Hi Nick,

I am not against delegated credentials, in fact I think it’s a good thing per 
se.

I had expressed a couple of concerns at the time the call for adoption was 
first issued [1], which I think are still valid.

Could you please comment on / add them to your pro-cons analysis?

Cheers, thanks,
t

[1] https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg22966.html

On 18/07/2017, 12:06, "TLS on behalf of Nick Sullivan" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> on behalf of 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Sean,
We've had some additional discussions in person here at IETF 99 with folks who 
were in the proxy certificates and short-lived certs camp, and we think there 
is now more agreement that the mechanism described in this draft is superior to 
the alternatives. I've included a summary of some of the pros and cons of the 
approaches:
Proxy certificates vs. Delegated Credentials
Pro proxy certificates:
- Already deployed in some industries, though not on the Web.
- Fits the conceptual model that public key == certificate.
Con proxy certificates:
- Proxy certificates adds additional complexity to the delegation other than 
limiting the time period (full X.509, additional constraints  such as hostname).
- Encourages implementers to reuse PKIX libraries rather than build code as 
part of TLS:
-- There have been problems and inconsistencies around pathlen and constraints 
enforcement in existing PKIX libraries.
-- Modifying these libraries is more complex and risk prone than delegated 
creds (which can easily be implemented in TLS as demonstrated by the 3 
interoperable implementations at the IETF 98 hackathon).
- In proxy certificates, pathing is SKI dependent, not directly tied to EE 
cert. This is a binding weaker than delegated credentials which includes a 
signature over the EE certificate.

Short-lived certs vs. Delegated Credentials
Pro short-lived certs:
- Short lived certs work with existing libraries, no new code changes.
Con short-lived certs:
- Not widely available from CAs, especially for EV.
- Potentially problematic to the CT ecosystem (all certificates must be logged 
in CT, which may bloat them).
- Introduces a high-risk operational dependency on external party:
-- Requires frequent exchanges with an external Certificate Authority (must 
provide proof of domain possession to CA vs. internally managed credential 
minter for delegated credentials).
-- There is no fallback if the CA has outage. With delegated credentials you 
can fall back to a LURK-style protocol with the long-lived certificate key.

Given these comparisons, we think the proposed draft is the superior option and 
would like to continue the discussion about adopting it.

Nick

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 12:58 AM Sean Turner 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
All,

During the WG call for adoption, a couple of questions were raised about 
comparison/analysis of sub-certs versus proxy and/or short-lived certificates.  
There is some discussion currently in the draft, but the chairs feel that these 
issues need further discussion (and elaboration in the draft) prior to WG 
adoption.  So let’s keep the conversation going.

J&S

> On Apr 12, 2017, at 15:31, Sean Turner 
> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
> All,
>
> At our IETF 98 session, there was support in the room to adopt 
> draft-rescorla-tls-subcerts [0].  We need to confirm this support on the list 
> so please let the list know whether you support adoption of the draft and are 
> willing to review/comment on the draft before 20170429.  If you object to its 
> adoption, please let us know why.
>
> Clearly, the WG is going to need to work through the trade-offs between 
> short-lived certificates and sub-certs because both seem, to some, to be 
> addressing the same problem.
>
> Cheers,
>
> J&S
>
> [0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-rescorla-tls-subcerts

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