Some of the methods of implementing these suggestions seem complex, but there’s 
a lot of good ideas here. Clint, what do you think of my suggestion on asking 
some outside SMEs to chime in?

Respectfully,

Tarah Wheeler
Principal Security Advocate
Senior Director of Engineering, Website Security
Symantec
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

From: Clint Wilson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Friday, November 18, 2016 at 7:53 AM
To: Tarah Wheeler 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, Eran Messeri 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: Rob Stradling <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, 
"[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [Trans] Call for adoption: draft-strad-trans-redaction-00


Hi all,

I’d like to propose that the redaction I-D allow for redacting labels above the 
2nd level domain, as determined by the public suffix used, of SAN:dNSName 
values. For example, redaction of 
“secret.example.com<http://secret.example.com>” would result in 
“{redacted}.example.com<http://example.com>” while 
“secret.example.co.uk<http://secret.example.co.uk>” would result in 
“{redacted}.example.co.uk<http://example.co.uk>”. The I-D should also allow for 
redaction of some subject DN values, especially commonName (the unfortunate 
reality is this field is still used… frequently).

To (hopefully) address some of the concerns redaction has encountered in the 
past, we’d like to propose the addition of a “redaction signal”. This is 
essentially the domain owner publicly signaling that they have opted-in to 
redaction of their certificates. While this does not solve the issue of a 
client being unable to authoritatively determine that the host name being 
observed during certificate verification is the one intended in the redacted 
precertificate, it does introduce a mechanism for the entity that CT is 
intended to protect to assert their acceptance of this tradeoff.

We haven’t identified the precise mechanism via which this redaction signal 
would be communicated, but two options we want to throw out are CAA records and 
HTTP header (such as the proposed Expect-CT header).

We also have not identified who/what should verify the redaction signal and 
when. A CA should check for the presence of the redaction signal before 
submitting a redacted precert, but if that were the only entity checking, we 
would need to determine a way to publicly audit this check. A Log Operator 
might check for the presence of a redaction signal before accepting a redacted 
precert, but this introduces a new requirement for logs to make some form of 
connection to the domain(s) in the precert. A relying party might check for the 
presence of the redaction signal when verifying the SCTs, but the lack of a 
redaction signal at the time of connection does not necessarily represent the 
state of redaction signal at the time of precert submission. A log monitor 
might check for a redaction signal when a precert is discovered for a domain of 
interest, in order to help determine whether a discovered precert might 
represent misissuance.

Cheers!

On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 5:45 PM Tarah Wheeler 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I’m glad to hear it, and looking forward to it.

I’d like to ask about the two things that seem really necessary to me; 
sometimes a technical RFC lacks within it the rationale for why we do things. 
I’ve been creating essentially a white paper at the same time as writing 
comments and some prescriptive thoughts on privacy.

There’s a fundamental disagreement here over why we would want privacy and 
transparency on a variable slider, and ultimately, it comes down to the 
motivations of the entities involved. Some of us want to sell a product that 
provides privacy, and some of us want to sell a product that is only possible 
with transparency. Let’s not pretend that we’re not all faced with differing 
incentives.

I’ve been on this list for a while, and very quiet because in general, it seems 
like a fool’s game to try to argue people out of acting in their best 
interests. It wasn’t until now that I had a solid idea of what would be useful 
to this process.

There are some very smart people in information security. There are those with 
strong inclinations towards advocating privacy at multiple levels of 
organizational size from a individual to a YUUUUUUGE company (sorry, couldn’t 
resist, and we all need to laugh a bit now and then). There are those who see 
full transparency as a virtue and I can certainly understand why, both on an 
ideological and a financial level.

I’ve watched this situation be cautiously talked around for months now, and I’d 
be interested to hear people’s thoughts on asking some unassailably 
corporate-neutral experts on both sides of this debate to provide guidance. 
Whose opinion are you interested in hearing on whether or not permitting 
certificate privacy and accepting it as a browser standard is a good idea? I’m 
putting myself and Symantec out there in a vulnerable way; I and we might not 
always hear what we want to hear, but every one of us wants to make the 
internet better in the way we believe will work best.

Respectfully,

Tarah Wheeler
Principal Security Advocate
Senior Director of Engineering, Website Security
Symantec
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

From: Eran Messeri <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 6:17 PM
To: Tarah Wheeler 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: Rob Stradling <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, 
"[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [Trans] Call for adoption: draft-strad-trans-redaction-00

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