Hi Metin,

I’m Minar, an author of daneportal.net where we implement SMIMEA records in 
federated DANE cert provisioning. I’m happy to hear more DANE discussion! :)

You wrote:

So, for [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> through 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> , you would hit 
*.example.edu<http://secure-web.cisco.com/1m9sVPSr2H8pVH1HJOAF1RrIiLKJY3LofJCjye7q1iYK5IbIreyFPPI0SLhIjFKex1XPcUjIRbccOrw0hC2L5x5uLgtak3TqTOiaNlg_vivDAEt2s0j_ojpa2Zx2_9igqF6Np41tphXKyCDPUgG1Ucm6rahLlCjRvFvjbzyMIawyhcjURZFhaZ13yPe6vR9q5_KBZXpgON91R_9N8OUIlHzbmyyqmvYgfQwtmQtkF97iN5uJNI7Px1oNC-xw6SB-a1I83XYkwEBYnxWPxF9YciGZKXVXTHH2LpqUDgp4S4g32KfZNMOp5V9Ilas_RsMC2h1uEioyfQ21VBXr0IFO5mBfooMrApAmdMXEtJMebgokkA2G9-a8sgShgK41jx0dUW8R9OT8A7wucbfM5Ju1kp1jCu6Dj9mbtFd2I5gd5SEc4F-MxJBRzgEKD-teET4CN/http%3A%2F%2Fexample.edu%2F>
 SMIMEA, which would return the root cert.  Does that make sense?

However, it remained unclear to me if that is intended use? (And if so, how 
should anybody know as it is not mentioned in RFC 8162?)

I’m also curious about that. Maybe this merits a clarification update in an RFC?

It is recommended to use two separate certificates, one for encrypting and one 
for signing. If that recommendation is followed, how does RFC 8162 / RFC 6698 
allow for this? Is it possible to have two records for the same user in the DNS 
(I’m not very familiar with the internals of DNS)?

It is totally possible to have many records for the same user. E.g. for 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>, in the DNS this is as simple as 
serving multiple SMIMEA records for the “<jdoe_hashed>._smimecert.example.com” 
name.
Absurd example: Jane Doe could have 7 certificates all being served at the same 
time because she likes to change her signing key every day
DANE clients (e.g. using libCanute) could end up using any suitable cert for 
encrypting, and should try all suitable certs for verification (taking into 
account the USAGE field/related CA constraining SMIMEA records).

How could we identify which is which, unless the full certificate (not only the 
key) is stored in the DNS record? Even then, wouldn’t it be more practical to 
use different type values, so the client can specifically look for the the 
record it needs?

You’ve hit the mark -- the attributes are in the cert like usual if it is the 
full cert (SELECTOR=0). But that leaves the shortcoming that clients are doing 
extra processing/bigger DNS responses.

I’m happy to hear you bring this up, since I also agree that we are missing an 
important mechanism for clients to specifically search for a signature vs 
encrypting cert record on DNS -- it’s unfortunate the current RFC did not 
address this.

There was an older idea bounced around that we implemented for daneportal.net 
of having dedicated meta domains for those two:
E.g. Jane Doe’s encrypting cert would be an SMIMEA record under 
“<hash>._encr._smimecert.example.com”, and her 7 signature certs could all be 
in “<hash>._sign._smimecert.example.com”.
For the basic RFC compliance, this is done in addition to putting a copy of all 
those records in the usual <hash>._smimecert zone.
Clients that are wise to that non-standard _encr/_sign domains could speed up 
cert resolution with that pathway, but could always fallback to the standard 
_smimecert domain. The cert attributes are only considered if the USAGE calls 
for it (PKIX-CA/EE constrained).

(Psst that old RFC draft that included this discussion is readable in the 
Canute docs: 
https://github.com/gmu-msl/canute/blob/main/docs/draft-ietf-dane-smime-02-srose.txt
 though the current resolver in that repo is strictly RFC compliant)

That’s my two cents – please do touch back with any more discussion / 
questions! I’d love to collaborate and increase the presence of DANE / SMIME 
implementations.

-Minar

Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows

________________________________
From: dane <[email protected]> on behalf of Metin Savignano 
<[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2022 10:37:04 AM
To: Eric Osterweil <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [dane] Question regarding RFC 8162

Hi Eric, hi everyone,

I haven’t seen any reaction my last message yet. I had hoped to get some 
clarification.

You wrote:

So, for [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> through 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> , you would hit 
*.example.edu<http://secure-web.cisco.com/1m9sVPSr2H8pVH1HJOAF1RrIiLKJY3LofJCjye7q1iYK5IbIreyFPPI0SLhIjFKex1XPcUjIRbccOrw0hC2L5x5uLgtak3TqTOiaNlg_vivDAEt2s0j_ojpa2Zx2_9igqF6Np41tphXKyCDPUgG1Ucm6rahLlCjRvFvjbzyMIawyhcjURZFhaZ13yPe6vR9q5_KBZXpgON91R_9N8OUIlHzbmyyqmvYgfQwtmQtkF97iN5uJNI7Px1oNC-xw6SB-a1I83XYkwEBYnxWPxF9YciGZKXVXTHH2LpqUDgp4S4g32KfZNMOp5V9Ilas_RsMC2h1uEioyfQ21VBXr0IFO5mBfooMrApAmdMXEtJMebgokkA2G9-a8sgShgK41jx0dUW8R9OT8A7wucbfM5Ju1kp1jCu6Dj9mbtFd2I5gd5SEc4F-MxJBRzgEKD-teET4CN/http%3A%2F%2Fexample.edu%2F>
 SMIMEA, which would return the root cert.  Does that make sense?

However, it remained unclear to me if that is intended use? (And if so, how 
should anybody know as it is not mentioned in RFC 8162?)

And please let me ask a second question:

It is recommended to use two separate certificates, one for encrypting and one 
for signing. If that recommendation is followed, how does RFC 8162 / RFC 6698 
allow for this? Is it possible to have two records for the same user in the DNS 
(I’m not very familiar with the internals of DNS)?

How could we identify which is which, unless the full certificate (not only the 
key) is stored in the DNS record? Even then, wouldn’t it be more practical to 
use different type values, so the client can specifically look for the the 
record it needs?

Please forgive me for dumb questions.

Thanks!
Metin

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