I agree that the problem would still remain on a global scope, but the 
argument, that there are other "dirty" CA's so we have to be "dirty" too, is 
very questionable... at least...

Is this a race to the bottom: The CA with lowest security standards wins?

Why should one trust any of those?

> On 15 Dec 2015, at 03:32, Noah Kantrowitz <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> And the counter to that is the huge number of existing CAs that allow 
> URL-based verification. We would pay the costs of increased complexity for 
> setup (for example, the existing LE client would be totally impossible) but 
> don't actually reap any benefits until the last of those CA shuts down. 
> Hence, pragmatism with a bias towards improving accessibility. If the person 
> running your website is actively hostile, they can probably get into some 
> pretty serious mischief anyway :-/ (all of my arguments are absolutely 
> dismissible as "slippery slope" fallacies for those playing along at home)
> 
> --Noah
> 
>> On Dec 14, 2015, at 6:20 PM, Julian Dropmann <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> The important difference is, that only zones which intent to use ACRE would 
>> create such an SRV record in the first place.
>> With the current design any A record host in the world can obtain certs. By 
>> using an ACRE specific SRV record the domain owner at has at least shown the 
>> intent to use ACRE for his zone. And also he could limit it to a specific 
>> port number/service on that host.
>> I think this would be a very huge security improvement, and of the 
>> verification quality in general, but only if this would not be an optional 
>> thing.
>> 
>>> On 15 Dec 2015, at 00:02, Noah Kantrowitz <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> It wouldn't matter anyway because even with a SRV delegation for the 
>>> challenge, the final cert is still issued against only a hostname, not a 
>>> specific service. Combined with the fact that there are existing CAs that 
>>> do a rough equivalent of http-01 and we can't expect that to go away any 
>>> time soon, it isn't hard to see why pragmatism won out in the initial 
>>> design. Fixing this for reals requires TLS-level protocol improvements for 
>>> per-service certificates. Not against that, just saying you've got a long 
>>> road ahead of you.
>>> 
>>> --Noah
>>> 
>>>> On Dec 14, 2015, at 2:47 PM, Michael Wyraz <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I thought about all the DNS stuff and came to the conclusion that 
>>>> focussing ssl certs for https only and ignoring all the rest may cause 
>>>> further security issues.
>>>> E.g. if I delegate http (via A-record or CNAME) to someone else, he can 
>>>> now create valid ssl certs for my mail server which I did not delegate. 
>>>> IMO A-record should be dedicated to http(s) (for legacy reasons, see 
>>>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9063378/why-do-browsers-not-use-srv-records)
>>>>  and all other services (inclusing ACME) should use their own srv records.
>>>> 
>>>> Looks like a decision between comfort and security - let's bet what will 
>>>> win...
>>>> 
>>>>> Fair, adding a DNS-level opt-out would be a reasonable addition for 
>>>>> future iterations, but not a hugely pressing issue given the expected use 
>>>>> cases.
>>>>> 
>>>>> --Noah
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Dec 14, 2015, at 12:55 PM, Michael Wyraz <[email protected]>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So just leave out the part with "then switch completely from A to SRV" 
>>>>>> and allow both. This gives people the comfort to use A/CNAME stuff while 
>>>>>> others who prefer security use SRV. Both are happy, problem solved ;-)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Using normal A/CNAME records matches the default use case of HTTPS a 
>>>>>>> lot more smoothly and allows a lot of cool transparent upgrade stuffs 
>>>>>>> from folks like DreamHost or Fastly that already do the CNAME setup as 
>>>>>>> part of user on-boarding and can run http-01 on the behalf of the user 
>>>>>>> to set them up on an SNI termination. If all the major CDNs did this, 
>>>>>>> it would be worth the negative issues where HTTP is delegated to an 
>>>>>>> untrusted service. If TLS ever grows per-service restrictions that 
>>>>>>> would be appropriate here, but that is waaaay out of scope for ACME I 
>>>>>>> would think :-/
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> --Noah
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Dec 14, 2015, at 11:17 AM, Michael Wyraz <[email protected]>
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Julian,
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> the issue your described here is caused by the assumption that any the 
>>>>>>>> A-record points to a host that should be allowed to create certs for 
>>>>>>>> that domain. IMO a solution would be simple: use some special SRV 
>>>>>>>> record that points to a service that does the challenge. Allow users 
>>>>>>>> to set this record to something like "none" to completely disallow 
>>>>>>>> ACME-based cert generation. Use A-record as fallback for a given time 
>>>>>>>> (e.g. one year), then switch completely from A to SRV,
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Problem solved ;-)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> And it's almost as comfortable as using the A-record because it needs 
>>>>>>>> just one single additional step, no change of the client, absolutely 
>>>>>>>> minimal change to the server, no extra software or support for dynamic 
>>>>>>>> DNS updates or such.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> As a side effect it solves many problems with ACME in complex 
>>>>>>>> environments like geo-distributed dns.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>>>>> Michael.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> maybe I am just a naive concerned user, but in my opinion there is 
>>>>>>>>> one major issue with the Simple HTTP challenge and possibly other 
>>>>>>>>> challenges, specified by ACME:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Any host which is specified by an A/AAAA record of that domain zone 
>>>>>>>>> can obtain trusted certificates in the name of the domain zone owner.
>>>>>>>>> Lets assume I host an private XMPP server using TLS on my own domain 
>>>>>>>>> using an SRV record, and I point an A record to a third party hoster 
>>>>>>>>> which hosts my public web blog.
>>>>>>>>> Now this third party hoster would be able to obtain signed 
>>>>>>>>> certificates for my domain using ACME and use that to host an XMPP 
>>>>>>>>> service on that domain using the standard port.
>>>>>>>>> Clients which trust that CA are now perfectly happy connecting to 
>>>>>>>>> that entity.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> By creating an A record I ofcourse need to trust that host to some 
>>>>>>>>> degree, but I still would expect the CA to verify if the requester 
>>>>>>>>> has control over the DNS zone itself an not just over a single 
>>>>>>>>> service running there.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> And consequently if it is valid to verify over HTTP, then maybe 
>>>>>>>>> another CA validates the domain ownership by a mail service/MX 
>>>>>>>>> record, and a third one over XMPP/SRV.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> This effectively means, as a domain zone admin, I have to trust every 
>>>>>>>>> single service I define, not just to properly deliver this service, 
>>>>>>>>> but also not to exploit his ability to obtain signed certificates in 
>>>>>>>>> my name.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Also you rely on the fact that on UNIX only root can bind on port 80 
>>>>>>>>> and 443. Lets assume there is an OS out there which does not enforce 
>>>>>>>>> this restriciton,
>>>>>>>>> now any user on that host is able to obtain signed certificates for 
>>>>>>>>> that domain.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Maybe I missed something here, but overall this seems to be a very 
>>>>>>>>> bad idea to automatically issue certificates without requiring a 
>>>>>>>>> change in the actual DNS zone the certificate is issued for.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>>>>>> Julian Dropmann
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
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