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    Thanks for steering the discussion, Ryan, and for offering summaries
    and recaps that help it move forward.<br>
    <br>
    <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 17/9/2024 7:04 μ.μ., Ryan Dickson
      via Servercert-wg wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0100019200ba88ef-9c4dee1f-54d8-40a9-a734-2c92f6b533c7-000000@email.amazonses.com">
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        <div>Hi all,<br>
          <br>
          Thanks for your feedback thus far! Understanding other
          perspectives from the community has been very helpful.<br>
          <br>
          Trying to focus my response on the themes I understand from
          the last 24hrs of discussion in hopes of helping us move
          forward in a common direction.</div>
      </div>
    </blockquote>
    <span><font face="arial, sans-serif">[...]</font></span>
    <blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0100019200ba88ef-9c4dee1f-54d8-40a9-a734-2c92f6b533c7-000000@email.amazonses.com">
      <div dir="ltr">
        <div><span>
            <div><br>
            </div>
            <p dir="ltr"
              style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><font
                face="arial, sans-serif"><span
style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Questions:
                </span><span
style="color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Can
                  those willing to share an opinion help me better
                  understand…</span></font></p>
            <ul>
              <li><span
id="m_-1424866073359714315m_-347336746046255284m_-6796603869944568816gmail-docs-internal-guid-5d69d76a-7fff-a1f2-c841-a2c71c443964">What
                  criteria this community should use to establish an
                  acceptable timeline for sunsetting or improving a DCV
                  method that’s been demonstrated as either 1) capable
                  of being abused or 2) offers unreliable security
                  properties?</span></li>
              <li>A description of active reliance on RFC 3912 lookups
                and/or lookups relying on HTTPS Websites hosting WHOIS
                tools?</li>
              <li>How do we feel about the approach described in [5]?</li>
            </ul>
          </span></div>
      </div>
    </blockquote>
    <br>
    I will only comment on the approach described in [5] to ban
    WHOIS/RDAP for ccTLDs in general (of course I agree with the first
    suggestion in [5]). <br>
    <br>
    I would consider it unfair to ban all ccTLDs when some of those
    operators do a great job at operating and maintaining these critical
    services, even better than some gTLD operators. Granted that there
    is no global oversight of their operations, however there are
    multiple jurisdictions that take these services very seriously,
    enough to apply strict supervision like the one applied to power
    plants, public transportation, telecommunication providers and
    nuclear factories!<br>
    <br>
    An alternative suggestion would be to create a block list of ccTLDs
    for which there is undisputed evidence that certain
    Registrars/Operators are not performing their duties in a reliable
    way. But even in that case, why would the Forum want to be in a
    position to deprive Domain Owners of Domain Names under "unreliable"
    Registrars, the right to obtain a publicly-trusted certificate to
    secure communications? The Forum has even established methods to
    securely offer certificates to onion Domain Names that are outside
    the DNS.<br>
    <br>
    <br>
    Best regards,<br>
    Dimitris.<br>
    <br>
    <blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0100019200ba88ef-9c4dee1f-54d8-40a9-a734-2c92f6b533c7-000000@email.amazonses.com">
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        <div><span>
            <div><br>
            </div>
            Thanks again,<br>
            Ryan<br>
            <br>
            [1] <a
href="https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-security-policy/c/FuOi_uhQB6U/m/3Gy6LcHsAQAJ"
              moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-security-policy/c/FuOi_uhQB6U/m/3Gy6LcHsAQAJ</a><br>
            [2] <a
href="https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-security-policy/c/FuOi_uhQB6U/m/FRXLDjXwAQAJ"
              moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-security-policy/c/FuOi_uhQB6U/m/FRXLDjXwAQAJ</a><br>
            [3] <a
href="https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004834.html"
              moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004834.html</a>
            <br>
            [4] <a
href="https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004840.html"
              moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004840.html</a>
            <br>
            [5] <a
href="https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004839.html"
              moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004839.html</a>
            <br>
            [6] <a
href="https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004835.html"
              moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://archive.cabforum.org/pipermail/servercert-wg/2024-September/004835.html</a></span></div>
      </div>
      <br>
      <div class="gmail_quote">
        <div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at
          11:22 AM Maria Merkel <<a href="mailto:maria@maria.cc"
            moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">maria@maria.cc</a>>
          wrote:<br>
        </div>
        <blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
          <div dir="ltr">It is worth adding that ICANN not only requires
            Whois availability in their agreements with gTLDs, but
            actually monitors it, so it is unlikely that these could
            have a non-functioning entry for very long: <a
href="https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/presentation-slam-13may17-en.pdf"
              moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/presentation-slam-13may17-en.pdf</a>
            <div><br>
            </div>
            <div>In most of these takeover situations, I would assume
              the Whois server was first offline for an extended period
              of time.</div>
            <div><br>
            </div>
            <div>I also think the timeline for disallowing Whois is too
              short, and maybe disallowing it for ccTLDs only first may
              be an acceptable compromise.</div>
          </div>
          <br>
          <div class="gmail_quote">
            <div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at
              5:13 PM Andrew Ayer via Servercert-wg <<a
                href="mailto:servercert-wg@cabforum.org"
                moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">servercert-wg@cabforum.org</a>>
              wrote:<br>
            </div>
            <blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi
              Ryan,<br>
              <br>
              We've seen evidence of two distinct security issues:<br>
              <br>
              1. CAs relying on an out-of-date database of WHOIS servers
              (original<br>
              WatchTowr analysis).<br>
              <br>
              2. ccTLDs not maintaining an accurate record of their
              WHOIS server in<br>
              the IANA Root Zone database (Hanno's analysis at [1]).<br>
              <br>
              We have not seen any evidence of issues with the WHOIS
              servers for<br>
              gTLDs in IANA's database.  Indeed, all 17 examples of
              outdated WHOIS<br>
              servers are for ccTLDs despite there being 4 times as many
              gTLDs as<br>
              ccTLDs.<br>
              <br>
              I don't think it's reasonable to generalize to gTLDs based
              on ccTLDs,<br>
              as ccTLDs aren't bound by any registry agreements and have
              historically<br>
              been operated less competently than gTLDs.  For example:<br>
              <br>
              Outages of .io NS servers:<br>
              <a
href="https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-production-traffic-b6aa17eeac20"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-production-traffic-b6aa17eeac20</a><br>
              <br>
              Hijacking NS servers for .io:<br>
              <a
href="https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/</a><br>
              <br>
              Hijacking NS servers for .cd:<br>
              <a
href="https://labs.detectify.com/writeups/how-i-hijacked-the-top-level-domain-of-a-sovereign-state/"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://labs.detectify.com/writeups/how-i-hijacked-the-top-level-domain-of-a-sovereign-state/</a><br>
              <br>
              Registry compromise of .tg:<br>
              <a
href="https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.dev.security.policy/c/4kj8Jeem0EU/m/GvqsgIzSAAAJ"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.dev.security.policy/c/4kj8Jeem0EU/m/GvqsgIzSAAAJ</a><br>
              <br>
              The last three issues were security-critical and impacted
              DNS-based<br>
              domain validation. It seems only the last issue was
              noticed by the<br>
              WebPKI community, and the response was scoped only to .tg.<br>
              <br>
              A more targeted ballot would:<br>
              <br>
              1. Require CAs to perform WHOIS lookups by sending a query
              to IANA's<br>
              WHOIS server and following the referral to the TLD's WHOIS
              server.<br>
              Require CAs to perform RDAP lookups by using IANA's
              bootstrap file.<br>
              Ban the use of HTTPS websites.  I believe this would give
              WHOIS/RDAP<br>
              validation comparable security properties to DNS-based
              validation<br>
              for gTLDs.  Note that the gTLD registry agreement places
              the same<br>
              requirements on updating WHOIS/RDAP server information as
              it does on<br>
              updating DNS server information.[2]<br>
              <br>
              2. Ban WHOIS/RDAP for ccTLDs.<br>
              <br>
              Regrettably, parsing emails sent to a Domain Contact is
              often the<br>
              easiest way to implement automated validation for a large
              number of<br>
              domains, since it allows delegation to a single central
              point, using<br>
              configuration that is often already in place (WHOIS record
              contact<br>
              information). Delegating DNS records using CNAME (e.g.
              with [3]) is<br>
              better, but not as easy because it requires the subscriber
              to operate<br>
              public-facing infrastructure.  So I think that banning
              WHOIS,<br>
              particularly on this timeline, would lead to a net
              reduction in<br>
              automation, and I don't believe this is justified by the
              available<br>
              evidence when a more targeted fix is available.<br>
              <br>
              Regards,<br>
              Andrew<br>
              <br>
              [1] <a
href="https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/d/msgid/dev-security-policy/20240913151529.2289f19d%40computer"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/d/msgid/dev-security-policy/20240913151529.2289f19d%40computer</a><br>
              <br>
              [2] <a
href="https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-agreements/base-registry-agreement-21-01-2024-en.html"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/registry-agreements/base-registry-agreement-21-01-2024-en.html</a>
              "IANA Rootzone Database"<br>
              <br>
              [3] <a href="https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns/"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns/</a><br>
              _______________________________________________<br>
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                moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">Servercert-wg@cabforum.org</a><br>
              <a
href="https://lists.cabforum.org/mailman/listinfo/servercert-wg"
                rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true"
                class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://lists.cabforum.org/mailman/listinfo/servercert-wg</a><br>
            </blockquote>
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