[cabfpub] Draft CAA motion

Jeremy Rowley jeremy.rowley at digicert.com
Wed Nov 9 16:02:08 UTC 2016


One way around the difficulty of CAA recording checking for large companies and mass issuance is to exempt the CA from record checking where issuance is through a technically constrained intermediate.  In this case, the CA has already verified the company has requested an issuing CA (which means high volume issuance) and you know the company is only issuing to their domains. 

Jeremy


-----Original Message-----
From: Public [mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org] On Behalf Of Gervase Markham via Public
Sent: Wednesday, November 9, 2016 8:12 AM
To: Doug Beattie <doug.beattie at globalsign.com>; CA/Browser Forum Public Discussion List <public at cabforum.org>
Cc: Gervase Markham <gerv at mozilla.org>
Subject: Re: [cabfpub] Draft CAA motion

On 09/11/16 13:40, Doug Beattie wrote:
> 1)      We’ve gone from at the time of validation (up to 39 months,
> which I agree is unreasonable) to a few days (I think Ryan suggested
> this) to 10 minutes.  I recommend we increase this back to a few days 
> (let’s say 3).  This will allow more flexibility in the location of 
> this check in the overall process, reduce the number duplicate checks 
> CAs need to make (one when order is placed, again when validated 
> (maybe) and one when issued) and will help reduce the “last minute” 
> checks that need to be done and which can impact issuance.  I think a 
> few days still allows a sufficiently short cache time that this should 
> address domain owners concerns for rolling out updated CAA records.  
> What’s driving the
> 10 minute requirement?

I agree manual issuance means 10 minutes is overly short, although it should be achievable for all automatic issuance. Duplicate checks are cheap, as the analysis on this list showed - even someone issuing 6 million certs an hour can keep up with the amount of CAA required. So possibly needing multiple checks is not a problem from my perspective.

We could switch to one day.

> 2)      I think there should be a provision that CAA can be done
> contractually such that those customers that own the domain can 
> provide CAA approval for their Domain Name to the CA so that each of 
> the FQDNs don’t need to be checked at issuance time, for the duration 
> of the contract.

I'm sorry, but that moves CAA from the realm of enforced site policy to the realm of CA policy, which defeats much of the point. We have discussed this recently on this list, I believe.

> 3)      I strongly object to this statement – why should blocking
> issuance for a CAA record be any different than blocking issuance 
> based on key word or high risk checks?  I can’t support this – why 
> does CABF need the results of CAA checks?
> 
> ·         CAs MUST log issuances that were prevented by an adverse CAA
> record in sufficient detail *_to provide feedback to the CAB Forum on 
> the circumstances_*

It's because people keep saying that CAA will obviously cause all sorts of problems. This requirement is so the Forum is able to say "OK, then, show us what the problems were and why they happened". Without this requirement, it becomes possible for people to spread FUD about CAA.

> 4)      Specifying what is logged is a bit over the top also.  The
> requirement should be to perform CAA and not drive implementation on 
> what is logged.  I searched the BRs for logging requirements and there 
> no existing logging requirements this specific, so I recommend these 
> statements should be dropped:
> 
> ·         CAs MUST keep records of the responses to all CAA DNS requests
> 
> ·         CAs MUST log issuances that were prevented by an adverse CAA
> record
> 
> ·         Section 2.2 “The CA SHALL log all actions taken, if any,
> consistent with its processing practice”

This latter language is already present in the existing wording, so your grep of the BRs clearly wasn't complete.

I agree that the first logging requirement is beyond what the BRs specify now, so we can remove that one. However, for reasons given above, I want to keep the second one.

> 5)      I don’t understand this statement:
> 
> ·         “It shall clearly specify the set of Issuer Domain Names that
> the CA recognises as permitting it to issue.”

The RFC says:

  "A CAA record with an issue parameter tag that specifies a domain name
   is a request that certificate issuers perform CAA issue restriction
   processing for the corresponding domain and grants authorization to
   the certificate issuer specified by the domain name."

This requirement is a requirement that CAs explicitly specify the values for the issue parameter tag which they consider as being permission to issue. E.g. "globalsign.com". If you have improved wording, I'm happy to hear it.

Gerv
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