Hi Rifaat,
Inline.

From: Rifaat Shekh-Yusef <[email protected]>
Sent: 17 April 2019 20:37
To: Richard Barnes <[email protected]>
Cc: IETF ACME <[email protected]>; Owen Friel (ofriel) <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Use cases / trust model for device certs

Hi Richard,

I was not aware of the ANIMA work before the meeting in Prague, so I will 
definitely look into that in details.

One use case that I have in mind is a way to make sure that a specific device 
can only be used by a specific party.
If you rely on RP to request identities for the device, then any party that has 
a valid ACME account can use any device.
[ofriel] This is one of the use cases that BRSKI enables. Read the sections 
relating to Ownership Tracker.

For example, if party A purchased a device from the vendor, and party B gets a 
hold of that device, then there
is nothing that prevents party B from getting a valid ACME certificate for that 
device.
[ofriel] With strict ownership tracking, BRSKI is flexible enough to prevent 
devices from bootstrapping against a network without proof of ownership.

If instead you reply on a token from the Device Authority, then the CA will 
only issue a certificate to a specific party and specific device.
[ofriel] The Device Authority appears to perform a similar function to the MASA 
audit log function. The Client (i.e. customer.com) can claim devices from the 
DA (via some sales channel/integration API), the DA issues JWTs indicating that 
the device is claimed by a specific Client, and ACME checks that the requesting 
Client matches that in the JWT which the DA has logged. The BRSKI MASA service 
audit logs every single domain that a device has registered against, and does 
not preclude Registrars claiming devices/proving ownership via some sales 
channel integration/API. It appears that this proposal is trying to address 
similar issues as BRSKI.

Regards,
 Rifaat


On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 1:09 PM Richard Barnes 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hey Rifaat,

Owen and I were chatting about ACME and device certs this morning, and it 
seemed like it might be useful to rekindle discussion on the topic here on the 
ACME list.

I'd like to push a little more on the trust model here.  Just to establish some 
terminology:

- Device: Uses certificates to authenticate identifiers
- Vendor: Makes the device that will get the end certificate
- Customer: Buys the device from the vendor and operates it
- CA: Validates identifiers and issues certificates
- Relying Party: Uses certificates to verify authentication for identifiers
- Device Identity: MAC address or similar

In the flows Owen and I have been discussing (more based on ANIMA/BRSKI), the 
model is basically broken in two, with the customer in the middle:

1. The customer validates devices' device identity as part of the ANIMA flow, 
based on the customer trusting the vendor, and assigns the device a domain name
2. The customer uses ACME to issue domain name certificates (the CA is unaware 
of the device identity)

That all pretty much just works with BRSKI and ACME as they are today.  But it 
presumes that the RP is authenticating the device by domain name, as is 
prevalent in most uses of TLS today.

In contrast, it seems like your draft presumes that the RP needs to know the 
device identity; it's not satisfied by a domain name alone.  Can you elaborate 
a bit more on what scenarios you have in mind for this?  If all you care about 
is the customer tracking things, then the model above is sufficient; the 
customer can simply assign domain names that encode the device identity however 
it likes.

Thanks,
--Richard
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