[Servercert-wg] [Discussion Period Begins]: SC-69 Clarify router and firewall logging requirements

Mon Feb 5 20:52:06 UTC 2024

Hi Clint,

Thanks for the feedback! 

1. I’m not sure the wording "Router and firewall activities" is considered an unspecified term, and leaves the exact definition and scope up to the CA, however” is necessary or even really helpful. I think it would be clearer to introduce Section 5.4.1.1 with something like “Logging of router and firewall activities necessary to meet the requirements of Section 5.4.1, Subsection 3.6 MUST at a minimum include:” 
I’d agree, this makes sense to update. 

* I’m not sold on the “Subsection” part, but I don’t recall if we have good semantics established for referencing the numbered paragraphs/sections under a Section heading. 

This was more a design decision, since Section 5.4.1 is already a lengthy section with a lot of information. Personally I feel creating the subsection make it easier to follow through. I’m open to changing if more people feel this should be addressed. 

1. I think the entire section including and under "Logging of router and firewall activities SHOULD NOT include:” should be removed. 
Based on the reasoning provided, I agree that it doesn’t really add anything extra to the requirements. 

1. The concluding sentence "CAs are encouraged to recommend additional MUST and SHOULD NOT requirements through an email to questions at cabforum.org <mailto:questions at cabforum.org>, for future discussion within the appropriate Working Group.” stands out as I think it’s the only such “encouragement” in the BRs. I don’t think that makes it bad or that it should be removed, but I’m also not sure how valuable it is to the BRs as a policy. I admit that may be because I view this encouragement as fundamental to membership and participation in the CA/B Forum at all — every member, regardless of type, should feel welcome and encouraged to recommend changes to any of the CA/B Forum documents. But we don’t say that anywhere, so maybe this is a good start? 
I took this approach from the CSWG, which used it during the switch to hardware-based keys. I’m not sure it was ever utilized however. 
If there’s strong opinions on removing this, I don’t have a problem with that. 

I’ll leave the comments open for a bit, before I make the above changes, in case there is more feedback. 

Regards,

Martijn 

From: Clint Wilson <clintw at apple.com>
Date: Saturday, 3 February 2024 at 01:13
To: Martijn Katerbarg <martijn.katerbarg at sectigo.com>, ServerCert CA/BF <servercert-wg at cabforum.org>
Subject: Re: [Servercert-wg] [Discussion Period Begins]: SC-69 Clarify router and firewall logging requirements 

Hi Martijn, 

Thanks for sending this out for discussion. Just a few comments at this point: 

1. I’m not sure the wording "Router and firewall activities" is considered an unspecified term, and leaves the exact definition and scope up to the CA, however” is necessary or even really helpful. I think it would be clearer to introduce Section 5.4.1.1 with something like “Logging of router and firewall activities necessary to meet the requirements of Section 5.4.1, Subsection 3.6 MUST at a minimum include:” 
* I’m not sold on the “Subsection” part, but I don’t recall if we have good semantics established for referencing the numbered paragraphs/sections under a Section heading. 
2. I think the entire section including and under "Logging of router and firewall activities SHOULD NOT include:” should be removed. 
* The first item listed seems overly broad (arguably, imo, even covering the “inbound and outbound” connections of the second item) and so making it a SHOULD NOT seems too strong a recommendation. 
* The second item seems counterintuitive and difficult to implement correctly+consistently. It could be read as something like “don’t log unless you know you’re being exploited”, which doesn’t sound like a recommendation we should be making (especially in the context of post-incident data analysis). 
* Neither of these recommendations seems necessary to accomplish the goals of additional clarity and specificity of what MUST be logged. 
3. The concluding sentence "CAs are encouraged to recommend additional MUST and SHOULD NOT requirements through an email to questions at cabforum.org, for future discussion within the appropriate Working Group.” stands out as I think it’s the only such “encouragement” in the BRs. I don’t think that makes it bad or that it should be removed, but I’m also not sure how valuable it is to the BRs as a policy. I admit that may be because I view this encouragement as fundamental to membership and participation in the CA/B Forum at all — every member, regardless of type, should feel welcome and encouraged to recommend changes to any of the CA/B Forum documents. But we don’t say that anywhere, so maybe this is a good start? 

Cheers! 

-Clint 

On Jan 29, 2024, at 10:30 AM, Martijn Katerbarg via Servercert-wg <servercert-wg at cabforum.org> wrote: 

Summary: 
This ballot aims to clarify what data needs to be logged as part of the "Firewall and router activities" logging requirement in the Baseline Requirements. 
This ballot is proposed by Martijn Katerbarg (Sectigo) and endorsed by Daniel Jeffery (Fastly) and Ben Wilson (Mozilla). 
--- Motion Begins --- 
This ballot modifies the “Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates" ("Baseline Reuqirements"), based on Version 2.0.2. 
MODIFY the Baseline Requirements as specified in the following Redline: https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/compare/41f01640748fa612386f8b1a3031cd1bff3d4f35...807675c91c8500157b0ffd58ab3a40b0b17075e5 <https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/compare/41f01640748fa612386f8b1a3031cd1bff3d4f35...807675c91c8500157b0ffd58ab3a40b0b17075e5> 
--- Motion Ends --- 
This ballot proposes a Final Maintenance Guideline. The procedure for approval of this ballot is as follows: 
Discussion (at least 7 days) 

1. Start time: 2024-01-29 18:30:00 UTC 
2. End time: not before 2024-02-05 18:30:00 UTC 
Vote for approval (7 days) 

1. Start time: TBD 
2. End time: TBD 

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