Internet-Draft | ACME DTN Node ID | September 2024 |
Sipos | Expires 30 March 2025 | [Page] |
This document specifies an extension to the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol which allows an ACME server to validate the Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) Node ID for an ACME client.
A DTN Node ID is an identifier used in the Bundle Protocol (BP) to name a "singleton endpoint", one which is registered on a single BP node.
The DTN Node ID is encoded as a certificate Subject Alternative Name (SAN) of type otherName with a name form of BundleEID
and as an ACME Identifier type "bundleEID".¶
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.¶
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."¶
This Internet-Draft will expire on 30 March 2025.¶
Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶
Although the original purpose of the Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) [RFC8555] was to allow Public Key Infrastructure Using X.509 (PKIX) Certification Authorities (CAs) to validate network domain names of clients, the same mechanism can be used to validate any of the subject claims supported by the PKIX profile [RFC5280].¶
In the case of this specification, the claim being validated is a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) of type otherName with a name form of BundleEID
, which used to represent a Bundle Protocol (BP) Endpoint ID (EID) in a Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) overlay network.
A DTN Node ID is any EID which can uniquely identify a BP node, as defined in Section 4.2.5.2 of [RFC9171], which is equivalent to the EID being usable as a singleton endpoint.
One common EID used as a Node ID is the Administrative EID, which is guaranteed to exist on any BP node.
Currently the URI schemes "dtn" and "ipn" as defined in [RFC9171] are valid for a singleton endpoint and thus a Node ID.¶
Because the BundleEID
claim is new to ACME, a new ACME Identifier type "bundleEID" is needed to manage this claim within ACME messaging.
A "bundleEID" claim can be part of a pre-authorization or as one of the authorizations of an order containing any number of claims.¶
Once an ACME server validates a Node ID, either as a pre-authorization of the "bundleEID" or as one of the authorizations of an order containing a "bundleEID", the client can finalize the order using an associated certificate signing request (CSR). Because a single order can contain multiple identifiers of multiple types, there can be operational issues for a client attempting to, and possibly failing to, validate those multiple identifiers as described in Section 5.1. Once a certificate is issued for a Node ID, how the ACME client configures the BP Agent with the new certificate is an implementation matter.¶
This document describes the ACME messages, BPv7 payloads, and BPSec requirements needed to validate Node ID ownership. This document does not address:¶
The basic unit of data exchange in a DTN is a Bundle [RFC9171], which consists of a data payload with accompanying metadata. An Endpoint ID is used as the destination of a Bundle and can indicate both a singleton or a group destination. A Node ID is used to identify the source of a Bundle and is used for routing through intermediate nodes, including the final node(s) used to deliver a Bundle to its destination endpoint. A Node ID can also be used as an endpoint for administrative bundles. More detailed descriptions of the rationale and capabilities of these networks can be found in "Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture" [RFC4838].¶
When an ACME client requests a pre-authorization or an order with a "bundleEID" identifier type having a value consistent with a Node ID (see Section 4.2.5 of [RFC9171]), the ACME server offers a "dtn-nodeid-01" challenge type to validate that Node ID. If the ACME client attempts the authorization challenge to validate a Node ID, the ACME server sends an ACME Node ID Validation Challenge Bundle with a destination of the Node ID being validated. The BP agent on that node receives the Challenge Bundle, generates an ACME key authorization digest, and sends an ACME Node ID Validation Response Bundle in reply. An Integrity Gateway on the client side of the DTN can be used to attest to the source of the Response Bundle. Finally, the ACME server receives the Response Bundle and checks that the digest was generated for the associated ACME challenge and from the client account key associated with the original request. This workflow is shown in the diagram of Figure 1 and defined in Section 3.¶
Because the DTN Node ID is used both for routing bundles between BP agents and for multiplexing administrative services within a BP agent, there is no possibility to separate the ACME validation of a Node ID from normal bundle handling for that same Node ID. This leaves administrative record types as a way to leave the Node ID unchanged while disambiguating from other service data bundles.¶
There is nothing in this protocol which requires network-topological co-location of either the ACME client or ACME server with their associated BP agent. While ACME requires a low-enough latency network to perform HTTPS exchanges between ACME client and server, the client's BP agent (the one being validated) could be on the far side of a long-delay or multi-hop DTN network. The means by which the ACME client or server communicates with its associated BP agent is an implementation matter.¶
This document defines CBOR structure using the Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL) of [RFC8610]. The entire CDDL structure can be extracted from the XML version of this document using the XPath expression:¶
'//sourcecode[@type="cddl"]'¶
The following initial fragment defines the top-level symbols of this document's CDDL, which includes the example CBOR content.¶
start = acme-record / bundle / tstr¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
Because this document combines two otherwise unrelated contexts, ACME and DTN, when a protocol term applies to one of those areas and is used in the other its name is prefixed with either "ACME" or "DTN" respectively. Thus within the ACME context the term is "DTN Node ID" while in the DTN context the name is just "Node ID".¶
In this document, several terms are shortened for the sake of terseness. These terms are:¶
Because this is an ACME document, the following DTN Bundle Protocol terms are defined here to clarify how they are used by this ACME identifier type and validation mechanism.¶
This specification is the first to make use of a Bundle Endpoint ID to identify a claim for a certificate request in ACME. In this document, the only purpose for which a Bundle Endpoint ID ACME identifier is validated is as a DTN Node ID (see Section 3), but other specifications can define challenge types for other Endpoint ID uses.¶
Identifiers of type "bundleEID" in certificate requests SHALL appear in an extensionRequest attribute [RFC2985] containing a subjectAltName extension of type otherName with a name form of BundleEID
, identified by id-on-bundleEID
of [IANA-SMI], consistent with the requirements of Section 4.4.2.1 of [RFC9174].
Because the BundleEID
is encoded as an IA5String it SHALL be treated as being in the percent-encoded form of Section 2.1 of [RFC3986].
Any "bundleEID" identifier which fails to properly percent-decode SHALL be rejected with an ACME error type of "malformed".¶
The ACME server SHALL decode and normalize (based on scheme-specific syntax) all received identifiers of type "bundleEID". Any "bundleEID" identifier request which uses a scheme not handled by the ACME server or for which the EID does not match the scheme-specific syntax SHALL be rejected with an ACME error type of "rejectedIdentifier".¶
When an ACME server needs to request proof that a client controls a BundleEID
, it SHALL create an authorization with the identifier type "bundleEID".
The ACME server SHALL NOT attempt to dereference the EID value on its own.
It is the responsibility of an ACME validation method to ensure the EID ownership using a method authorized by the ACME client.¶
An identifier for the Node ID of "dtn://example/" would be formatted as:¶
{ "type": "bundleEID", "value": "dtn://example/" }¶
While the PKIX other name form of BundleEID
can hold any Endpoint ID value, the certificate profile used by [RFC9174] and supported by this ACME validation method in Section 3 requires that the value hold a Node ID.¶
In addition to the narrowing of that certificate profile, this validation method requires that the client's BP agent responds to administrative records sent to the Node ID being validated. This typically is limited to an Administrative Endpoint ID, but there is no prohibition on the administrative element of a BP node from receiving administrative records for, and sending records from, other Node IDs in order to support this validation method.¶
Neither that certificate profile nor this validation method support operating on non-singleton Endpoint IDs, but other validation methods could be defined to do so in order to support other certificate profiles.¶
The DTN Node ID validation method proves control over a Node ID by requiring the ACME client to configure a BP agent to respond to specific Challenge Bundles sent from the ACME server. The ACME server validates control of the Node ID by verifying that received Response Bundles correspond with the BP Node and client account key being validated.¶
Similar to the ACME use case for validating email address ownership [RFC8823], this challenge splits the token into several parts, each being transported by a different channel, and the Key Authorization result requires combining all parts of the token. A separate challenge identifier is used as a filter by BP agents similarly to the challenge "from" email address of [RFC8823].¶
The token parts are:¶
token-chal
:
token-chal
value.
This ensures that the Key Authorization is bound to the specific ACME challenge (and parent ACME authorization).
This token does not appear on the BP channel so that any eavesdropper knowing the client's account key thumbprint (e.g. from some other validation method) is not able to impersonate the client.¶
token-bundle
:
Because multiple Challenge Bundles can be sent to validate the same Node ID, the token-bundle
in the response is needed to correlate with the expected Key Authorization digest.¶
The DTN Node ID Challenge SHALL only be allowed for an EID usable as a DTN Node ID, which is defined per-scheme in Section 4.2.5.1 of [RFC9171]. When an ACME server supports Node ID validation, the ACME server SHALL define a challenge object in accordance with Section 3.1. Once this challenge object is defined, the ACME client may begin the validation.¶
To initiate a Node ID validation, the ACME client performs the following steps:¶
id-chal
and token-chal
from the challenge object in accordance with Section 3.1.¶
id-chal
payload, in accordance with Section 3.3.¶
token-bundle
with token-chal
(each as base64url-encoded text strings) and computes the Key Authorization in accordance with Section 8.1 of [RFC8555] using the full token and client account key thumbprint.¶
id-chal
is no longer usable.
If the authorization fails, the ACME client MAY retry the challenge from Step 3.¶
The ACME server verifies the client's control over a Node ID by performing the following steps:¶
token-bundle
to be able to correlate with a response bundle.
Computing an expected Key Authorization digest is not necessary until a response is received with a chosen hash algorithm.¶
When responding to a Challenge Bundle, a BP agent SHALL send a single Response Bundle in accordance with Section 3.4.
A BP agent SHALL respond to ACME challenges only within the interval of time and only for the id-chal
indicated by the ACME client.
A BP agent SHALL respond to multiple Challenge Bundles with the same ACME parameters but different bundle identities (source Node ID and timestamp); these correspond with the ACME server validating via multiple routing paths.¶
The DTN Node ID Challenge request object is defined by the ACME server when it supports validating Node IDs.¶
The DTN Node ID Challenge request object has the following content:¶
{ "type": "dtn-nodeid-01", "url": "https://example.com/acme/chall/prV_B7yEyA4", "id-chal": "dDtaviYTPUWFS3NK37YWfQ", "token-chal": "tPUZNY4ONIk6LxErRFEjVw" }¶
The token-chal
value included in this object applies to the entire challenge, and may correspond with multiple separate token-bundle
values when multiple Challenge Bundles are sent for a single validation.¶
The DTN Node ID Challenge response object is defined by the ACME client when it authorizes validation of a Node ID. Because a DTN has the potential for significantly longer delays than a non-DTN network, the ACME client is able to inform the ACME server if a particular validation round-trip is expected to take longer than normal network delays (on the order of seconds).¶
The DTN Node ID Challenge response object has the following content:¶
{ "rtt": 300.0 }¶
A challenge response is not sent until the BP agent has been configured to properly respond to the challenge, so the RTT value is meant to indicate any node-specific path delays expected to encountered from the ACME server. Because there is no requirement on the path (or paths) which bundles may traverse between the ACME server and the BP agent, and the ACME server can attempt some path diversity, the RTT value SHOULD be pessimistic.¶
A default bundle response interval, used when the object does not contain an RTT, SHOULD be a configurable parameter of the ACME server. If the ACME client indicated an RTT value in the object, the response interval SHOULD be twice the RTT (with limiting logic applied as described below). The lower limit on response interval is network-specific, but SHOULD NOT be shorter than one second. The upper limit on response interval is network-specific, but SHOULD NOT be longer than one minute (60 seconds) for a terrestrial-only DTN.¶
Each ACME Node ID Validation Challenge Bundle SHALL be structured and encoded in accordance with [RFC9171].¶
Each Challenge Bundle has parameters as listed here:¶
The Challenge Bundle administrative record content SHALL consist of a CBOR map containing two pairs:¶
id-chal
, copied from the challenge object, represented as a CBOR byte string.¶
token-bundle
, represented as a CBOR byte string.
The token-bundle
is a random value that uniquely identifies the challenge bundle.
This value SHALL have at least 128 bits of entropy.
See [RFC4086] for additional information on randomness requirements.¶
This structure is part of the extension CDDL in Appendix A. An example full Challenge Bundle is included in Appendix B.1¶
For interoperability, entities which use this validation method SHALL support the hash algorithm "SHA-256" of [RFC9054], but can use other hash algorithms. This requirement allows for different implementations to be configured to use an interoperable algorithm, but does not preclude the use of other algorithms.¶
If the BP agent generating a Challenge Bundle does not have a well-synchronized clock or the agent responding to the challenge is expected to not have a well-synchronized clock, the bundle SHALL include a Bundle Age extension block.¶
Challenge Bundles SHALL include a Block Integrity Block (BIB) in accordance with Section 4 or with a Security Source identical to the bundle Source Node. Challenge Bundles SHALL NOT be directly encrypted by Block Confidentiality Block (BCB) or any other method (see Section 7.1).¶
A proper Challenge Bundle meets all of the following criteria:¶
id-chal
as indicated in the ACME challenge object.
The challenge payload contains a token-bundle
meeting the definition in Section 3.3.
The challenge payload contains at least one hash algorithm identifier acceptable to the client.¶
Any of the failures above SHALL cause the challenge bundle to be deleted and otherwise ignored by the BP agent.¶
Each ACME Node ID Validation Response Bundle SHALL be structured and encoded in accordance with [RFC9171].¶
Each Response Bundle has parameters as listed here:¶
The Response Bundle administrative record content SHALL consist of a CBOR map containing three pairs:¶
id-chal
, copied from the Request Bundle, represented as a CBOR byte string.¶
token-bundle
, copied from the Request Bundle, represented as a CBOR byte string.¶
This structure is part of the extension CDDL in Appendix A. An example full Response Bundle is included in Appendix B.2¶
If the BP agent responding to a Challenge Bundle does not have a well-synchronized clock, it SHALL use any information about last-hop delays and (if present) Bundle Age extension data to infer the age of the Challenge Bundle and lifetime of the Response Bundle.¶
Response Bundles SHALL include a BIB in accordance with Section 4. Response Bundles SHALL NOT be directly encrypted by BCB or any other method (see Section 7.1 for explanation).¶
A proper Response Bundle meets all of the following criteria:¶
id-chal
and token-bundle
as sent in the Challenge Bundle (this is also how the two bundles are correlated).
The response payload contains a hash algorithm identifier acceptable to the server (as indicated in the challenge bundle).
The response payload contains the expected Key Authorization digest computed by the ACME server.¶
Any of the failures above SHALL cause that single-perspective validation to fail. Any of the failures above SHOULD be distinguished as subproblems to the ACME client. The lack of a response within the expected response interval, as defined in Section 3.2, SHALL also be treated as a validation failure.¶
To avoid on-path attacks in certain networks, an ACME server can perform a single validation using multiple challenge bundle sources or via multiple routing paths. This technique is called multi-perspective validation as recommended in Section 10.2 of [RFC8555] and an implementation used by Let's Encrypt is described in [LE-multi-perspective].¶
When required by policy, an ACME server SHALL send multiple challenge bundles from different sources in the DTN network. When multiple Challenge Bundles are sent for a single validation, it is a matter of ACME server policy to determine whether or not the validation as a whole is successful. The result of each single-source validation is defined as success or failure in Section 3.4.1.¶
A RECOMMENDED validation policy is to succeed if the challenge from a primary bundle source is successful and if there are no more than one failure from a secondary source. The determination of which perspectives are considered primary or secondary is an implementation matter.¶
Regardless of whether a validation is single- or multi-perspective, a validation failure SHALL be indicated by an ACME error type of "incorrectResponse". Each specific perspective failure SHOULD be indicated to the ACME client as a validation subproblem.¶
This section defines a BIB use which closely resembles the function of DKIM email signing [RFC6376]. In this mechanism a routing node in a DTN sub-network attests to the origination of a bundle by adding a BIB before forwarding it. The bundle receiver then need not trust the source of the bundle, but only trust this security source node. The receiver needs policy configuration to know which security sources are permitted to attest for which bundle sources.¶
An integrity gateway SHALL validate the Source Node ID of a bundle, using local-network-specific means, before adding a BIB to the bundle. The exact means by which an integrity gateway validates a bundle's source is network-specific, but could use physical-layer, network-layer or BP-convergence-layer authentication. The bundle source could also add its own BIB with a local-network-specific security context or local-network-specific key material (i.e. a group key shared within the local network).¶
When an integrity gateway adds a BIB it SHALL be in accordance with [RFC9172]. The BIB targets SHALL cover both the payload block and the primary block (either directly as a target or as additional authenticated data for the payload block MAC/signature). The Security Source of this BIB SHALL be either the bundle source Node ID itself or a routing node trusted by the destination node (see Section 7.2).¶
The ultimate purpose of this ACME validation is to allow a CA to issue certificates following the profiles of Section 4.4.2 of [RFC9174], and Section 4 of [I-D.ietf-dtn-bpsec-cose]. These purposes are referred to here as bundle security certificates.¶
One defining aspect of bundle security certificates is the Extended Key Usage key purpose id-kp-bundleSecurity
of [IANA-SMI], as defined in Section 4.4.2.1 of [RFC9174].
When requesting a certificate which includes a Node ID SAN, the CSR SHOULD include an Extended Key Usage of id-kp-bundleSecurity
.
When a bundle security certificate is issued based on a validated Node ID SAN, the certificate SHALL include an Extended Key Usage of id-kp-bundleSecurity
.¶
A single bundle security CSR MAY contain a mixed set of SAN claims, including combinations of "ip", "dns", and "bundleEID" claims. There is no restriction on how a certificate combines these claims, but each claim SHALL be validated by an ACME server to issue such a certificate as part of an associated ACME order. This is no different than the existing behavior of [RFC8555] but is mentioned here to make sure that CA policy handles such situations; especially related to validation failure of an identifier in the presence of multiple identifiers. The initial "ip" validations are defined in [RFC8738] and initial "dns" validations are defined in [RFC8555] and [RFC8737]. The specific use case of [RFC9174] allows, and for some network policies requires, that a certificate authenticate both the DNS name of an entity as well as the Node ID of the entity.¶
ACME extensions specified in this document can be used to request encryption-only or signing-only bundle security certificates. The validity of a request for either a restricted-use or unrestricted-use certificate is dependent on both CA policy to issue such certificates as well as constraints based on the requested key and algorithm types.¶
In order to request signing only bundle security certificate, the CSR SHALL include the key usage extension with digitalSignature and/or nonRepudiation bits set and no other bits set.¶
In order to request encryption only bundle security certificate, the CSR SHALL include the key usage extension with keyEncipherment or keyAgreement bits set and no other bits set.¶
Presence of both of the above sets of key usage bits in the CSR, as well as absence of key usage extension in the CSR, signals to ACME server to issue a bundle security certificate suitable for both signing and encryption.¶
This section is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.¶
[NOTE to the RFC Editor: please remove this section before publication, as well as the reference to [RFC7942] and [github-dtn-demo-agent] and [github-dtn-wireshark].]¶
This section records the status of known implementations of the protocol defined by this specification at the time of posting of this Internet-Draft, and is based on a proposal described in [RFC7942]. The description of implementations in this section is intended to assist the IETF in its decision processes in progressing drafts to RFCs. Please note that the listing of any individual implementation here does not imply endorsement by the IETF. Furthermore, no effort has been spent to verify the information presented here that was supplied by IETF contributors. This is not intended as, and must not be construed to be, a catalog of available implementations or their features. Readers are advised to note that other implementations can exist.¶
An example implementation of the this draft of ACME Node ID Validation has been created as a GitHub project [github-dtn-demo-agent] and is intended to use as a proof-of-concept and as a possible source of interoperability testing.¶
A Wireshark dissector for of the this draft of ACME Node ID Validation has been created as a GitHub project [github-dtn-wireshark] and is intended to be used to inspect and troubleshoot implementations.¶
This section separates security considerations into threat categories based on guidance of BCP 72 [RFC3552].¶
Because this challenge mechanism is used to bootstrap security between DTN Nodes, the challenge and its response are likely to be transferred in plaintext. The only ACME data present on-the-wire is a random token and a cryptographic digest, so there is no sensitive data to be leaked within the Node ID Validation bundle exchange. Because each challenge uses a separate token pair, there is no value in an on-path attacker seeing the tokens from past challenges and/or responses.¶
It is possible for intermediate BP nodes to encapsulate-and-encrypt Challenge and/or Response Bundles while they traverse untrusted networks, but that is a DTN configuration matter outside of the scope of this document.¶
As described in Section 10.1 of [RFC8555], it is possible for an active attacker to alter data on both ACME client channel and the DTN validation channel.¶
The primary mitigation is to delegate bundle integrity sourcing to a trusted routing node near, in the sense of bundle routing topology, to the bundle source node as defined in Section 4. This is functionally similar to DKIM signing of [RFC6376] and provides some level of bundle origination.¶
Another way to mitigate single-path on-path attacks is to attempt validation of the same Node ID from multiple sources or via multiple bundle routing paths, as defined in Section 3.5. It is not a trivial task to guarantee bundle routing though, so more advanced techniques such as onion routing (using bundle-in-bundle encapsulation) could be employed.¶
It is possible for an on-path attacker to replay both Challenge Bundles or Response Bundles. Even in a properly-configured DTN it is possible that intermediate bundle routers to use multi-path forwarding of a singleton-destination bundle.¶
Ultimately, the point of the ACME bundle exchange is to derive a Key Authorization and its cryptographic digest and communicate it back to the ACME server for validation, so the uniqueness of the Key Authorization directly determines the scope of replay validity.
The uniqueness of each token-bundle
to each challenge bundle ensures that the Key Authorization is unique to the challenge bundle.
The uniqueness of each token-chal
to the ACME challenge ensures that the Key Authorization is unique to that ACME challenge and not based solely on values visible to on-path eavesdroppers.¶
Having each bundle's primary block and payload block covered by a BIB from a trusted security source (see Section 4) ensures that a replayed bundle cannot be altered in the blocks used by ACME. All together, these properties mean that there is no degraded security caused by replay of either a Challenge Bundle or a Response Bundle even in the case where the primary or payload block is not covered by a BIB. The worst that can come of bundle replay is the waste of network resources as described in Section 7.4.¶
The behaviors described in this section all amount to a potential denial-of-service to a BP agent.¶
A malicious entity can continually send Challenge Bundles to a BP agent. The victim BP agent can ignore Challenge Bundles which do not conform to the specific time interval and challenge token for which the ACME client has informed the BP agent that challenges are expected. The victim BP agent can require all Challenge Bundles to be BIB-signed to ensure authenticity of the challenge.¶
A malicious entity can continually send Response Bundles to a BP agent. The victim BP agent can ignore Response Bundles which do not conform to the specific time interval or Source Node ID or challenge token for an active Node ID validation.¶
Similar to other validation methods, an ACME server validating a DTN Node ID could be used as a denial of service amplifier. For this reason any ACME server can rate-limit validation activities for individual clients and individual certificate requests.¶
Because this protocol relies on ACME for part of its operation, the security considerations of [RFC8555] apply to all ACME client--server exchanges during Node ID validation.¶
Because this protocol relies on BPv7 for part of its operation, the security considerations of [RFC9171] and [RFC9172] apply to all BP messaging during Node ID validation.¶
Although messaging between an ACME client or ACME server an its associated BP agent are out-of-scope for this document, both of those channels are critical to Node ID validation security. Either channel can potentially leak data or provide attack vectors if not properly secured. These channels need to protect against spoofing of messaging in both directions to avoid interruption of normal validation sequencing and to prevent false validations from succeeding.¶
The ACME server and its BP agent exchange the outgoing id-chal
, token-bundle
, and Key Authorization digest but these values do not need to be confidential (they are also in plaintext over the BP channel).¶
Depending on implementation details, the ACME client might transmit the client account key thumbprint to its BP agent to allow computing the Key Authorization digest on the BP agent. If an ACME client does transmit its client account key thumbprint to a BP agent, it is important that this data is kept confidential because it provides the binding of the client account key to the Node ID validation (as well as for all other types of ACME validation). Avoiding this transmission would require a full round-trip between BP agent and ACME client, which can be undesirable if the two are separated by a long-delay network.¶
This specification adds to the ACME registry group and BP registry group for this behavior.¶
Within the "Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) Protocol" registry group [IANA-ACME], the following entry has been added to the "ACME Identifier Types" registry.¶
Label | Reference |
---|---|
bundleEID | This specification and [RFC3986] |
Within the "Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) Protocol" registry group [IANA-ACME], the following entry has been added to the "ACME Validation Methods" registry.¶
Label | Identifier Type | ACME | Reference |
---|---|---|---|
dtn-nodeid-01 | bundleEID | Y | This specification |
Within the "Bundle Protocol" registry group [IANA-BP], the following entries have been added to the "Bundle Administrative Record Types" registry.¶
[NOTE to the RFC Editor: For [RFC5050] compatibility the AR-TBD value needs to be no larger than 15, but such compatibility is not needed. For BPbis the AR-TBD value needs to be no larger than 65535 as defined by [I-D.ietf-dtn-bpv7-admin-iana].]¶
Bundle Protocol Version | Value | Description | Reference |
---|---|---|---|
7 | AR-TBD | ACME Node ID Validation | This specification |
[NOTE to the RFC Editor: The "0xFFFF" in this CDDL is replaced by the "ACME Node ID Validation" administrative record type code.]¶
The normative CDDL extension of BP [RFC9171] for the ACME bundles is:¶
; All ACME records have the same structure $admin-record /= [0xFFFF, acme-record] acme-record = { id-chal, token-bundle, ? key-auth-digest ; present in Response Bundles ? alg-list ; present in Challenge Bundles } id-chal = (1 => bstr) token-bundle = (2 => bstr) key-auth-digest = (3 => [ alg: alg-id, value: bstr ]) alg-list = (4 => [+ alg-id]) ; From the IANA registry, only hash algorithms allowed alg-id: tstr / int¶
[NOTE to the RFC Editor: The "0xFFFF" in these examples are replaced by the "ACME Node ID Validation" administrative record type code.]¶
This example is a bundle exchange for the ACME server with Node ID "dtn://acme-server/" performing a verification for ACME client Node ID "dtn://acme-client/". The example bundles use no block CRC or BPSec integrity, which is for simplicity and is not recommended for normal use. The provided figures are extended diagnostic notation [RFC8610].¶
For this example the ACME client key thumbprint has the base64url encoded value of:¶
"LPJNul-wow4m6DsqxbninhsWHlwfp0JecwQzYpOLmCQ"¶
And the ACME-server generated token-chal
has the base64url-encoded value of:¶
"tPUZNY4ONIk6LxErRFEjVw"¶
For the single challenge bundle in this example, the token-bundle
(transported as byte string via BP) has the base64url-encoded value of:¶
"p3yRYFU4KxwQaHQjJ2RdiQ"¶
The minimal-but-valid Challenge Bundle is shown in Figure 2. This challenge requires that the ACME client respond within a 60 second time window.¶
When the tokens are combined with the key thumbprint, the full Key Authorization value (a single string split across lines for readability) is:¶
"p3yRYFU4KxwQaHQjJ2RdiQtPUZNY4ONIk6LxErRFEjVw." "LPJNul-wow4m6DsqxbninhsWHlwfp0JecwQzYpOLmCQ"¶
The minimal-but-valid Response Bundle is shown in Figure 3. This response indicates that there is 30 seconds remaining in the response time window.¶
This specification is based on DTN use cases related to PKIX certificate issuance.¶
The workflow and terminology of this validation method was originally copied from the work of Alexey Melnikov in [RFC8823].¶