Subject: WG Review: Keys In DNS (kidns)

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:00:01 -0700 (PDT)

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Security Area.  The IESG
has not made any determination as yet. The following draft charter was
submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only. Please send
your comments to the IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by Tuesday,
November 7, 2010                           

Keys In DNS (kidns)
-----------------------
Last modified: 2010-10-25
Current status: Proposed Working Group

Chairs:
    Warren Kumari <[email-masked]>
    Ondrej Sury <[email-masked]>

Security Area Directors:
    Sean Turner <[email-masked]>
    Tim Polk <[email-masked]>

Security Area Advisor:
    Tim Polk <[email-masked]>

Mailing Lists:
    General Discussion: [email-masked]
    To Subscribe:       https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/keyassure
    Archive:      
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/keyassure/current/maillist.html

Objective:
Specify mechanisms and techniques that allow Internet applications to
establish cryptographically secured communications by using information
distributed through the DNS and authenticated using DNSSEC to obtain
public keys which are associated with a service located at a
domain name.

Problem Statement:

Entities on the Internet are usually identified using domain names and
forming a cryptographically secured connection to the entity requires
the entity to authenticate its name. For instance, in HTTPS, a server
responding to a query for <https://www.example.com> is expected to
authenticate as "www.example.com". Security protocols such as TLS and
IPsec accomplish this authentication by allowing an endpoint to prove
ownership of a private key whose corresponding public key is somehow
bound to the name being authenticated. As a pre-requisite for
authentication, then, these protocols require a mechanism for bindings
to be asserted between public keys and domain names.

DNSSEC provides a mechanism for a domain operator to sign DNS
information directly, using keys that are bound to the domain by the
parent domain; relying parties can continue this chain up to any trust
anchor that they accept. In this way, bindings of keys to domains are
asserted not by external entities, but by the entities that operate the
DNS. In addition, this technique inherently limits the scope of any
given entity to the names in zones he controls.

This working group will develop mechanisms for domain operators to
present bindings between names within their control and public keys, in
such a way that these bindings can be integrity-protected (and thus
shown to be authentically from the domain operator) using DNSSEC and
used as a basis for authentication in protocols that use domain names as
identifiers. Possible starting points for these deliverables include
draft-hallambaker-certhash, draft-hoffman-keys-linkage-from-dns, and
draft-josefsson-keyassure-tls.

The mechanisms developed by this group will address bindings between
domain names and keys, allowing flexibility for all key-transport
mechanisms supported by the application protocols addressed (e.g., both
self-signed and CA-issued certificates for use in TLS).

The group may also create documents that describe how protocol entities
can discover and validate these bindings in the execution of specific
applications. This work would be done in coordination with the IETF
Working Groups responsible for the protocols.

Milestones:
Dec 2010  First WG draft of standards-track protocol for using DNS to
          associate hosts with keys for TLS and DTLS
Jan 2011  First WG draft of standards-track protocols for using DNS to
          associate hosts with IPsec
Jun 2011  Protocol for using DNS to associate domain names with keys
          for TLS and DTLS to IESG
Aug 2011  Protocols for using DNS to associate domain names with keys
          for IPsec to IESG
Aug 2011  Recharter