----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Salowey (jsalowey)" <[email protected]>
To: "Juergen Schoenwaelder" <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 2:01 AM

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
> Behalf
> > Of Juergen Schoenwaelder
> > Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 4:26 PM
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 05:54:48PM +0100, Juergen Schoenwaelder wrote:
> >
> > >    Both transport receiver and transport sender implementations MUST
> > >    provide means to generate a key pair and self-signed certificate
> in
> > >    the case that a key pair and certificate are not available
> through
> > >    another mechanism.
> > >
> > > I do not know the idea behind this requirement is or how I comply to
> > > it. Is this expressing a requirement for the management interface of
> > > the box? Or is the idea that this is used in some automated fashion
> > > (which likely does not make sense but would be harmful if read this
> > > way).
> >
> > This text seems to be unchanged in -02 and I still do not know how I
> > implement this MUST. On Unix systems, people use tools such as openssl
> > to create certificates etc. while a syslog implementation would
> > typically links against a DTLS library and would not have itself a
> > builtin option to create a self-signed certificate. So is this text
> > putting up an implementation requirement that a syslog daemon must
> > have a _built-in_ option to create a self-signed certificate? My
> > concern is that key / certificate management is something pretty
> > unrelated to the syslog over DTLS transport implementation itself and
> > hence it is somewhat unclear how to implement the MUST.
> >
> [Joe] There was some discussion of this on the list. The conclusion was
> that this was not a GUI requirement but could be met by a script to
> generate a certificate an configure its use, which didn't see onerous to
> implementers.  The same text is in the syslog TLS RFC.

The key point is
"The same text is in the syslog TLS RFC.  "
We established consensus on this and got it accepted by all parties (IETF, IESG
etc) so there needs to be a very good reason to change it, and I have not yet
heard one.

> > >    The transport receiver and transport sender SHOULD provide
> mechanisms
> > >    to record the end-entity certificate for the purpose of
> correlating
> > >    it with the sent or received data.
> > >
> > > What is an end-entity certificate? And how do I correlate sent or
> > > received data?
> >
> > The second part has been clarified in -02 but I still wonder what an
> > "end entity certificate" is. Probably this is meant:
> >
> >    The transport receiver and transport sender SHOULD provide
> >    mechanisms to record the certificate or certificate fingerprint of
> >    the remote endpoint for the purpose of correlating an identity with
> >    the sent or received data.
> >
> [Joe] End entity is RFC 5280 terminology.  It refers to the owner of the
> public key that is used in the authentication versus a certificate
> authority that signs certificates.
>
> > >    [...] Once the transport receiver gets a close_notify from the
> > >    transport sender, it MUST reply with a close_notify.
> > >
> > > Is it our job to define this? Does DTLS not specify how to handle
> > > such DTLS alerts?
> >
> > I am still wondering why we need to specify this...
> >
> [Joe] This is the same text as we used in the syslog TLS document. That
> being said it is likely redundant.

The key point is 
"This is the same text as we used in the syslog TLS document.  "
We established consensus on this and got it accepted by all parties (IETF, IESG
etc) so there needs to be a very good reason to change it, and I have not yet
heard one.

Tom Petch

> > /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/>

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