At the Vancouver F2F we had extensive discussions on the security model for 
PAWS. Draft-das proposes to use shared secrets pre-provisioned in the master 
devices for authentication, while draft-lei proposes to mandate client 
certificates into master devices.

There seemed to be an understanding that the credential types in use for 
authentication are a matter of a business model chosen by the provider which 
deploys white space devices, rather than a protocol decision.

Brian mentioned that the iesg may not allow a document to be published which 
specifies how shared secrets are used, but does not have a provisioning 
mechanism for the shared secrets defined. In my opinion, a mechanism for 
distributing shared secrets does not necessarily have to be defined, as a 
shared secret can be established using current practices to set up shared 
secrets with financial institutions (using the browser).
Thus, my suggestion would be to describe in the document how a shared secret 
and how a client certificate is used to authenticate a master device. Then, if 
we run into issues with iesg, in worst case we could remove the shared secret 
part and keep the other one.

I'd like to get additional views on this topic.


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

Reply via email to