I’m not sure this is detailing short-comings in technology. Instead, the draft 
is really pointing to issues in implementation?  For example, revocation 
checking exists. Some browsers choose not to use it in the traditional sense 
for various well-documented reasons. Should the RFC detail why the user agents 
are not implementing instead of saying it’s not snappy enough? Same with “too 
big to fail”. Instead of saying that it’s an issue, the draft should say 
there’s a difficulty in enforcing requirements against root store operators 
because their decision tends to be binary (either trust or not trust). 
Although, as Gerv pointed out, Mozilla has shown there are non-binary 
alternatives.


From: Ralph Holz [mailto:ralph.i...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 7:41 PM
To: Jeremy Rowley
Cc: Russ Housley; wpkops@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [wpkops] draft-housley-web-pki-problems-00

Informational RFCs that detail shortcomings of technology exist - see, e.g., 
the work done in the UTA WG (disclaimer: I am an co-author of one such RFC).

Calling for specific mechanisms or forums is indeed odd. I'd suggest to rather 
go for a list of pointers instead.

Ralph

On 8 July 2015 at 05:36, Jeremy Rowley 
<jeremy.row...@digicert.com<mailto:jeremy.row...@digicert.com>> wrote:
This paper sounds like a wish list of select issues taken from the Mozilla 
forums.  I don't see why it would be published as informational RFC? Is the 
goal to make a list of issues that community members feel need to be discussed? 
I don't get it.

The conclusions seem to be 1) Have a CAB Forum that is more transparent (which 
is out of scope of the IEFT - I'm not sure I've ever seen an IETF paper 
specifically call out to another industry body requesting a change in its 
membership?) and 2) Use Let's Encrypt - one specific member of the CA 
community.  Many CAs already offer free tools to automate issuance, making the 
call out to Let's Encrypt very odd in an IETF document, especially where the 
touted feature - new automated tools - already exist 
(https://www.digicert.com/express-install/).  I have a similar complaint about 
the reference to acme where PHB has been proposing something similar for a LONG 
time (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hallambaker-omnibroker-06).

I'm also not sure why you selected the specific issues for inclusion in the 
paper. For example, the paper doesn't mention inconsistencies in validation 
levels, which (imo) is a bigger issue than the "too big to fail" scenario. Cost 
also is a weird issue to include in the document since it's always relative.  
It's also very difficult to discuss without running afoul of anti-trust laws.

Jeremy

-----Original Message-----
From: wpkops [mailto:wpkops-boun...@ietf.org<mailto:wpkops-boun...@ietf.org>] 
On Behalf Of Russ Housley
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 8:57 AM
To: wpkops@ietf.org<mailto:wpkops@ietf.org>
Subject: [wpkops] draft-housley-web-pki-problems-00

I want to make people on this list aware of this draft that was posted 
yesterday.

Stephen Farrell suggested that this list might be a good place to discuss it.

Russ

_______________________________________________
wpkops mailing list
wpkops@ietf.org<mailto:wpkops@ietf.org>
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkops

_______________________________________________
wpkops mailing list
wpkops@ietf.org<mailto:wpkops@ietf.org>
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkops

_______________________________________________
wpkops mailing list
wpkops@ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkops

Reply via email to