[cabfpub] VWG Question 2 – Domain Validation pre-ballot

kirk_hall at trendmicro.com kirk_hall at trendmicro.com
Wed Nov 18 23:23:10 UTC 2015


Richard Barnes is withdrawing this suggested edit of adding other paths, but has suggested the path "/.well-known/validation" in the current ballot be CHANGED to "/.well-known/pki-validation".  His reasoning is as follows:

I can actually live with this [withdrawing his suggested addition of other authorized paths].  Eric Mill pointed out to me that you can distinguish between validation types within that directory, so there's enough flexibility without the liberalization.  So unless anyone else thinks there's a need to liberalize this requirement, consider the proposal withdrawn.
I would like to bike-shed the string a little bit.  The word "validation" is over-broad.  One could certainly imagine other "validation" things going under .well-known.  (POSH, an existing .well-known user, comes close http://www.iana.org/go/draft-ietf-xmpp-posh-06)
What would people think about changing from "validation" to something like "pki-validation"?



From: Kirk Hall (RD-US)
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 5:08 PM
To: CABFPub (public at cabforum.org)
Subject: Question 2 – Domain Validation pre-ballot

Question 2 – Domain Validation pre-ballot

The second open question for the current Domain Validation ballot also comes from Richard Barnes of Mozilla, and is as follows.


Proposal 2: In line H



CURRENT DRAFT:



“6. Having the Applicant demonstrate control over the requested FQDN by installing a Random Value (contained in the name of the file, the content of a file, on a web page in the form of a meta tag, or any other format as determined by the CA) under "/.well-known/validation" directory on an Authorized Domain Name, that can be validated over an Authorized Port; or”



Richard proposes to add the following language as shown: "*** or any other path under .well-known registered by IANA for this purpose"



6. Having the Applicant demonstrate control over the requested FQDN by installing a Random Value (contained in the name of the file, the content of a file, on a web page in the form of a meta tag, or any other format as determined by the CA) under "/.well-known/validation" directory on an Authorized Domain Name, or any other path under .well-known registered by IANA for this purpose that can be validated over an Authorized Port; or


Richard’s reasoning: “For automated systems like ACME, they're going to want a much more precise definition of the validation process than what's in this document, and they may want to use different .well-known paths to indicate different methods that are all compliant with this section. Requiring the IANA registration allows these differences to exist, but in a controlled way.”

On the call today, it was noted that only a single path "/.well-known/validation" directory on an Authorized Domain Name” was chosen intentionally – so that webmasters could be informed to lock down this path on their websites to avoid allowing a hacker to post a bogus credential (such as a bogus Random Value, etc.) and obtain a cert by practical demonstration for a domain they do not really own or control.  The sentiment on the call was against this change.  One comment was that if a different path was needed in the future, it could be discussed and added later by a separate ballot if justified.

Questions:  The Validation Working is likely to reject this suggested change.  However, we would like to hear from anyone who things the suggested change is a good idea.


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