Re: authmeth-14 notes

On Sun, 6 Mar 2005, Hallvard B Furuseth wrote:

>> 3.1.6. Server Identity Check
>
>>   Matching is performed according to these rules:
>
> Can someone remind me why this is specified here instead of in [TLS]?
> It doesn't look LDAP-specific.  I can't find the answer in the archive.

TLS regards this as application-specific, and indeed applications do vary. 
TLS for SMTP says almost nothing about server name checking, for example.

You could certainly make a case that there should be a standard 
name-matching procedure including wildcard processing that multiple app 
protocols could refer to, to avoid duplication and needless difference 
between app protocols.  Unfortunately no one has done this, perhaps 
because it's rather hard to coordinate among all the apps and specs that 
profile TLS.  A generic "Application Protocol Use of TLS" doc might 
include other stuff too like recommending a STARTTLS command instead of 
separate-port, effects of mid-stream TLS state changes on app protocol 
state, insecure cipher suite warnings, etc.  I suspect at this point we 
don't want to rip all this stuff out of authmeth, write a new doc, confer 
with other WGs (IMAP, SMTP, BEEP, etc) for agreement, etc.  Could well be 
the right approach for the next iteration after this one, though.

  - RL "Bob"