Hi Dave,

thank your for your reply.
Its a pity that stanza/element signing hasn't caught any real adoption
in the XMPP ecosystem.

I think for my usecase I will look closer at XEP-0285, as it appears
that it adds the least overhead (apart from applying base64 twice).

Happy Hacking
Paul

Am 14.09.20 um 12:30 schrieb Dave Cridland:
>
>
> On Sat, 12 Sep 2020 at 12:36, Paul Schaub <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>     Hi List,
>
>     I see there have been past activities around creating signatures for
>     stanzas/elements.
>
>     There are two deferred, competing proposals (XEP-0274: Design
>     Considerations for Digital Signatures in XMPP ([1]) & XEP-0285:
>     Encapsulating Digital Signatures in XMPP ([2])).
>
>
> Those aren't competing proposals; XEP-0274 really just provides a lot
> of background, proposes some useful terms, and summarizes the existing
> designs. XEP-0285, by the same author, *does* propose something new,
> as does XEP-0290 - also by Kurt.
>  
>
>     Winfried Tilanus very recently hinted towards XAdES as another
>     signature
>     standard that could be applied to XMPP ([3]).
>
>     I recently looked into xmlsec and canonicalized XML via C14N11 but I'd
>     like to ask if anyone has experience with creating signatures of
>     stanza
>     contents and sharing signed contents over XMPP. Which mechanisms
>     are you
>     using? Are you using one of the XEPs mentioned above? If not, why not?
>     What tooling do you use to overcome the problems of signed XML?
>
>
> Broadly, XEP-0274 says there are two alternatives for signing at a
> high level, and both of them suck. XEP-0285 and XEP-0290 then
> demonstrate viable, well-designed, signature systems of both main
> types, and also demonstrate why they unfortunately suck.
>
> As far as I'm aware, neither '285 nor '290 were ever adopted anywhere,
> though I think Kurt might have written some code for one or both.
>
> The summary is, roughly, that signing XML is simple enough, but
> deciding what XML to sign, and what XML has been signed, are both much
> harder. Stanzas are routinely altered by servers as they pass through,
> normally by adding elements but occasionally by changing them, and the
> outer "envelope" of the stanza is also frequently rewritten. So
> senders must indicate what XML has been signed, as well as provide a
> signature.
>
> XEP-0285 does this by serializing the signed XML and signing that
> string, whereas XEP-290 approaches it by referencing the signed
> elements in-situ.
>
> Broadly, I think any approach we take is going to look very close to
> one or other. Nearly a decade ago, we decided by default that we
> couldn't bring ourselves to do either.
>
> If I were in the boil-the-ocean and forklift-upgrade brigade, I'd
> handle this by changing the wire protocol entirely to handle the
> distinction between originator content and intermediary metadata, and
> add signatures all the way down.
>
> Dave.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Standards mailing list
> Info: https://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/standards
> Unsubscribe: [email protected]
> _______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Standards mailing list
Info: https://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/standards
Unsubscribe: [email protected]
_______________________________________________

Reply via email to