Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) Processing for Email Addresses

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS resource record (RR) provides a mechanism for domains to express the allowed set of Certification Authorities (CAs) that are authorized to issue certificates for the domain. [RFC8659] contains the core CAA specification, where Property Tags that restrict the issuance of certificates which certify domain names are defined. [RFC8659] does not define a mechanism to restrict the issuance of certificates which certify email addresses that include the domain name.¶

This document defines a CAA Property Tag which restricts the allowed set of issuers of certificates which certify email addresses. Its syntax and processing are similar to the "issue" Property Tag as defined in section 4.2 of [RFC8659].¶

2. Conventions and Definitions

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.¶

3. Syntax of the "issuemail" Property Tag

This document defines the "issuemail" Property Tag. The presence of one or more "issuemail" Properties in the Relevant Resource Record Set ([RFC8659]) indicates that the domain is requesting that Certification Authorities restrict the issuance of certificates that certify email addresses.¶

The CAA "issuemail" Property Value has the following sub-syntax (specified in ABNF as per [RFC5234]):¶

  issuemail-value = *WSP [issuer-domain-name *WSP]
    [";" *WSP [parameters *WSP]]

  issuer-domain-name = label *("." label)
  label = (ALPHA / DIGIT) *( *("-") (ALPHA / DIGIT))

  parameters = (parameter *WSP ";" *WSP parameters) / parameter
  parameter = tag *WSP "=" *WSP value
  tag = (ALPHA / DIGIT) *( *("-") (ALPHA / DIGIT))
  value = *(%x21-3A / %x3C-7E)

The production rules for "WSP", "ALPHA", and "DIGIT" are defined in Appendix B.1 of [RFC5234]. Readers who are familiar with the sub-syntax of the "issue" and "issuewild" Property Tags will recognize that this sub-syntax is identical.¶

The meanings of each production rule within "issuemail-value" are as follows:¶

• "issuer-domain-name": A domain name of the CA comprised of one or more labels¶
• "label": A single LDH domain label¶
• "parameters": A semicolon-separated list of parameters¶
• "parameter": A tag and a value, separated by an equals sign ("=")¶
• "tag": A keyword which identifies the type of parameter¶
• "value": The string value for a parameter¶

4. Processing of the "issuemail" Property Tag

Prior to issuing a certificate that certifies an email address, the Certification Authority MUST check for publication of a Relevant Resource Record Set (RRSet). The discovery of such a Relevant RRSet MUST be performed using the algorithm specified in section 3 of [RFC8659]. The input domain to the discovery algorithm SHALL be the domain "part" ([RFC5322]) of the email address that is being certified. If the domain "part" of the email address being certified is an Internationalized Domain Name ([RFC5890]) that contains one or more U-Labels, then all U-Labels MUST be converted to their A-Label representation ([RFC5891]) for the purpose of discovering the Relevant RRSet for that email address.¶

If the Relevant RRSet is empty, or the Relevant RRSet does not contain any "issuemail" Properties, then the domain has not requested any restrictions on the issuance of certificates for email addresses. The presence of other Property Tags, such as "issue" or "issuewild", does not restrict the issuance of certificates which certify email addresses.¶

For each "issuemail" Property in the Relevant RRSet, the Certification Authority SHALL compare its issuer-domain-name with the issuer-domain-name as expressed in the Property Value. If there is not any "issuemail" record whose issuer-domain-name (as expressed in the Property Value) matches the Certification Authority's issuer-domain-name, then the Certification Authority MUST NOT issue the certificate. If the Relevant RRSet contains any "issuemail" Property whose issuemail-value does not conform to the ABNF syntax as defined in Section 3 of this document, then those records SHALL be treated as if the issuer-domain-name in the issuemail-value is the empty string.¶

If the certificate certifies more than one email address, then the Certification Authority MUST perform the above procedure for each email address being certified.¶

The assignment of issuer-domain-names to Certification Authorities is beyond the scope of this document.¶

Parameters may be defined by a Certification Authority to further restrict the issuance of certificates. For example, a Certification Authority may define a parameter which contains an account identifier. If this parameter is present in an issuemail Property, the Certification Authority will verify that the account that is requesting the certificate matches the account specified in the Property and will refuse to issue the certificate if they do not match.¶

The processing of parameters in the issuemail-value are specific to each Certification Authority and are beyond the scope of this document. In particular, this document does not define any parameters and does not specify any processing rules for when parameters must be acknowledged by a Certification Authority. However, parameters that do not conform to the ABNF syntax as defined in Section 3 will result in the issuemail-value being not conformant with the ABNF syntax. As stated above, a Property whose issuemail-value is malformed SHALL be treated as if the issuer-domain-name in the issuemail-value is the empty string.¶

5. Examples of the "issuemail" Property Tag

Several illustrative examples of Relevant RRSets and their expected processing semantics follow. All examples assume that the issuer-domain-name for the Certification Authority is "authority.example".¶

mail.client.example         CAA 0 issue "authority.example"
mail.client.example         CAA 0 issue "other-authority.example"

mail.client.example         CAA 0 issuemail ";"

mail.client.example         CAA 0 issuemail "authority.example; account=123456"

mail.client.example         CAA 0 issuemail ";"
mail.client.example         CAA 0 issuemail "authority.example"

malformed.client.example     CAA 0 issuemail "%%%%%"

6. Security Considerations

The security considerations that are expressed in [RFC8659] are relevant to this specification.¶

CAA Properties may have the "critical" flag asserted, which specifies that the Property is critical and must be processed by conforming Certification Authorities. If a Certification Authority does not understand the Property, then it must not issue the certificate in question.¶

If a single CAA RRSet is processed by multiple Certification Authorities for the issuance of multiple certificate types, then a Certification Authority's lack of support for a critical CAA Property in the RRSet will prevent the Certification Authority from issuing any certificates for that domain.¶

For example, assume that an RRSet contains the following Properties:¶

client.example         CAA 128 issue "other-authority.example"
client.example         CAA 0 issuemail "authority.example"

In this case, if the Certification Authority whose issuer-domain-name matches "authority.example" does not recognize the "issue" Property Tag, then that Certification Authority will not be able to issue S/MIME certificates that certify email addresses for "client.example".¶

7. IANA Considerations

The author requests the registration of the following "Certification Authority Restriction Properties":¶

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the participants on the LAMPS Working Group mailing list for their insightful feedback and comments. In particular, the author extends sincere appreciation to Russ Housley, Seo Suchan, Michael Richardson, and Alexey Melnikov for their suggestions which greatly improved the quality of this document.¶

Author's Address