#9: explicitly note revocation check failures as errors causing connection termination?
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/websec/current/msg00306.html Subject: Re: [websec] Decouple HSTS's two orthogonal effects? From: Adam Barth <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:35:58 -0700 To: Tom Ritter <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Tom Ritter <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 4:58 PM, Adam Barth <[email protected]> wrote: >> There's no coupling between HSTS and the particular algorithm a UA >> uses to verify certificates. The UA is free to use whatever >> verification mechanism it desires. > > This is good, but perhaps some clarification to the draft would be in order: > > Section 2.2 states: > > 2. The UA terminates, without user recourse, any secure transport > connection attempts upon any and all secure transport errors or > warnings, including those caused by a site presenting self-signed > certificates If a self-signed certificate does not cause a secure transport error, then you're all set. For example, it's fine for a self-signed certificate to be in the list of explicitly trusted certificates. In that case, no secure transport error is generated. Try it. :) > Knowing that HSTS allows any validation method a posteriori allows you > interpret this correctly - that self-signed certs *may* be allowed > under HSTS, if the user has added them to their store. But without > that, it may be interpretted incorrectly - that no self-signed certs > would be allowed. That's not what it says. > Furthermore, I'm not sure, but "any and all secure > transport errors or warnings" may be ambiguous. I don't know if it's > an existing standard to enter a warning or error state in event of > (for example) a revocation check failure - although we do know that > most browsers do not present any warning or error. There's more on > that in Adam Langley's thread. If HSTS does not define whether or > not a revocation check failure is an error condition, I think it > should. Indeed. A reference there would be helpful. -- -------------------------------------------+-------------------------------- Reporter: jeff.hodges@… | Owner: =JeffH Type: defect | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Component: strict-transport-sec | Version: Severity: Active WG Document | Keywords: -------------------------------------------+-------------------------------- Ticket URL: <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/websec/trac/ticket/9> websec <http://tools.ietf.org/websec/> _______________________________________________ websec mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/websec
