On 2/22/2010 12:43 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
On 2/22/10 11:27 AM, Jesse Thompson wrote:

We might as well stick with this clusterf*ck until xmpp-dna or
xmpp-delegate is implemented.

Oh, and even then you're going to require a certificate, no? The point
of DNA or _xmpp-delegate or whatever solution the XMPP WG comes up with
is to handle the case of delegation (e.g., Google Apps is hosting my
domains) or the case of adding multiple domains to an existing
connection via attribute certificates. And the attribute cert stuff is
going to require a lot of man hours -- new features in OpenSSL or the
like, an admin-friendly and open-source tool to generate attribute certs
because otherwise it will be really hard, best practice docs, READMEs,
etc. Who is going to do all that work? TANSTAAFL, folks.

Yes, we're stuck with a bunch of crappy alternatives:

1. wildcard certificates won't match all virtual domains and also don't match the vcards/conference components within subdomains, introduce security risks if the private keys are exposed, and can be difficult to obtain for many organizations

2. xmpp-dna appears that it will be complicated to understand and/or implement

3. xmpp-delegate would be perfect if we had DNSSEC or some out of band method of assuring the accuracy of DNS

4. using mismatched or self-signed certificates shows warnings to users, but most clients have been developed to make it easy for users to bypass the warnings.

Given these alternatives, #4 seems to be the pragmatic solution.

Jesse

--
  Jesse Thompson
  Division of Information Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Email/IM: [email protected]

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