Re: [POSH] What's the point of using JWKs in POSH?

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On 6/9/14, 11:34 AM, Thijs Alkemade wrote:
> [Resending this message from the right address. Sorry for the
> duplicate copy, Matt.]
> 
> On 5 jun. 2014, at 00:46, Matt Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Signed PGP part On 6/4/14, 4:17 PM, Matt Miller wrote:
>>> [ Forwarding to the [email protected] mailing list on behalf of
>>> Thjis Alkemade ]
>>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> Today, I've spent some time on trying to implement
>>> POSH-checking for xmpp.net. My implementation aimed to do two
>>> things: doing the validation as described and showing someone
>>> how they could set up their .well-known file by converting
>>> their X509 certificates to JSON Web Keys.
>>> 
>>> The latter part was a lot more work than the former and made
>>> me wonder why it is defined the way it is.
>>> 
>>> From draft-ietf-xmpp-posh:
>>> 
>>> Each included JWK object MUST possess the following
>>> information:
>>> 
>>> o  The "kty" field set to the appropriate key type used for
>>> TLS connections (e.g., "RSA" for a certificate using an RSA
>>> key).
>>> 
>>> o  The required public parameters for the key type (e.g., "n"
>>> and "e" for a certificate using an RSA key).
>>> 
>>> o  The "x5t" field set to the certificate thumbprint, as
>>> described in section 3.6 of [JOSE-JWK].
>>> 
>>> Yet the data that is required in the first and second bullet
>>> is never used. It doesn't specify if and how clients should
>>> verify it. Verification only uses the x5t field and optionally
>>> x5c.
>>> 
>>> There are good arguments for "pinning" just the public key. 
>>> draft-ietf-websec-key-pinning only uses the SPKI field, DANE
>>> can use either the full cert or its SPKI field (and optionally
>>> hashed). But the way it is specified here won't allow that: the
>>> x5t field always needs to be present and clients should verify
>>> it.
>>> 
>>> So the public parameters of the key are useless here, but they
>>> make a key >10x as large is they have to be. Generating them is
>>> also not as easy: most certificate viewers show a SHA1
>>> fingerprint and it's really easy to do with the openssl cli
>>> tool, but extracting n and e and base64-encoding them is a lot
>>> more work. I wouldn't even know what to do for ECDSA keys.
>>> 
>>> Are there any interoperability reasons for using JWKs that I'm
>>> not aware of? Couldn't it just use a list of SHA1 hashes?
>>> 
>>> Best regards, Thijs
>> 
>> As I stated in the previous venue ([email protected]), us authors
>> were originally working to support various other use-cases, such
>> as browserid.  However, no one is arguing to actually support
>> those other use-cases, so the desire to use JWKs is much less.
>> 
>> My co-author and I discussed this today, and think what would be
>> best is to switch from using a JWK-set to (roughly) your
>> suggestion of a list of hashes.  It would allow us to stay with a
>> single syntax for both the "by-reference" and "by-value"
>> documents, as well as provide a simple point of extension (if
>> that is ever necessary).
>> 
>> An example:
>> 
>> { "fingerprints": [ { "sha-1": "ij39Ctarv+LwSw45qoqaZl7venM=", 
>> "sha-256": "WhEr4Lpv2L5pv769aRj9rrm4G6MNNCfQlre23Gol/eA=" }, { 
>> "sha-1": "JWow1EHNSbNyRfhQchi22bjurr0=", "sha-256":
>> "K52a2gXfrjchMLYwv16QyOtv5bkKRE6rnR30hY3JM8k=" } ], "expires":
>> 604800 }
>> 
>> Each "fingerprint" is a JSON object, where the key is the hash 
>> algorithm and the value is the base64 encoding of hashing the 
>> DER-encoded certificate with the given algorithm.  I do think
>> that algorithm agility is necessary, which means something more
>> than a simple array in my opinion.  Generating this should be
>> very simple; I could kludge this together on the command-line
>> pretty quickly
>> 
>> If the WG is ok with this, we can get a new revision of 
>> draft-ietf-xmpp-posh out relatively soon (by next week).
>> 
> 
> This looks good to me!
> 
> Thijs
> 
> 

We'll get a new revision with this change out by next week.


- -- 
- - m&m

Matt Miller < [email protected] >
Cisco Systems, Inc.
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