On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 04:30:03PM +0100, Eliot Lear wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/21/16 4:19 PM, Juergen Schoenwaelder wrote:
> > Lada, I think Stephen asks about JSON encoded YANG-defined data that
> > is signed, that is, the JSON serialization itself is signed. What
> > happens to the signature if you convert the JSON to corresponding XML
> > serialization. I think the answer is that the signature is broken in
> > this case and I think this is quite natural.
> >
> > Object signatures so far never came up in the NETCONF/YANG context
> > (well not quite correct, I think there is some related discussion
> > aroud the zero-config draft) but even if they do, I think we will have
> > to accept that signatures are encoding specific. And I think this is
> > not a big deal; if I sign my HTML encoded email, then the signature
> > likely won't apply to a text-only rendering of the same email.
> >
> 
> However this goes, it should be well documented somewhere.  This will
> not be the first time this comes up (he says, knowingly).
> 

I am somewhat surprised. Do people really expect that signatures
computed over a certain encoding of some data can be applied to a
different encoding of the same data? If I sign a tar archive and then
convert the content to a zip archive, do people really assume the
signature is still valid?

If this is a surprise, perhaps object signature RFCs should say
something about this. Does it make sense to have a statement in every
data encoding RFC saying that 'if you transform the encoding to a
different encoding, a signature calculated over the original encoding
will not be valid anymore'?

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   +49 421 200 3103         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>

_______________________________________________
netmod mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod

Reply via email to