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PKI-Authenticated Certificate Discovery Using DANE TLSA records
draft-wilson-dane-pkix-cd-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Ash Wilson , Shumon Huque
Last updated 2021-03-08
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draft-wilson-dane-pkix-cd-00
Internet Engineering Task Force                                A. Wilson
Internet-Draft                                                  Valimail
Updates: 6698, 7671 (if approved)                               S. Huque
Intended status: Standards Track                              Salesforce
Expires: 9 September 2021                                   8 March 2021

    PKI-Authenticated Certificate Discovery Using DANE TLSA records
                      draft-wilson-dane-pkix-cd-00

Abstract

   The DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) TLSA
   specification [RFC6698] and The DNS-Based Authentication of Named
   Entities (DANE) Protocol: Updates and Operational Guidance [RFC7671]
   describe how to publish Transport Layer Security (TLS) server
   certificates or public keys in the DNS.  This document updates
   [RFC6698] and [RFC7671].  It describes how to use the TLSA record to
   enable entity and CA certificate discovery for object security and
   trust chain discovery use cases, and how to use PKIX validation for
   TLSA records queried without the benefit of DNSSEC.

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
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   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 9 September 2021.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2021 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 publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights

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   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.  Background and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Background  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.2.  Motivation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Authentication Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Object Signing And Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Trust Anchors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.3.  Trust Model For DNS-Based Identities  . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.4.  DNS Naming Convention Or Labeling Format  . . . . . . . .   4
     3.5.  Trust Anchor Discovery  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Update to DANE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  PKIX Constraints  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Background and Motivation

1.1.  Background

   A digital identity consists of at least two essential elements: a
   name, and a method for proving ownership of the name.  Digital
   identities are often represented using X.509 certificates [RFC5280],
   which bind a name to a public key under a certificate authority's
   signature.  This allows all entities which trust the certificate
   authority to trust that the public key associated with the name in
   the certificate is authentic and unaltered.  The public key may be
   used for authentication, in the establishment of a secure session
   between two entities using a protocol like TLS or DTLS.  The public
   key in the certificate may also be used to provide object security
   mechanisms like cryptographic signature verification or payload
   encryption.  The certificate discovery process for object security
   usually relies on either in-band transmission of the certificate by
   the sender (IEEE 802.11p DSRC), or out-of-band via a proprietary API
   presented by the certificate authority.

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1.2.  Motivation

   Internet of Things (IoT) applications increasingly need to
   authenticate messages sent through decoupled applications.  Without
   some sort of message security mechanism in place, trust in sender
   identity is assumed based on the trustworthiness of all systems and
   networks involved in handling the message between the sending entity
   and the recipient.  This document proposes the use of the DANE TLSA
   record for certificate discovery, and provides an optional method for
   certificate authentication, in the event DNSSEC is not available.

2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  Authentication Model

3.1.  Object Signing And Encryption

   An entity which generates a cryptographic signature for a message has
   an associated name in DNS, where a TLSA record may be found
   containing the entity's certificate.  The entity's certificate
   contains the public key which can be used to authenticate the
   signature.

   Likewise, an entity which can receive messages encrypted using a
   public key (either directly, or by way of a key-wrapping technique)
   has a DNS-based identity where a public key suitable for message
   encryption can be found.

3.2.  Trust Anchors

   A PKIX-CD identity has a discoverable certificate and trust anchor.
   The trust anchor MAY be used by a TLS server to populate a local
   certificate store for the purpose of enabling traditional PKI-based
   mutual TLS.  This approach comes with constraints and caveats, as
   described in Security (Section 7), below.  The use of PKIX-CD for
   enabling mutual TLS is a wrapper for PKI-based mutual authentication,
   and does not change the way that TLS operates.  This approach
   provides a transitional state from PKIX-based DANE to DNSSEC-based
   DANE for mutual TLS authentication.  Trust anchor discovery MAY
   happen on-the-fly within the TLS handshake only when using DNSSEC-
   based DANE.

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3.3.  Trust Model For DNS-Based Identities

   DNSSEC SHOULD be used to ensure the integrity of the certificate
   presented via the TLSA record.  For a variety of reasons, DNSSEC is
   not ubiquitous across the entire DNS namespace.  For zones which are
   not protected by DNSSEC, the CA certificate which can be used to
   verify the certificates presented by the TLSA records MUST be
   retrieved from a known location derived from the identity's full DNS
   name.

3.4.  DNS Naming Convention Or Labeling Format

   This document defines a specific label or DNS naming format for the
   TLSA DNS records which carry entity certificates, and this format is
   compatible with the [TLSCLIENTID].  This is necessary to provide a
   well-known location for securely retrieving a CA certificate which
   can be used to verify certificates retrieved from DNS without the
   benefit of DNSSEC.

   For a device identity with DNS name
   a1b2c3._device.subdomain.organization.example, we can decompose the
   DNS name into a few important parts:

   *  a1b2c3: device identifier

   *  _device: identity grouping label

   *  subdomain: organizational label

   *  organization.example: organizational domain

   *  _device.subdomain.organization.example: identity domain

   The device identifier MAY consist of multiple labels, but for
   simplicity's sake we will represent it here as only one label.

   The identity grouping label is the rightmost label prefixed by an
   underscore, to the left of the organizational domain.  This does not
   need to be immediately adjacent to the organizational domain; labels
   MAY exist between the identity grouping label and the organizational
   domain.  In the above example, this is _device.  Another example
   might be abc123._messagesender.subdomain.example.net, where the
   identity grouping label would be _messagesender.

   The organizational label(s) is any label existing between the
   identity grouping label and the organizational domain.

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   The organizational domain is the domain that was registered with a
   domain name registrar.

   The identity domain is all labels from the top-level domain label
   through the identity grouping label.

3.5.  Trust Anchor Discovery

   In order to authenticate device certificates presented in TLSA
   records, without DNSSEC, we must safely obtain a CA certificate which
   can be used to verify the entity certificate.

   Using the components of the device name, together with the
   authorityKeyIdentifier (AKI) found in the entity certificate
   (described in [RFC5280]), we can compose the URL where the signing
   certificate should be found.

   The process whereby the signing certificate URL can be constructed
   for a device named a1b2c3._device.environment.example.net is as
   follows:

   1.  Perform a DNS query for
       a1b2c3._device.environment.organization.example rrtype==TLSA.

   2.  Extract the AKI from the certificate.  We will use AA-BB-CC as
       the placeholder in this example.

   3.  Identify the organizational domain: organization.example

   4.  Identify any organizational labels: environment

   5.  Identify the identity grouping label, and remove the underscore
       prefix: device

   6.  Using the following pattern, create the hostname: ${IDENTITY_GROU
       PING_LABEL}.${ORGANIZATIONAL_LABELS}.${ORGANIZATIONAL_DOMAIN}:
       device.environment.organization.example

   7.  Adding HTTPS and the AKI, build the authority URI:
       https://device.environment.organization.example/.well-known/ca/
       AA-BB-CC.pem

   The file found at the URL MUST contain exactly one PEM-encoded CA
   certificate.  The HTTPS server presenting the file MUST use TLS with
   a certificate that can be validated to the TLS client's client root
   certificate store, if DANE is not used for the server's identity.
   The certificate in the PEM file does not need to chain to the TLS
   client's root certificate store.

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   A PEM-encoded certificate being presented by a server possessing a
   DANE or Web PKI-validated identity is sufficient to indicate the
   trustworthiness of the CA certificate for validating certificates
   presented for associated identities.  In this example, the
   certificate found at
   https://device.environment.organization.example/.well-known/ca/AA-BB-
   CC.pem MAY be cached and used to validate PKIX-CD certificates with
   identities matching *._device.environment.example.net, if the
   certificates contain AKI AA-BB-CC.

   Benefits of this approach:

   *  This method uses an HTTPS server as a content-addressable storage
      mechanism for public keys in CA certificates.  The HTTPS server
      MAY host any number of CA certificates, and the HTTPS server does
      not need to provide any directory listing service.  This makes the
      discovery of CA certificates possible by already knowing an
      identity's AKI, and the entire CA bundle for the zone is not
      required to be distributable as a bundle.

   *  Device identities exist in a zone apart from other identities,
      which may have granular management access controls applied.

   *  The DNS record used for locating the CA certificates does not
      exist in the same zone as the records it is used to verify.  The
      zone where the authority record is located may have granular rules
      applied which create compartmentalized failure zones.  If the
      device identity zone is compromised, altered certificates will not
      validate unless the authority server can also be impersonated.

4.  Update to DANE

   The method of certificate discovery via TLSA records, without DNSSEC,
   SHALL be referred to as PKIX-CD, and shall use the DANE Certificate
   Usage value of 4.  The presence of the certificate usage value 4
   indicates that the party requesting the certificate is responsible
   for validating it using the CA certificate located at the authority
   URL, which can be composed using the process described above.

5.  PKIX Constraints

   The certificates presented with PKIX-CD MUST contain the
   subjectAlternativeName OID, with at least one dNSName which matches
   the DNS name used to retrieve the certificate.  A certificate which
   is delivered without the benefit of DNSSEC, even if the CA's
   signature is valid, MUST NOT be trusted without alignment between the
   DNS name used to retrieve the certificate and one DNSName attribute
   within the certificate.  The SubjectAlternativeName field MAY have

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   other entries in addition to the one which aligns with the DNS name
   where the certificate can be discovered.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document includes no request to IANA.

7.  Security Considerations

   This document updates RFC 6698 by defining the use of the TLSA record
   for discovering client TLS certificates and associated CA
   certificates.  However, the security model presented here is quite
   different than the security model presented in RFC 6698.  RFC 6698
   relies on DNSSEC as the public key infrastructure (PKI) used for
   validating certificates (or certificate metadata) presented via TLSA
   resource records in DNS.  This draft proposes the use of Web PKI as
   the root of trust, in the event the zone presenting TLSA records for
   this use case is not protected by DNSSEC.  Web PKI's root of trust is
   in the browser CA bundle, and the substitution of Web PKI for the
   DNSSEC PKI trades the security implications of DNSSEC for Web PKI.

   Because PKIX-CD can provide an avenue for certificate chain
   discovery, care must be taken to ensure that identities are
   authenticated via the correct chain.  There may be a desire to
   locally cache all discovered CA certificates into a general
   certificate store.  This must not happen without certain controls in
   place.  Without the identity consumer (authenticator) ensuring that
   the signing certificate for a particular zone is only used to verify
   certificates ONLY from that particular zone, cross-domain
   impersonation (is this a cousin of the confused deputy problem?) may
   be possible.  An example of this is an application where
   organization.example and supplier.example both present identities via
   PKIX-CD.  If the CA certificates from organization.example and
   supplier.example are loaded into a local certificate store and used
   for authenticating certificates from both zones, then devices under
   supplier.example may be deemed authentic even if signed by
   organization.example.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [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>.

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   [RFC5280]  Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
              Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
              Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
              (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.

   [RFC6698]  Hoffman, P. and J. Schlyter, "The DNS-Based Authentication
              of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS)
              Protocol: TLSA", RFC 6698, DOI 10.17487/RFC6698, August
              2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6698>.

   [RFC7671]  Dukhovni, V. and W. Hardaker, "The DNS-Based
              Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) Protocol: Updates
              and Operational Guidance", RFC 7671, DOI 10.17487/RFC7671,
              October 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7671>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [TLSCLIENTID]
              Huque, S. and V. Dukhovni, "TLS Extension for DANE Client
              Identity", <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-huque-tls-
              dane-clientid>.

Authors' Addresses

   Ash Wilson
   Valimail

   Email: ash.d.wilson@gmail.com

   Shumon Huque
   Salesforce

   Email: shuque@gmail.com

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