on proving eligibility for certificates
   through consulting an external authority that issues a token
   according to a particular policy.  This document specifies a generic
   Authority Token challenge for ACME which supports subtype claims for
   different identifiers or namespaces that can be defined separately
   for specific applications.

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 https://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 September 12, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 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
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 1]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

   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
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Challenges for an Authority Token . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Token Type Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Authority Token Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  Binding Challenges  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  ATC tkauth-type Registration  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Acquiring a Token . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.1.  Basic REST Interface  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Using an Authority Token in a Challenge . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   9.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   10. Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12

1.  Introduction

   ACME [I-D.ietf-acme-acme] is a mechanism for automating certificate
   management on the Internet.  It enables administrative entities to
   prove effective control over resources like domain names, and
   automates the process of generating and issuing certificates.

   In some cases, proving effective control over an identifier requires
   an attestation from a third party who has authority over the
   resource, for example, an external policy administrator for a
   namespace other than the DNS application ACME was originally designed
   to support.  In order to automate the process of issuing certificates
   for those resources, this specification defines a generic Authority
   Token challenge that ACME servers can issue in order to require
   clients to return such a token.  The challenge contains a type
   indication that tells the client what sort of token it needs to
   acquire.  It is expected that the Authority Token challenge will be
   usable for a variety of identifier types.

   For example, the system of [I-D.ietf-acme-authority-token-tnauthlist]
   provides a mechanism that allows service providers to acquire
   certificates corresponding to a Service Provider Code (SPC) as
   defined in [RFC8226] by consulting an external authority responsible

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 2]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

   for those codes.  Furthermore, Communications Service Providers
   (CSPs) can delegate authority over numbers to their customers, and
   those CSPs who support ACME can then help customers to acquire
   certificates for those numbering resources with ACME.  This can
   permit number acquisition flows compatible with those shown in
   [RFC8396].  Another, similar example would a mechanism that permits
   CSPs to delegate authority for particular telephone numbers to
   customers, as described in [I-D.ietf-acme-telephone].

2.  Terminology

   In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT
   RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as
   described in [RFC2119].

3.  Challenges for an Authority Token

   Proving that a device on the Internet has effective control over a
   non-Internet resource is not as straightforward as proving control
   over an Internet resources like a DNS zone or a web page.  Provided
   that the issuer of identifiers in a namespace, or someone acting on
   the issuer's behalf, can implement a service that grants Authority
   Tokens to the people to whom it has issued identifiers, a generic
   token could be used as a response to an ACME challenge.  This
   specification, therefore, defines an Authority Token issued by an
   authority over a namespace to an ACME client for delivery to a CA in
   response to a challenge.  Authority over a hierarchical namespace can
   also be delegated, so that delegates of a root authority can
   themselves act as Token Authorities for certain types of names.

   This architecture assumes a trust relationship between CAs and Token
   Authorities: that CAs are willing to accept the attestation of Token
   Authorities for particular types of identifiers as sufficient proof
   to issue a credential.  It furthermore assumes that ACME clients have
   a relationship with Token Authorities which permits them to
   authenticate and authorize the issuance of Authority Tokens to the
   proper entities.  This ACME challenge has no applicability to
   identifiers or authorities where those pre-associations cannot be
   assumed.

   ACME challenges that support Authority Tokens therefore need to
   specify the type of token they require; CAs can even provide a hint
   in their challenges to ACME clients that tells them how to find a
   Token Authority who can issue tokens for a given namespace.  This
   challenge type thus requires a new "tkauth-type" element, and may
   optionally supply a "token-authority" designating a location where
   tokens can be acquired.  The set of "tkauth-type" values and the

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 3]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

   semantic requirements for those tokens are tracked by an IANA
   registry.

3.1.  Token Type Requirements

   The IANA will maintain a registry of tkauth-types under a policy of
   Specification Required.  In order to register a new tkauth-type,
   specifications must address the following requirements.

   While Authority Token types do not need to be specific to a
   namespace, every token must carry enough information for a CA to
   determine the name that it will issue a certificate for.  Some types
   of Authority Token types might be reusable for a number of different
   namespaces; other might be specific to a particular type of name.
   Therefore, in defining tkauth-types, future specifications must
   indicate how a token conveys to the CA the name(s) that the Token
   Authority is attesting that the ACME client controls.

   While nothing precludes use cases where an ACME client is itself a
   Token Authority, an ACME client will typically need a protocol to
   request and retrieve an Authority Token.  The Token Authority will
   require certain information from an ACME client in order to ascertain
   that it is the right entity to request a certificate for a particular
   name.  The protocols used to request an Authority Token MUST convey
   to the Token Authority the identifier type and value from the ACME
   challenge, as well as the binding (see Section 3.3), and those MUST
   be reflected in the Authority Token.  A baseline mechanism for how
   the Token Authority authenticates and authorizes ACME clients to
   receive Authority Tokens is given in Section 5.

   Because the assignment of resources can change over time,
   demonstrations of authority must be regularly refreshed.  Definitions
   of a tkauth-type MUST specify how they manage the freshness of
   authority assignments.  Typically, a CA will expect a regular
   refreshing of the token.

3.2.  Authority Token Scope

   An Authority Token is used to answer a challenge from an ACME server,
   upon a request for the issuance of a certificate.  It could be that
   the AT is requested from the Token Authority after a challenge has
   been received, or it could be that the AT was acquired prior to the
   initial ACME client request.  A Token Authority could grant to a
   client a Token that has the exact same scope as the requested
   certificate; alternatively, an Authority Token could attest to all of
   the resources that the client is eligible to receive certificates
   for, which could be a superset of the scope of the requested
   certificate.

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 4]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

   For example, imagine a case where an Authority for DNS names knows
   that a client is eligible to receive certificates for "example.com"
   and "example.net".  The client asks an ACME server for a certificate
   for "example.com", the server directs the client to acquire an
   Authority Token from the Authority.  When the client sends an
   acquisition request (see Section 5) to the Authority, the Authority
   could issue a token scoped just to "example.com", or a token that
   attests the client is eligible to receive certificates for both
   "example.com" or "example.net".  The advantage of the latter is that
   if, at a later time (but one within the expiry of the JWT), the
   client wanted to acquire a certificate for "example.net", it would
   not have to return to the Authority, as the Token effectively pre-
   authorized the issuance of that certificate.

   Applications of the Authority Token to different identifier types
   might require different scopes, so registrations of tkauth-types
   should be clear if and how a scope greater than that of the requested
   certificate would be conveyed in a token.

3.3.  Binding Challenges

   Applications that use the Authority Token need a way to correlate
   tokens issued by an Authority with the proper ACME client, to prevent
   replay or cut-and-paste attacks using a token issued for a different
   purpose.  To mitigate this, Authority Tokens contain a binding signed
   by an Authority; an ACME server can use the binding to determine that
   a Token presented by a client was in fact granted by the Authority
   based on a request from the client, and not from some other entity.

   Binding an Authority Token to a particular ACME account entails that
   the Token could be reused up until its expiry for multiple challenges
   issued by an ACME server.  This might be a desirable property when
   using short-lived certificates, for example, or in any cases where
   the ACME server issues challenges more frequently that an Authority
   Token can or should issue tokens, or in cases where the Authority
   Token scope (see Section 3.2) is broad, so certificates with a more
   narrow scope may periodically be issued.

   For some identifier types, it may be more appropriate to bind the
   Authority Token to a nonce specific to the challenge rather than to
   an ACME account fingerprint.  Any specification of the use of the
   nonce for this purpose is left to the identifier type profile for the
   Authority Token.

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 5]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

4.  ATC tkauth-type Registration

   This draft registers a tkauth-type of "ATC", for the Authority Token
   Challenge.  Here the "ATC" tkauth-type signifies a standard JWT token
   [RFC7519] using a JWS-defined signature string [RFC7515].  This may
   be used for any number of different identifier types given in ACME
   challenges.  The "atc" element (defined below) lists the identifier
   type used by tokens based on ATC.  The use of "ATC" is restricted to
   JWTs, if non-JWT tokens were desired for ACME challenges, a different
   tkauth-type should be defined for them.

   For this ACME Authority Token usage of JWT, the payload of the JWT
   OPTIONALLY contain an "iss" indicating the Token Authority that
   generated the token, if the "x5u" element in the header does not
   already convey that information; typically, this will be the same
   location that appeared in the "token-authority" field of the ACME
   challenge.  In order to satisfy the requirement for replay prevention
   the JWT MUST contain a "jti" element, and an "exp" claim.  In
   addition to helping to manage replay, the "jti" provides a convenient
   way to reliably track with the same "ATC" Authority Token is being
   used for multiple challenges over time within its set expiry.

   The JWT payload must also contain a new JWT claim, "atc", for
   Authority Token Challenge, which contains three mandatory elements in
   an array: the identifier type, the identifier value, and the binding.
   The identifier type and value are those given in the ACME challenge
   and conveyed to the Token Authority by the ACME client.  Following
   the example of [I-D.ietf-acme-authority-token-tnauthlist], this could
   be the TNAuthList, as defined in [RFC8226], that the Token Authority
   is attesting.  Practically speaking, that scope may comprise a list
   of Service Provider Code elements, telephone number range elements,
   and/or individual telephone numbers.  For the purposes of the "ATC"
   tkauth-type, the binding is assumed to be a fingerprint of the ACME
   credential for the account used to request the certificate, but the
   specification of how the binding is generated is left to the
   identifier type profile for the Authority Token.

   So for example:

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 6]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

   { "typ":"JWT",
     "alg":"ES256",
     "x5u":"https://authority.example.org/cert"}
     {
       "iss":"https://authority.example.org/authz",
       "exp":1300819380,
       "jti":"id6098364921",
       "atc":{"TnAuthList","F83n2a...avn27DN3==",
       "SHA256 56:3E:CF:AE:83:CA:4D:15:B0:29:FF:1B:71:D3:BA:B9:19:81:F8:50:
        9B:DF:4A:D4:39:72:E2:B1:F0:B9:38:E3"} }

   Optionally, the "atc" element may contain a fourth element, "ca".  If
   present, the "ca" element indicates that the Token Authority is
   granting permission to issue a certification authority certificate
   rather than an end-entity certificate for the names in question.
   This permits subordinate delegations from the issued certificate.
   The "atc" object in the example above would then look like:

        "atc":{"TnAuthList","ca","""F83n2a...avn27DN3==",
        "SHA256 56:3E:CF:AE:83:CA:4D:15:B0:29:FF:1B:71:D3:BA:B9:19:81:F8:50:
         9B:DF:4A:D4:39:72:E2:B1:F0:B9:38:E3"} }

5.  Acquiring a Token

   The acquisition of a Authority Token requires a network interface,
   apart from potential use cases where the entity that acts as an ACME
   client itself also acts as a Token Authority trusted by the ACME
   server.  Implementations compliant with this specification MUST
   support an HTTPS REST interface for Authority Token acquisition as
   described below, though other interfaces MAY be supported as well.

5.1.  Basic REST Interface

   In order to request an Authority Token from a Token Authority, a
   client sends an HTTPS POST request.  Different services may organize
   their web resources in domain-specific ways, but the resource locator
   should specify the account of the client, an identifier for the
   service provider, and finally a locator for the token.

      POST /at/account/:id/token HTTP/1.1
      Host: authority.example.com
      Content-Type: application/json

   The body of the POST request will minimally contain a JSON
   fingerprint object for the ACME client, for example:

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 7]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

     {
       "fingerprint":"SHA256 56:3E:CF:AE:83:CA:4D:15:B0:29:FF:1B:71:D3 \
        :BA:B9:19:81:F8:50:9B:DF:4A:D4:39:72:E2:B1:F0:B9:38:E3"
     }

   It is understood if this minimal JSON object is provided that the
   client is requesting the Token Authority to issue a token that
   attests the entire scope of authority to which the client is
   entitled.  The client may also request an AT with some subset of its
   own authority via an optional "scope" element in this JSON object.
   The way that "scope" is defined will necessarily be specific to the
   identifier type.  For the TNAuthlist identifier type, for example, an
   object requesting an AT with authority for only a single telephone
   number might look like:

     {
      "fingerprint":"SHA256 56:3E:CF:AE:83:CA:4D:15:B0:29:FF:1B:71:D3 \
        :BA:B9:19:81:F8:50:9B:DF:4A:D4:39:72:E2:B1:F0:B9:38:E3",
      "scope":"12125551000"
     }

   Finally, the JSON object may also contain a optional element "ca"
   which signifies that the client is requesting that the Token
   Authority issue an AT with the "ca" flag set, as described in
   Section 4.

   After an HTTPS-level challenge to verify the identity of the client
   and subsequently making an authorization decision, in the success
   case the Token Authority returns a 200 OK with a body of type
   "application/json" containing the Authority Token.

6.  Using an Authority Token in a Challenge

   Taking the identifier example of TNAuthList from
   [I-D.ietf-acme-authority-token-tnauthlist], an ACME for this tkauth-
   type challenge might for example look as follows:

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 8]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

       HTTP/1.1 200 OK
       Content-Type: application/json
       Link: <https://example.com/acme/some-directory>;rel="directory"

       {
        "status": "pending",

        "identifier": {
           "type": "TNAuthList",
           "value": "F83n2a...avn27DN3=="
         },
         "challenges": [
         {
           "type": "tkauth-01",
           "tkauth-type": "ATC",
           "token-authority": "https://authority.example.org/authz",
           "url": "https://boulder.example.com/authz/asdf/0"
           "token": "IlirfxKKXAsHtmzK29Pj8A" }
         ],
       }

   Entities receiving this challenge know that they can, as a proof,
   acquire an ATC token from the designated Token Authority (specified
   in the "token-authority" field), and that this authority can provide
   tokens corresponding to the identifier type of "TNAuthList".

   Once the ATC has been acquired by the ACME Client, it can be posted
   back to the URL given by the ACME challenge.

       POST /acme/authz/asdf/0 HTTP/1.1
       Host: boulder.example.com
       Content-Type: application/jose+json

        {
         "protected": base64url({
         "alg": "ES256",
         "kid": "https://boulder.example.com/acme/reg/asdf",
         "nonce": "Q_s3MWoqT05TrdkM2MTDcw",
         "url": "https://boulder.example.com/acme/authz/asdf/0"
          }),
         "payload": base64url({
         "ATC": "evaGxfADs...62jcerQ"
            }),
         "signature": "5wUrDI3eAaV4wl2Rfj3aC0Pp--XB3t4YYuNgacv_D3U"
        }

   The "ATC" field in this response contains the Authority Token.

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019               [Page 9]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

7.  Acknowledgements

   We would like to thank you for your contributions to this problem
   statement and framework.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document requests that the IANA registers a new ACME identifier
   type (per [I-D.ietf-acme-acme]) for the label "atc", for which the
   reference is [RFCThis].

   This document further requests that the IANA create a registry for
   "token types" as used in these challenges, following the requirements
   in Section 3.1, pre-populated with the label of "ATC" per Section 4
   with a value of [RFCThis].

9.  Security Considerations

   Per the guidance in [I-D.ietf-acme-acme], ACME transactions MUST use
   TLS, and similarly the HTTPS REST transactions used to request and
   acquire authority tokens MUST use TLS.  These measures are intended
   to prevent the capture of Authority Tokens by eavesdroppers.

   The capture of Authority Tokens by an adversary could enable an
   attacker to acquire a certificate from a CA.  Therefore, all
   Authority Tokens MUST contain a field that identifies to the CA which
   ACME client requested the token from the authority; here that is the
   fingerprint specified in Section 4).  All Authority Tokens must
   specify an expiry (of the token itself as proof for a CA, as opposed
   to the expiry of the name), and for some application, it may make
   sense of that expiry to be quite short.  Any protocol used to
   retrieve Authority Tokens from an authority MUST use confidentiality
   to prevent eavesdroppers from acquiring an Authority Token.

10.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-acme-acme]
              Barnes, R., Hoffman-Andrews, J., McCarney, D., and J.
              Kasten, "Automatic Certificate Management Environment
              (ACME)", draft-ietf-acme-acme-18 (work in progress),
              December 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-acme-authority-token-tnauthlist]
              Wendt, C., Hancock, D., Barnes, M., and J. Peterson,
              "TNAuthList profile of ACME Authority Token", draft-ietf-
              acme-authority-token-tnauthlist-01 (work in progress),
              October 2018.

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019              [Page 10]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

   [I-D.ietf-acme-service-provider]
              Barnes, M. and C. Wendt, "ACME Identifiers and Challenges
              for VoIP Service Providers", draft-ietf-acme-service-
              provider-02 (work in progress), October 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-acme-star]
              Sheffer, Y., Lopez, D., Dios, O., Pastor, A., and T.
              Fossati, "Support for Short-Term, Automatically-Renewed
              (STAR) Certificates in Automated Certificate Management
              Environment (ACME)", draft-ietf-acme-star-05 (work in
              progress), March 2019.

   [I-D.ietf-acme-telephone]
              Peterson, J. and R. Barnes, "ACME Identifiers and
              Challenges for Telephone Numbers", draft-ietf-acme-
              telephone-01 (work in progress), October 2017.

   [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>.

   [RFC7340]  Peterson, J., Schulzrinne, H., and H. Tschofenig, "Secure
              Telephone Identity Problem Statement and Requirements",
              RFC 7340, DOI 10.17487/RFC7340, September 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7340>.

   [RFC7515]  Jones, M., Bradley, J., and N. Sakimura, "JSON Web
              Signature (JWS)", RFC 7515, DOI 10.17487/RFC7515, May
              2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7515>.

   [RFC7519]  Jones, M., Bradley, J., and N. Sakimura, "JSON Web Token
              (JWT)", RFC 7519, DOI 10.17487/RFC7519, May 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7519>.

   [RFC8224]  Peterson, J., Jennings, C., Rescorla, E., and C. Wendt,
              "Authenticated Identity Management in the Session
              Initiation Protocol (SIP)", RFC 8224,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8224, February 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8224>.

   [RFC8225]  Wendt, C. and J. Peterson, "PASSporT: Personal Assertion
              Token", RFC 8225, DOI 10.17487/RFC8225, February 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8225>.

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019              [Page 11]
Internet-Draft            ACME Authority Token                March 2019

   [RFC8226]  Peterson, J. and S. Turner, "Secure Telephone Identity
              Credentials: Certificates", RFC 8226,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8226, February 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8226>.

   [RFC8396]  Peterson, J. and T. McGarry, "Managing, Ordering,
              Distributing, Exposing, and Registering Telephone Numbers
              (MODERN): Problem Statement, Use Cases, and Framework",
              RFC 8396, DOI 10.17487/RFC8396, July 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8396>.

Authors' Addresses

   Jon Peterson
   Neustar, Inc.
   1800 Sutter St Suite 570
   Concord, CA  94520
   US

   Email: jon.peterson@team.neustar

   Mary Barnes
   iconectiv

   Email: mary.ietf.barnes@gmail.com

   David Hancock
   Comcast

   Email: davidhancock.ietf@gmail.com

   Chris Wendt
   Comcast
   One Comcast Center
   Philadelphia, PA  19103
   USA

   Email: chris-ietf@chriswendt.net

Peterson, et al.       Expires September 12, 2019              [Page 12]