Hi Zach,

> This seems incongruous. If the token must be kept secret an attacker, it
> should not be served via an unauthenticated channel.


I agree the wording makes it incongruous, I was caught up on this the other
week until it was clarified for me by Jacob.

The token is random not to prevent a guessing attack but to prevent the
implementation of a server that can automatically reply to challenges
without being a party to the authorization creation (e.g. knowing the
token). It's OK for the token to be served via an unauthenticated channel,
it just can't be predictable.

I took a crack at rewording this in
https://github.com/ietf-wg-acme/acme/pull/284 - Hopefully if I'm completely
off-base someone can correct it to be accurate & understandable.

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 1:12 AM, Zach Shepherd <[email protected]> wrote:

> The following feedback is based on 8010a31 (current HEAD of master).
>
> Section 6.2, Request Authentication, states "Note that authentication via
> signed JWS request bodies implies that GET requests are not authenticated.
> Servers MUST NOT respond to GET requests for resources that might be
> considered sensitive. Account resources are the only sensitive resources
> defined in this specification."
>
> Sections 8.2, HTTP; 8.3, TLS with Server Name Indication (TLS SNI); and
> 8.4, DNS, each describe a GET request and specify a "token" value which
> "MUST have at least 128 bits of entropy, in order to prevent an attacker
> from guessing it."
>
> This seems incongruous. If the token must be kept secret an attacker, it
> should not be served via an unauthenticated channel.
>
> Assuming secrecy of the token is not important, I would propose removing
> the entropy requirement and including some discussion of the token in
> Section 10, Security Considerations.
>
> Regards,
> Zach Shepherd
>
>
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