Hi, I think the real difference here is not "CA-issued certs" vs. "self-signed certs", but "accepting any cert" vs. "accepting certs you can verify (as trusted peers according to your local policy)".
We definitely want to discourage blindly accepting any certificate (CA-issued or self-signed); but when properly verified, self-signed certificates are not any less secure than CA-issued ones. Best regards, Pasi > -----Original Message----- > From: Chris Lonvick > Sent: 09 May, 2008 16:20 > To: Rainer Gerhards > Cc: syslog@ietf.org > Subject: [Syslog] Self-signed certs - was: Re: > -transport-tls-12, section 4.2.3 (fingerprints) > > Hi, > > On Thu, 8 May 2008, Rainer Gerhards wrote: > <some elided for brevity> > > However, I wonder why it would be useful to auto-generate certs. > > Probably I am overlooking somehting obvious. But: isn't cert > > auto-generation equal to no authentication? After all, if a > > *self-signed* cert is generated by the remote peer AND we accept > > it, doesn't that essentially mean we accept any peer because the > > peer can put whatever it likes into the cert? I do not see why > > this is any better than having no cert at all... > > It minimally protects against masquerade and disclosure, two of the > threats we agreed upon. It will also provide a TCP-based transport > for anyone who wishes/needs to have a mechanism to throttle the flow > of packets for congestion control - something that you cannot do > with the UDP transport. > > Those are the reasons I can think of. You do raise a good point by > questioning this and I'd like to see some discussion from the WG. > Are these reasons sufficient to keep self-signed certs in the > specification? If so, should specific comments be made about their > use? > > WG Chair Hat sort'a on, sort'a off: I'm thinking that a self-signed > cert is the method of least effort to provide congestion control for > syslog and it should be included in the document just for that > reason. This was the objection raised by the Transport ADs when > they saw that syslog-transport-udp was the only REQUIRED transport. > I agree that self-signed certs don't really provide good protection > and that should be noted in the Security Considerations Section. If > you don't agree with this, please object now. > > If you do agree with this, does the following text work: > === > (Perhaps as a third paragraph in Section 4.2.4) > > Self-signed certificates will provide minimal protection against > modification and disclosure. Their use will not provide effective > protection against masqeurade unless they are used with certificate > fingerprint authorization lists. The use of self-signed > certificates without certificate fingerprint authorization lists is > NOT RECOMMENDED. However since tls is a tcp-based protocol, > enabling tls, even with self-signed certificates, will effectively > enable congestion control in the network. See Section 8.6 of > [syslog-protocol]. > > And perhaps merge the first three sentences of the above with > the second paragraph in Sec Considerations section 5.1. Current: > The use of self-signed certificates with certificate fingerprint > authorization lists provides more protection from > masquerade and man-in-the-middle attacks than forgoing certificate > validation and authorization. > === > > Thanks, > Chris _______________________________________________ Syslog mailing list Syslog@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/syslog
