It's worth pointing out that the latest draft of the domain validation
ballot[1] written by the CA/B Forum Validation WG set the authorization
lifetime at 39 months:

> Completed confirmations of Applicant authority may be valid for the
> issuance of multiple certificates over time.  In all cases, the
> confirmation must have been initiated no more than 39 months prior to
> certificate issuance.

This begs the question of whether significantly reducing the
authorization lifetime in ACME will result in any real-world security
improvement, given that non-ACME CAs could continue to operate with
lifetimes of up to 39 months.

Boulder's current choice of 10 months is probably a concession to the
fact that some environments are still having a hard time when it comes
to automating the challenges described in ACME. With the current
lifetime of 10 months and a certificate lifetime of 3 months, even a
challenge solved manually will get you certificate coverage for up to a
year, which is comparable to traditional CAs.

[1] https://cabforum.org/pipermail/public/2016-April/007234.html

On 22/04/16 13:00, Hugo Landau wrote:
> Indeed. I also don't see the need for long authorization lifespans.
> Removing autorenewal would complement this well, and simplify the
> protocol.
> 
> Hugo Landau
> 
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 11:24:54PM +0200, Benjamin Hof wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Reading the ACME 02 draft, I have a concern regarding the identifier
>> authorization life time.
>>
>> Given a compromised TLS server, the attacker can solve an ACME challenge
>> and be authorized for the hosts's name.  This authorization can then be
>> used to obtain valid certificates, even after the intrusion has been
>> stopped, for as long as the authorization is valid (ten months in
>> boulder).
>>
>> This risk comes in addition to common DV exposure and is present for
>> (almost) any TLS server, not only the ones using ACME.
>>
>> If the above holds, it would appear beneficial if the authorization was
>> valid only briefly:  as long as it takes to obtain the desired
>> certificates.
>>
>> Is there a reason to allow the long life times?
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
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