I had the same thought about firewall rules vs configuration changes being 
duplicative. I also agree about the dubious value of “hardware failures, 
software crashes, and system restarts”. I left it in since it was there but I 
was kind of struggling to figure out the purpose of some of that information. I 
assume its there for the purpose of understanding the impact and duration of an 
unexpected outage of your boundary protections? I don’t think that list really 
gets you that but it might be a piece of the picture for some, but not all, 
environments.

From: Christophe Bonjean <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2024 5:39 AM
To: Ponds-White, Trev <[email protected]>; CA/B Forum Server Certificate WG 
Public Discussion List <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [Servercert-wg] [Discussion Period Begins]: SC-69 
Clarify router and firewall logging requirements

I agree with Trev’s perspective.

A few comments:

  *   Firewall rules are a separate item, but aren’t firewall rules covered by 
configuration changes? Should we merge it?
  *   What’s the purpose of “hardware failures, software crashes, and system 
restarts”? System restarts I could see how it’s relevant for audit logging 
purposes, but not sure what the additional value is of logging hardware 
failures and software crashes.

Christophe

From: Servercert-wg 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> 
On Behalf Of Ponds-White, Trev via Servercert-wg
Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2024 3:08 AM
To: Martijn Katerbarg 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; CA/B 
Forum Server Certificate WG Public Discussion List 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; Clint Wilson 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [Servercert-wg] [Discussion Period Begins]: SC-69 Clarify router 
and firewall logging requirements

I think “router and firewall activities” are solutions that don’t identify the 
problem we are trying to solve. Ultimately we want to know that the CA systems 
are segregated and protected. In this section we are specifying the required 
logs the CAs should have that allow them to monitor this and investigate if 
issues occur. I think it would be better to change this something like

“Network boundary controls (firewall, switch, router, gateway, or other network 
control device or system) activities. Relevant activities to log include 
configuration changes, firmware updates, and access control modifications. As 
well as system events and errors, including hardware failures, software 
crashes, and system restarts.”

This also better aligns with NetSec 1.f “Configure each network boundary 
control (firewall, switch, router, gateway, or other network control device or 
system) with rules that support only the services, protocols, ports, and 
communications that the CA has identified as necessary to its operations;”



From: Servercert-wg 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> 
On Behalf Of Martijn Katerbarg via Servercert-wg
Sent: Monday, February 5, 2024 12:52 PM
To: Clint Wilson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; ServerCert CA/BF 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [Servercert-wg] [Discussion Period Begins]: SC-69 
Clarify router and firewall logging requirements


CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the 
content is safe.


Hi Clint,

Thanks for the feedback!


  1.  I’m not sure the wording "Router and firewall activities" is considered 
an unspecified term, and leaves the exact definition and scope up to the CA, 
however” is necessary or even really helpful. I think it would be clearer to 
introduce Section 5.4.1.1 with something like “Logging of router and firewall 
activities necessary to meet the requirements of Section 5.4.1, Subsection 3.6 
MUST at a minimum include:”
I’d agree, this makes sense to update.

     *   I’m not sold on the “Subsection” part, but I don’t recall if we have 
good semantics established for referencing the numbered paragraphs/sections 
under a Section heading.
This was more a design decision, since Section 5.4.1 is already a lengthy 
section with a lot of information. Personally I feel creating the subsection 
make it easier to follow through. I’m open to changing if more people feel this 
should be addressed.


  1.  I think the entire section including and under "Logging of router and 
firewall activities SHOULD NOT include:” should be removed.
Based on the reasoning provided, I agree that it doesn’t really add anything 
extra to the requirements.


  1.  The concluding sentence "CAs are encouraged to recommend additional MUST 
and SHOULD NOT requirements through an email to 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>, for future discussion 
within the appropriate Working Group.” stands out as I think it’s the only such 
“encouragement” in the BRs. I don’t think that makes it bad or that it should 
be removed, but I’m also not sure how valuable it is to the BRs as a policy. I 
admit that may be because I view this encouragement as fundamental to 
membership and participation in the CA/B Forum at all — every member, 
regardless of type, should feel welcome and encouraged to recommend changes to 
any of the CA/B Forum documents. But we don’t say that anywhere, so maybe this 
is a  good start?
I took this approach from the CSWG, which used it during the switch to 
hardware-based keys. I’m not sure it was ever utilized however.
If there’s strong opinions on removing this, I don’t have a problem with that.

I’ll leave the comments open for a bit, before I make the above changes, in 
case there is more feedback.

Regards,

Martijn

From: Clint Wilson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Saturday, 3 February 2024 at 01:13
To: Martijn Katerbarg 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, 
ServerCert CA/BF <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [Servercert-wg] [Discussion Period Begins]: SC-69 Clarify router 
and firewall logging requirements
Hi Martijn,

Thanks for sending this out for discussion. Just a few comments at this point:


  1.  I’m not sure the wording "Router and firewall activities" is considered 
an unspecified term, and leaves the exact definition and scope up to the CA, 
however” is necessary or even really helpful. I think it would be clearer to 
introduce Section 5.4.1.1 with something like “Logging of router and firewall 
activities necessary to meet the requirements of Section 5.4.1, Subsection 3.6 
MUST at a minimum include:”

     *   I’m not sold on the “Subsection” part, but I don’t recall if we have 
good semantics established for referencing the numbered paragraphs/sections 
under a Section heading.

  1.  I think the entire section including and under "Logging of router and 
firewall activities SHOULD NOT include:” should be removed.

     *   The first item listed seems overly broad (arguably, imo, even covering 
the “inbound and outbound” connections of the second item) and so making it a 
SHOULD NOT seems too strong a recommendation.
     *   The second item seems counterintuitive and difficult to implement 
correctly+consistently. It could be read as something like “don’t log unless 
you know you’re being exploited”, which doesn’t sound like a recommendation we 
should be making (especially in the context of post-incident data analysis).
     *   Neither of these recommendations seems necessary to accomplish the 
goals of additional clarity and specificity of what MUST be logged.

  1.  The concluding sentence "CAs are encouraged to recommend additional MUST 
and SHOULD NOT requirements through an email to 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>, for future discussion 
within the appropriate Working Group.” stands out as I think it’s the only such 
“encouragement” in the BRs. I don’t think that makes it bad or that it should 
be removed, but I’m also not sure how valuable it is to the BRs as a policy. I 
admit that may be because I view this encouragement as fundamental to 
membership and participation in the CA/B Forum at all — every member, 
regardless of type, should feel welcome and encouraged to recommend changes to 
any of the CA/B Forum documents. But we don’t say that anywhere, so maybe this 
is a  good start?

Cheers!
-Clint

On Jan 29, 2024, at 10:30 AM, Martijn Katerbarg via Servercert-wg 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:


Summary:

This ballot aims to clarify what data needs to be logged as part of the 
"Firewall and router activities" logging requirement in the Baseline 
Requirements.

This ballot is proposed by Martijn Katerbarg (Sectigo) and endorsed by Daniel 
Jeffery (Fastly) and Ben Wilson (Mozilla).

--- Motion Begins ---

This ballot modifies the “Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management 
of Publicly-Trusted Certificates" ("Baseline Reuqirements"), based on Version 
2.0.2.

MODIFY the Baseline Requirements as specified in the following Redline: 
https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/compare/41f01640748fa612386f8b1a3031cd1bff3d4f35...807675c91c8500157b0ffd58ab3a40b0b17075e5

--- Motion Ends ---

This ballot proposes a Final Maintenance Guideline. The procedure for approval 
of this ballot is as follows:

Discussion (at least 7 days)

  1.  Start time: 2024-01-29 18:30:00 UTC
  2.  End time: not before 2024-02-05 18:30:00 UTC

Vote for approval (7 days)

  1.  Start time: TBD
  2.  End time: TBD

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