Tim, How do you envision that any previous or future work product of members of the CAB Forum on profile-type documents be integrated into the work of this group?
Namely, in Section 9 of the Baseline Requirements there was some language about Issuer and Subject Identifiers, and then Appendices A and B discussed key lengths, algorithms, and certificate extensions. I am thinking that because there will be an overlap of participation from many of the same players it will not be a problem, but will one group end up deferring to the other on certain types of issues, or are they completely separate? Thanks, Ben From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tim Moses Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2012 6:45 AM To: '[email protected]' Subject: [wpkops] First draft charter proposal Colleagues - Here is a first draft of a charter proposal. Please give it some thought and share the results of your deliberations. Thanks a lot. All the best. Tim. The Web PKI is the set of systems and procedures most commonly used to protect the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of communications between Web browsers and Web content servers. It first appeared in 1993 or thereabouts and has developed continuously in a somewhat organic fashion since then. Across all the suppliers and the point releases of their products, there are now hundreds of variations on the Web PKI in regular use. And this can be a source of problems both for end-users and certificate issuers. For end-users, there is no clear view whether certificate "problems" remain when they see indication of a "good" connection. For instance, in some browsers, a "good" indication may be displayed when a "revoked" response has been received and "accepted" by the user. Whereas, other browsers may refuse to display the contents under these circumstances. And for issuers, it can be difficult to predict what proportion of the user population will accept a certificate chain with certain characteristics. For instance, when a browser includes a nonce in an OCSP request but the server supplies a response that does not include the nonce, it is hard to know which browsers will accept and which will reject the response. Starting from the premise that more consistency in Web security behavior is desirable, a natural first step would be to document current and historic browser and server behavior. Future activities may attempt to prescribe how the Web PKI "should" work, and the prescription may turn out to be a proper subset of the PKIX PKI. However, that task is explicitly not a goal of the proposed working group. Instead, the group's goal is merely to describe how the Web PKI "actually" works in the set of browsers and servers that are in common use today. Additionally, a number of applications (other than the Web) may use the same trust anchors as the ones used by the Web. These applications include: document signing; code signing; and email. They may use PKI in a way that differs from the way in which the Web uses it. Therefore, these applications are explicitly out of scope for the working group. Also, the reliability of the Web PKI depends critically on the practices of its certificate issuers. However, the topic of practices is outside the scope of the IETF. Therefore, this will be left to other competent bodies. That there are technical shortcomings with Web PKI, as it is practiced today, is well recognized. And, that there is also some urgency in addressing these shortcomings is also well recognized. But, it is felt that too much haste can be counter-productive. The expectation is that the work of this group will bring to light, in a systematic way, aspects of the Web PKI that should be progressed in future working groups of the IETF's Security Area, and that suppliers will be willing to participate in those working groups and modify their products to comply with their standards. Given the urgency of the required developments and the scale of the task, it is agreed that adherence to the published schedule should take precedence over completeness of the results. The working group should focus its initial attention on the browser and server versions that make up the largest part of the desktop and mobile Web today. The output documents will all be BCP-style RFCs. 1. Agree the working group charter (1 month). 2. Catalog the products and versions to be analyzed (1 month). 3. First WG draft of "trust model" document (4 months). 4. First WG draft of "public-key submission and certificate installation" document (4 months). 5. First WG draft of "certificate, CRL, and OCSP profile" document (8 months). 6. First WG draft of "certificate, CRL, and OCSP processing" document (12 months). 7. First WG draft of "certificate re-issuance" document (4 months). 8. First WG draft of "certificate renewal" document (4 months). 9. First WG draft of "certificate revocation" document (8 months). 10. IESG submission of "trust model" document (16 months). 11. IESG submission of "public-key submission and certificate installation" document (16 months). 12. IESG submission of "certificate, CRL, and OCSP profile" document (20 months). 13. IESG submission of "certificate, CRL, and OCSP processing" document (24 months). 14. IESG submission of "certificate re-issuance" document (16 months). 15. IESG submission of "certificate renewal" document (16 months). 16. IESG submission of "certificate revocation" document (20 months) The schedule is predicated upon the group's ability to recruit a sufficient number of editors and engage either the relevant product experts or other experts willing to test the selected product configurations. T: +1 613 270 3183
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