Internet DRAFT - draft-davidben-tls-merkle-tree-certs
draft-davidben-tls-merkle-tree-certs
Transport Layer Security D. Benjamin
Internet-Draft D. O'Brien
Intended status: Experimental Google LLC
Expires: 5 September 2024 B. E. Westerbaan
Cloudflare
4 March 2024
Merkle Tree Certificates for TLS
draft-davidben-tls-merkle-tree-certs-02
Abstract
This document describes Merkle Tree certificates, a new certificate
type for use with TLS. A relying party that regularly fetches
information from a transparency service can use this certificate type
as a size optimization over more conventional mechanisms with post-
quantum signatures. Merkle Tree certificates integrate the roles of
X.509 and Certificate Transparency, achieving comparable security
properties with a smaller message size, at the cost of more limited
applicability.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
The latest revision of this draft can be found at
https://davidben.github.io/merkle-tree-certs/draft-davidben-tls-
merkle-tree-certs.html. Status information for this document may be
found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-davidben-tls-merkle-
tree-certs/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the Transport Layer
Security Working Group mailing list (mailto:tls@ietf.org), which is
archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/tls/. Subscribe
at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tls/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/davidben/merkle-tree-certs.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. Terminology and Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Assertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1. DNS Claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2. IP Claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Issuing Certificates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1. Merkle Tree CA Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.2. Batch State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.3. Issuance Queue and Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.4. Certifying a Batch of Assertions . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.4.1. Building the Merkle Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.4.2. Signing a ValidityWindow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.4.3. Certificate Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.5. Size Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6. Using Certificates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.1. Relying Party State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.2. Certificate Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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6.3. Certificate Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7. Transparency Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
7.1. Single Trusted Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.2. Single Update Service with Multiple Mirrors . . . . . . . 25
7.3. Multiple Transparency Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.4. Monitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
8. HTTP Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
9. ACME Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
10. Use in TLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
10.1. TLS Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
10.2. The Bikeshed Certificate Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
10.3. The Trust Anchors Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
10.4. Certificate Type Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
10.4.1. Indicate in First CertificateEntry . . . . . . . . . 34
10.4.2. Change Certificate Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
11. Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
11.1. Fallback Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
11.2. Rolling Renewal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
11.3. Deploying New Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
11.4. Agility and Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
11.5. Batch State Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
11.6. Trust Anchor List Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
12. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
13. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
13.1. Authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
13.2. Cross-protocol attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
13.3. Revocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
13.4. Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
13.4.1. Unauthorized Certificates . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
13.4.2. Misbehaving Certification Authority . . . . . . . . 41
13.4.3. Misbehaving Transparency Service . . . . . . . . . . 42
13.5. Security of Fallback Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
14. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
15. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
15.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
15.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Change log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Since draft-davidben-tls-merkle-tree-certs-00 . . . . . . . . . 48
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
1. Introduction
Authors' Note: This is an early draft of a proposal with many parts.
While we have tried to make it as concrete as possible, we anticipate
that most details will change as the proposal evolves.
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A typical TLS [RFC8446] handshake uses many signatures to
authenticate the server public key. In a certificate chain with an
end-entity certificate, an intermediate certificate, and an implicit
trust anchor, there are two X.509 signatures [RFC5280]. Intermediate
certificates additionally send an extra public key. If the handshake
uses Certificate Transparency (CT) [RFC6962], each Signed Certificate
Timestamp (SCT) also carries a signature. CT policies often require
two or more SCTs per certificate [APPLE-CT] [CHROME-CT]. If the
handshake staples an OCSP response [RFC6066] for revocation, that
adds an additional signature.
Current signature schemes can use as few as 32 bytes per key and 64
bytes per signature [RFC8032], but post-quantum replacements are much
larger. For example, Dilithium3 [Dilithium] uses 1,952 bytes per
public key and 3,293 bytes per signature. A TLS Certificate message
with, say, four Dilithum3 signatures (two X.509 signatures and two
SCTs) and one intermediate CA's Dilithium3 public key would total
15,124 bytes of authentication overhead. Falcon-512 and Falcon-1024
[Falcon] would, respectively, total 3,561 and 6,913 bytes.
This document introduces Merkle Tree Certificates, an optimization
that authenticates a subscriber key using under 1,000 bytes. See
Section 5.5. To achieve this, it reduces its scope from general
authentication:
* Certificates are short-lived. The subscriber is expected to use
an automated issuance protocol, such as ACME [RFC8555].
* Certificates are only usable with relying parties that have
contacted a transparency service sufficiently recently. See
Section 7.
* Certificates are issued after a significant processing delay of,
in the recommended parameters (Section 5.1), about an hour.
Subscribers that need a certificate issued quickly are expected to
use a different mechanism.
To support the reduced scope, this document also describes a
certificate negotiation mechanism. Subscribers send these more
efficient certificates when available, and otherwise fall back to
other mechanisms.
Merkle Tree Certificates are not intended to replace existing Public
Key Infrastructure (PKI) mechanisms but, in applications where a
significant portion of authentications meet the above requirements,
complement them as an optional optimization. In particular, it is
expected that, even within applications that implement it, this
mechanism will not be usable for all TLS connections.
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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.
This document additionally uses the TLS presentation language defined
in Section 3 of [RFC8446].
2.1. Time
All time computations in this document are represented by POSIX
timestamps, defined in this document to be integers containing a
number of seconds since the Epoch, defined in Section 4.16 of
[POSIX]. That is, the number of seconds after 1970-01-01 00:00:00
UTC, excluding leap seconds. A UTC time is converted to a POSIX
timestamp as described in [POSIX].
Durations of time are integers, representing a number of seconds not
including leap seconds. They can be added to POSIX timestamps to
produce other POSIX timestamps.
The current time is a POSIX timestamp determined by converting the
current UTC time to seconds since the Epoch. One POSIX timestamp is
said to be before (respectively, after) another POSIX timestamp if it
is less than (respectively, greater than) the other value.
2.2. Terminology and Roles
There are five roles involved in a Merkle Tree certificate
deployment:
Subscriber: The party that authenticates itself in the protocol. In
TLS, this is the side sending the Certificate and
CertificateVerify message.
Merkle Tree certification authority (CA): The service that issues
Merkle Tree certificates to the subscriber, and publishes logs of
all certificates.
Relying party: The party authenticating the subscriber. In TLS,
this is the side receiving the Certificate and CertificateVerify
message.
Transparency service: The service that mirrors the issued
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certificates for others to monitor. It additionally summarizes
the CA's activity for relying parties, in order for certificates
to be accepted. This is conceptually a single service, but may be
multiple services, run by multiple entities in concert. See
Section 7. For example, if the relying party is a web browser,
the browser vendor might run the transparency service, or it may
trust a collection of third-party mirrors.
Monitors: Parties who monitor the list of valid certificates,
published by the transparency service, for unauthorized
certificates.
Additionally, there are several terms used throughout this document
to describe this proposal. This section provides an overview. They
will be further defined and discussed in detail throughout the
document.
Assertion: A protocol-specific statement that the CA is certifying.
For example, in TLS, the assertion is that a TLS signing key can
speak on behalf of some DNS name or other identity.
Abridged assertion: A partially-hashed Assertion to save space. For
example, in TLS, an abridged assertion replaces the subject public
key by a hash.
Certificate: A structure, generated by the CA, that proves to the
relying party that the CA has certified some assertion. A
certificate consists of the assertion itself accompanied by an
associated proof string.
Batch: A collection of assertions certified at the same time. CAs
in this proposal only issue certificates in batches at a fixed
frequency.
Batch tree head: A hash computed over all the assertions in a batch,
by building a Merkle Tree. The Merkle Tree construction and this
hash are described in more detail in Section 5.4.1.
Inclusion proof: A structure which proves that some assertion is
contained in some tree head. See Section 5.4.3.
Validity window: A range of consecutive batch tree heads. A relying
party maintains a copy of the CA's latest validity window. At any
time, it will accept only assertions contained in tree heads
contained in the current validity window.
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3. Overview
The process of issuing and using a certificate is as follows:
1. The subscriber requests a certificate from the CA. Section 9
describes ACME [RFC8555] extensions for this.
2. The CA collects certificate requests into a batch (see
Section 5.1) and builds the Merkle Tree and computes the tree
head (see Section 5.4.1). It then signs the validity window
ending at this tree head (see Section 5.4.2) and publishes (see
Section 8) the result.
3. The CA constructs a certificate using the inclusion proof. It
sends this certificate to the subscriber. See Section 5.4.3.
4. The transparency service downloads the abridged assertions,
recreates the Merkle Tree, and validates the window signature.
It mirrors them for monitors to observe. See Section 7.
5. The relying party fetches the latest validity window from the
transparency service. This validity window will contain the new
tree head.
6. In an application protocol such as TLS, the relying party
communicates its currently saved validity window to the
subscriber.
7. If the relying party’s validity window contains the subscriber’s
certificate, the subscriber negotiates this protocol and sends
the Merkle Tree certificate. See Section 6.3 for details. If
there is no match, the subscriber proceeds as if this protocol
were not in use (e.g., by sending a traditional X.509 certificate
chain).
Figure 1 below shows this process.
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+--------------+ 1. issuance request +-------------------------+
| +---------------------->| |
| Subscriber | | Certification Authority |
| |<----------------------+ |
+---------+----+ 3. inclusion proof +-----------+-------------+
^ | |
| | | 2. sign and
6. accepted | | 7. inclusion proof | publish tree
tree heads | | |
| v v
+-------+---------+ +----------------------+
| | 5. batch tree heads | |
| Relying Party |<---------------------+ Transparency Service |
| | | |
+-----------------+ +----------+-----------+
|
| 4. mirror tree
v
+------------+
| |
| Monitors |
| |
+------------+
Figure 1: An overview of a Merkle Tree certificate deployment
The remainder of this document discusses this process in detail,
followed by concrete instantions of it in TLS [RFC8446] and ACME
[RFC8555].
4. Assertions
[[TODO: The protocol described in this document is broadly
independent of the assertion format. We describe, below, one
possible structure, but welcome feedback on how best to structure the
encoding. The main aims are simplicity and to improve on handling
cross-protocol attacks per Section 13.2.]]
TLS certificates associate some application-specific identifier with
a TLS signing key. When TLS is used to authenticate HTTPS [RFC9110]
servers, these identifiers specify DNS names or HTTP origins. Other
protocols may require other kinds of assertions.
To represent this, this document defines an Assertion structure:
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enum { tls(0), (2^16-1) } SubjectType;
enum {
dns(0),
dns_wildcard(1),
ipv4(2),
ipv6(3),
(2^16-1)
} ClaimType;
struct {
ClaimType claim_type;
opaque claim_info<0..2^16-1>;
} Claim;
struct {
SubjectType subject_type;
opaque subject_info<0..2^16-1>;
Claim claims<0..2^16-1>;
} Assertion;
An Assertion is roughly analogous to an X.509 TBSCertificate
(Section 4.1.2 of [RFC5280]). It describes a series of claims about
some subject. The subject_info field is interpreted according to the
subject_type value. For TLS, the subject_type is tls, and the
subject_info is a TLSSubjectInfo structure. TLSSubjectInfo is
defined in full in Section 10.1 below, but as an illustrative
example, it is reproduced below:
struct {
SignatureScheme signature;
opaque public_key<1..2^16-1>;
} TLSSubjectInfo;
This structure represents the public half of a TLS signing key. The
semantics are thus that each claim in claims applies to the TLS
client or server. This is analogous to X.509's SubjectPublicKeyInfo
structure (Section 4.1.2.7 of [RFC5280]) but additionally
incorporates the protocol. Protocols consuming an Assertion MUST
check the subject_type is a supported value before processing
subject_info. If unrecognized, the structure MUST be rejected.
Other protocols aiming to integrate with this structure allocate a
SubjectType codepoint and describe how it is interpreted.
Likewise, a Claim structure describes some claim about the subject.
The claim_info field is interpreted according to the claim_type.
Each Claim structure in an Assertion's claims field MUST have a
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unique claim_type and all values MUST be sorted in order of
increasing claim_type. Structures violating this constraint MUST be
rejected.
When a relying party interprets an Assertion certified by the CA, it
MUST ignore any Claim values with unrecognized claim_type. When a CA
interprets an Assertion in a certification request from a subscriber,
it MUST reject any Claim values with unrecognized claim_type.
This document defines claim types for DNS names and IP addresses, but
others can be defined.
[[TODO: For now, the claims below just transcribe the X.509
GeneralName structure. Should these be origins instead? For HTTPS,
it's a pity to not capture the scheme and port. We do mandate ALPN
in Section 10.2, so cross-protocol attacks are mitigated, but it's
unfortunate that subscribers cannot properly separate their HTTPS vs
FTPS keys, or their port 443 vs port 444 keys. One option here is to
have HTTPS claims instead, and then other protocols can have FTPS
claims, etc. #35 ]]
4.1. DNS Claims
The dns and dns_wildcard claims indicate that the subject is
authoritative for a set of DNS names. They use the DNSNameList
structure, defined below:
opaque DNSName<1..255>;
struct {
DNSName dns_names<1..2^16-1>;
} DNSNameList;
DNSName values use the "preferred name syntax" as specified by
Section 3.5 of [RFC1034] and as modified by Section 2.1 of [RFC1123].
Alphabetic characters MUST additionally be represented in lowercase.
IDNA names [RFC5890] are represented as A-labels. For example,
possible values include example.com or xn--iv8h.example. Values
EXAMPLE.COM and <U+1F50F>.example would not be permitted.
Names in a dns claim represent the exact DNS name specified. Names
in a dns_wildcard claim represent wildcard DNS names and are
processed as if prepended with the string "*." and then following the
steps in Section 6.3 of [I-D.draft-ietf-uta-rfc6125bis].
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4.2. IP Claims
The ipv4 and ipv6 claims indicate the subject is authoritative for a
set of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, respectively. They use the
IPv4AddressList and IPv6AddressList structures, respectively, defined
below. IPv4Address and IPv6Address are interpreted in network byte
order.
uint8 IPv4Address[4];
uint8 IPv6Address[16];
struct {
IPv4Address addresses<4..2^16-1>;
} IPv4AddressList;
struct {
IPv6Address addresses<16..2^16-1>;
} IPv6AddressList;
5. Issuing Certificates
This section describes the structure of Merkle Tree certificates and
defines the process of how a Merkle Tree certification authority
issues certificates for a subscriber.
5.1. Merkle Tree CA Parameters
A Merkle Tree certification authority is defined by the following
values:
hash: A cryptographic hash function. In this document, the hash
function is always SHA-256 [SHS], but others may be defined.
issuer_id: An opaque byte string that identifies the CA. This value
should be short and is limited to at most 32 bytes.
public_key: The public half of a signing keypair. The corresponding
private key, private_key, is known only to the CA.
start_time: The issuance time of the first batch of certificates,
represented as a POSIX timestamp (see Section 2.1).
batch_duration: A number of seconds which determines how frequently
the CA issues certificates. See details below.
lifetime: A number of seconds which determines the lifetime of
certificates issued by this CA. MUST be a multiple of
batch_duration.
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validity_window_size: An integer describing the maximum number of
unexpired batches which may exist at a time. This value is
determined from lifetime and batch_duration by lifetime /
batch_duration.
These values are public and known by the relying party and the CA.
They may not be changed for the lifetime of the CA. To change these
parameters, the entity operating a CA may deploy a second CA and
either operate both during a transition, or stop issuing from the
previous CA.
[[TODO: The signing key case is interesting. A CA could actually
maintain a single stream of Merkle Trees, but then sign everything
with multiple keys to support rotation. The CA -> Subscriber -> RP
flow does not depend on the signature, only the CA -> Transparency
Service -> RP flow. The document is not currently arranged to
capture this, but it probably should be. We probably need to
decouple the signing half and the Merkle Tree half slightly. #36 ]]
Certificates are issued in batches. Batches are numbered
consecutively, starting from zero. All certificates in a batch have
the same issuance time, determined by start_time + batch_duration *
batch_number. This is known as the batch's issuance time. That is,
batch 0 has an issuance time of start_time, and issuance times
increment by batch_duration. A CA can issue no more frequently than
batch_duration. batch_duration determines how long it takes for the
CA to return a certificate to the subscriber.
All certificates in a batch have the same expiration time, computed
as lifetime past the issuance time. After this time, the
certificates in a batch are no longer valid. Merkle Tree
certificates uses a short-lived certificates model, such that
certificate expiration replaces an external revocation signal like
CRLs [RFC5280] or OCSP [RFC6960]. lifetime SHOULD be set accordingly.
For instance, a deployment with a corresponding maximum OCSP
[RFC6960] response lifetime of 14 days SHOULD use a value no higher
than 14 days. See Section 13.3 for details.
CAs are RECOMMENDED to use a batch_duration of one hour, and a
lifetime of 14 days. This results in a validity_window_size of 336,
for a total of 10,752 bytes in SHA-256 hashes.
To prevent cross-protocol attacks, the key used in a Merkle Tree CA
MUST be unique to that Merkle Tree CA. It MUST NOT be used in
another Merkle Tree CA, or for another protocol, such as X.509
certificates.
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5.2. Batch State
Each batch is in one of three states:
pending: The current time is before the batch's issuance time
ready: The current time is not before the batch's issuance time, but
the batch has not yet been issued
issued: Certificates have been issued for this batch
The CA also maintains a latest batch number, which is the number of
the last batch in the "issued" state. As an invariant, all batches
before this value MUST also be in the "issued" state.
For each batch in the "issued" state, the CA maintains the following
batch state:
* The list of abridged assertions certified in this batch.
* The tree head, a hash computed over this list, described in
Section 5.4.1.
* A validity window signature computed as described in
Section 5.4.2.
The CA exposes all of this information in an HTTP [RFC9110] interface
described in Section 8.
5.3. Issuance Queue and Scheduling
The CA additionally maintains an issuance queue, not exposed via the
HTTP interface.
When a subscriber requests a certificate for some assertion, the CA
first validates it per its issuance policy. For example, it may
perform ACME identifier validation challenges (Section 8 of
[RFC8555]). Once validation is complete and the CA is willing to
certify the assertion, the CA appends it to the issuance queue.
The CA runs a regularly-scheduled issuance job which converts this
queue into certificates. This job runs the following procedure:
1. If no batches are in the "ready" state, do nothing and abort this
procedure. Schedule a new job to run sometime after the earliest
"pending" batch's issuance time.
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2. For each batch in the "ready" state other than the latest one,
run the procedure in Section 5.4 with an empty assertion list, in
order of increasing batch number. Batches cannot be skipped.
3. Empty the issuance queue into an ordered list of assertions. Run
the procedure in Section 5.4 using this list and the remaining
batch in the "ready" state. This batch's issuance time will be
at or shortly before the current time.
5.4. Certifying a Batch of Assertions
This section describes how to certify a given list of assertions at a
given batch number. The batch MUST be in the "ready" state, and all
preceding batches MUST be in the "issued" state.
5.4.1. Building the Merkle Tree
First, the CA then builds a Merkle Tree from the list as follows:
Let n be the number of input assertions. If n > 0, the CA builds a
binary tree with l levels numbered 0 to l-1, where l is the smallest
positive integer such that n <= 2^(l-1). Each node in the tree
contains a hash value. Hashes in the tree are built from the
following functions:
HashEmpty(level, index) = hash(HashEmptyInput)
HashNode(left, right, level, index) = hash(HashNodeInput)
HashAssertion(assertion, index) = hash(HashAssertionInput)
HashEmpyInput, HashNodeInput and HashAssertionInput are computed by
encoding the structures defined below:
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struct {
uint8 distinguisher = 0;
opaque issuer_id<1..32>;
uint32 batch_number;
uint64 index;
uint8 level;
} HashEmptyInput;
struct {
uint8 distinguisher = 1;
opaque issuer_id<1..32>;
uint32 batch_number;
uint64 index;
uint8 level;
opaque left[hash.length];
opaque right[hash.length];
} HashNodeInput;
struct {
SubjectType subject_type;
opaque subject_info_hash[hash.length];
Claim claims<0..2^16-1>;
} AbridgedAssertion;
struct {
uint8 distinguisher = 2;
opaque issuer_id<1..32>;
uint32 batch_number;
uint64 index;
AbridgedAssertion abridged_assertion;
} HashAssertionInput;
issuer_id and batch_number are set to the CA's issuer_id and the
current batch number.
HashAssertionInput.abridged_assertion.subject_info_hash is set to
hash(assertion.subject_info) from the function input assertion, and
the remaining fields of HashAssertionInput.abridged_assertion are
taken unmodified from assertion. The remaining fields, such as
index, are set to inputs of the function.
Tree levels are computed iteratively as follows:
1. Initialize level 0 with n elements. For j between 0 and n-1,
inclusive, set element j to the output of
HashAssertion(assertion[j], j).
2. For i between 1 and l-1, inclusive, compute level i from level
i-1 as follows:
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* If level i-1 has an odd number of elements j, append
HashEmpty(i-1, j) to the level.
* Initialize level i with half as many elements as level i-1.
For all j, set element j to the output of HashNode(left,
right, i, j) where left is element 2*j of level i-1 and right
is element 2*j+1 of level i-1. left and right are the left and
right children of element j.
At the end of this process, level l-1 will have exactly one root
element. This element is called the tree head. Figure 2 shows an
example tree for three assertions. The tree head in this example is
t20.
level 2: ___ t20 ___
/ \
/ \
level 1: t10 t11
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
level 0: t00 t01 t02 empty
| | |
a0 a1 a2
Figure 2: An example Merkle Tree for three assertions
If n is zero, the CA does not build a tree and the tree head is
HashEmpty(0, 0).
If n is one, the tree contains a single level, level 0, and has a
tree head of HashAssertion(assertion, 0).
5.4.2. Signing a ValidityWindow
Batches are grouped into consecutive ranges of validity_window_size
batches, called validity windows. As validity_window_size is
computed to cover the full certificate lifetime, a validity window
that ends at the latest batch number covers all certificates that may
still be valid from a CA.
Validity Windows are serialized into the following structure:
opaque TreeHead[hash.length];
struct {
uint32 batch_number;
TreeHead tree_heads[validity_window_size*hash.length];
} ValidityWindow;
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batch_number is the batch number of the highest batch in the validity
window.
tree_heads value contains the last validity_window_size tree heads.
(Recall the TLS presentation language brackets the total length of a
vector in bytes; not the number of elements.) tree_heads starts from
batch_number, in decreasing batch number order. That is,
tree_heads[0] is the tree head for batch batch_number, tree_heads[1]
is the tree head for batch_number - 1, and so on. If batch_number <
validity_window_size - 1, any tree heads for placeholder negative
batch numbers are filled with HashEmpty(0, 0), computed with
batch_number set to 0.
After the CA builds the Merkle Tree for a batch, it constructs the
ValidityWindow structure whose batch_number is the number of the
batch being issued. It then computes a signature over the following
structure:
struct {
uint8 label[32] = "Merkle Tree Crts ValidityWindow\0";
opaque issuer_id<1..32>;
ValidityWindow window;
} LabeledValidityWindow;
The label field is an ASCII string. The final byte of the string,
"\0", is a zero byte, or ASCII NULL character. The issuer_id field
is the CA's issuer_id. Other parties can verify the signature by
constructing the same input and verifying with the CA's public_key.
The CA saves this signature as the batch's validity window signature.
It then updates the latest batch to point to batch_number. A CA
which generates such a signature is considered to have certified
every assertion contained in every value in the tree_heads list, with
expiry determined by batch_number, the position of the tree head in
the list, and the CA's input parameters as described in Section 5.1.
A CA MUST NOT generate signatures over inputs that are parseable as
LabeledValidityWindow, except via the above process. If a
LabeledValidityWindow structure that was not produced in this way has
a valid signature by CA's public_key, this indicates misuse of the
private key by the CA, even if the preimages to the tree_heads
values, or intermediate nodes, or subject_info_hash values are not
known.
5.4.3. Certificate Format
[[TODO: BikeshedCertificate is a placeholder name until someone comes
up with a better one. #15 ]]
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For each assertion in the tree, the CA constructs a
BikeshedCertificate structure containing the assertion and a proof.
A proof is a message that allows the relying party to accept the
associated assertion, provided it trusts the CA and recognizes the
tree head. The structures are defined below:
enum { merkle_tree_sha256(0), (2^16-1) } ProofType;
struct {
ProofType proof_type;
opaque trust_anchor_data<0..2^8-1>;
} TrustAnchor;
struct {
TrustAnchor trust_anchor;
opaque proof_data<0..2^16-1>;
} Proof;
struct {
Assertion assertion;
Proof proof;
} BikeshedCertificate;
The proof_type identifies a type of proof. It determines the format
of the trust_anchor_data and proof_data values. The mechanism
defined in this document is merkle_tree_sha256, which uses
trust_anchor_data and proof_data formats of MerkleTreeTrustAnchor and
MerkleTreeProofSHA256, respectively:
struct {
opaque issuer_id<1..32>;
uint32 batch_number;
} MerkleTreeTrustAnchor;
opaque HashValueSHA256[32];
struct {
uint64 index;
HashValueSHA256 path<0..2^16-1>;
} MerkleTreeProofSHA256;
A trust anchor is a short identifier that identifies a source of
certificates. It is analogous to an X.509 trust anchor's subject
name. These are used for certificate selection, described in
Section 6.3. In Merkle Tree certificates, each batch is a distinct
trust anchor. The trust_anchor_data for merkle_tree_sha256 is a
MerkleTreeTrustAnchor structure. The issuer_id field is the CA's
issuer_id. The batch_number field is the number of the batch.
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A relying party that trusts a trust anchor must know the batch's tree
head. It then trusts any assertion which can be proven to be in the
corresponding Merkle Tree, as described in Section 6.2.
The proof_data for merkle_tree_sha256 is a MerkleTreeProofSHA256.
After building the tree, the CA constructs a MerkleTreeProofSHA256
for each assertion as follows. For each index i in the batch's
assertion list:
1. Set index to i. This will be a value between 0 and n-1,
inclusive.
2. Set path to an array of l-1 hashes. Set element j of this array
to element k of level j, where k is (i >> j) ^ 1. >> denotes a
bitwise right-shift, and ^ denotes a bitwise exclusive OR (XOR)
operation. This element is the sibling of an ancestor of
assertion i in the tree. Note the tree head is never included.
For example, the path value for the third assertion in a batch of
three assertions would contain the marked nodes in Figure 3, from
bottom to top.
level 2: ___ t20 ___
/ \
/ \
level 1: *t10 t11
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
level 0: t00 t01 t02 *empty
| | |
a0 a1 a2
Figure 3: An example Merkle Tree proof for the third of three
assertions
If the batch only contained one assertion, path will be empty and
index will be zero.
For each assertion, the CA assembles a BikeshedCertificate structure
and sends it to the subscriber. It SHOULD also send the additional
information described in Section 6.3.
This certificate can be presented to supporting relying parties as
described in Section 6. It is valid until the batch expires.
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5.5. Size Estimates
Merkle Tree proofs scale logarithmically in the batch size.
Section 11.2 recommends subscribers renew halfway through the
previous certificate's lifetime. Batch sizes will thus, on average,
be subscriber_count * 2 / validity_window_size, where
subscriber_count is a CA's active subscriber count. The recommended
parameters in Section 5.1 give an average of subscriber_count / 168.
Some organizations have published statistics which can estimate batch
sizes for the Web PKI. On March 7th, 2023, [LetsEncrypt] reported
around 330,000,000 active subscribers for a single CA. [MerkleTown]
reported around 3,800,000,000 unexpired certificates in Certificate
Transparency logs, and an issuance rate of around 257,000 per hour.
Note the numbers from [MerkleTown] represent, respectively, all Web
PKI CAs combined and issuance rates for longer-lived certificates and
may not be representative of a Merkle Tree certificate deployment.
These three estimates correspond to batch sizes of, respectively,
around 2,000,000, around 20,000,000, and 257,000. The corresponding
path lengths will be 20, 24, and 17, given proof sizes of,
respectively, 640 bytes, 768 bytes, and 544 bytes.
For larger batch sizes, 32 hashes, or 1024 bytes, is sufficient for
batch sizes up to 2^33 (8,589,934,592) certificates.
6. Using Certificates
This section describes how subscribers present and relying parties
verify Merkle Tree certificates.
6.1. Relying Party State
For each Merkle Tree CA it trusts, a relying party maintains a copy
of the most recent validity window from the CA. This structure
determines which certificates the relying party will accept. It is
regularly updated from the transparency service, as described in
Section 7.
6.2. Certificate Verification
When a subscriber presents a BikeshedCertificate whose proof_type
field is merkle_tree_sha256, the relying party runs the following
procedure to verify it. This procedure's error conditions are
described with TLS alerts, defined in Section 6.2 of [RFC8446]. Non-
TLS applications SHOULD map these error conditions to the
corresponding application-specific errors. When multiple error
conditions apply, the application MAY return any applicable error.
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1. Decode the trust_anchor_data and proof_data fields as
MerkleTreeTrustAnchor and MerkleTreeProofSHA256 structures,
respectively. If they cannot be decoded, abort this procedure
with a bad_certificate error.
2. Check if the certificate's issuer_id corresponds to a trusted
Merkle Tree CA with a saved validity window. If not, abort this
procedure with an unknown_ca error.
3. Check if the certificate's batch_number is contained in the
saved validity window. If not, abort this procedure with a
unknown_ca error.
4. Compute the expiration time of the certificate's batch_number,
as described in Section 5.1. If this value is before the
current time, abort this procedure with a certificate_expired
error.
5. Set hash to the output of HashAssertion(assertion, index). Set
remaining to the certificate's index value.
6. For each element v at zero-based index i of the certificate's
path field, in order:
* If remaining is odd, set hash to the output of HashNode(v,
hash, i + 1, remaining >> 1). Otherwise, set hash to the
output of HashNode(hash, v, i + 1, remaining >> 1)
* Set remaining to remaining >> 1.
7. If remaining is non-zero, abort this procedure with an error.
8. If hash is not equal to the corresponding tree head in the saved
validity window, abort this procedure with a bad_certificate
error.
9. Optionally, perform any additional application-specific checks
on the assertion and issuer. For example, an HTTPS client might
constrain an issuer to a particular DNS subtree.
10. If all the preceding checks succeed, the certificate is valid
and the application can proceed with using the assertion.
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6.3. Certificate Negotiation
Merkle Tree certificates can only be presented to up-to-date relying
parties, so this document describes a mechanism for subscribers to
select certificates. This section describes the general negotiation
mechanism. Section 10.3 describes it as used in TLS.
Subscribers maintain a certificate set of available
BikeshedCertificates. The TrustAnchor value in each
BikeshedCertificate is known as the primary TrustAnchor. Each
BikeshedCertificate is also associated with the following values:
* A set of additional TrustAnchor values which also match this
certificate
* An expiration time, after which the certificate is no longer
usable
These values can be computed from the BikeshedCertificate, given
knowledge of the ProofType value and the CA's parameters. However,
CAs are RECOMMENDED to send this information to subscribers in a
ProofType-independent form. See Section 9 for how this is
represented in ACME. This simplifies subscriber deployment and
improves ecosystem agility, by allowing subscribers to use
certificates without precise knowledge of their parameters.
For Merkle Tree certificates, the expiration time is computed as
described in Section 5.1. There are validity_window_size - 1
additional TrustAnchor values: for each i from 1 to
validity_window_size - 1, make a copy of the primary TrustAnchor with
the batch_number value replaced with batch_number + i.
Each relying party maintains a set of TrustAnchor values, which
describe the certificates it accepts. This set is sent to the
subscriber to aid in certificate selection. The ProofType code point
defines how the relying party determines the TrustAnchor values. For
Merkle Tree certificates, the proof_type is merkle_tree_sha256, the
issuer_id is the CA's issuer_id, and the batch_number is the
batch_number of the relying party's validity window.
The subscriber compares this set with its certificate set. A
certificate is eligible if all of the following are true:
* The current time is before the certificate's expiration time
* Either the certificate's primary TrustAnchor value or one of the
additional TrustAnchor values appears in the relying party's
TrustAnchor set.
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* Any additional application-specific constraints hold. For
example, the TLS signature_algorithms (Section 4.2.3 of [RFC8446])
extension constrains the types of keys which may be used.
The subscriber SHOULD select the smallest available certificate where
the above checks succeed. When two comparably-sized certificates are
available, the subscriber SHOULD select the one with the later
expiration time, to reduce clock skew risks. If no certificate is
available, the subscriber SHOULD fallback to another PKI mechanism,
such as X.509.
7. Transparency Services
This section describes the role of the transparency service. The
transparency service ensures all certificates accepted by the relying
party are consistently and publicly logged. It performs three
functions:
* Mirror all abridged assertions certified by the CA and present
them to monitors
* Validate all tree heads and validity windows produced by the CA
* Provide the latest valid validity window to relying parties
In doing so, the transparency service MUST satisfy the following
requirements:
* The mirrored CA state is append-only. That is, the hashes,
signatures, and assertions for a given batch number MUST NOT
change.
* All tree hashes sent to relying parties MUST be reflected in the
mirrored CA state.
The transparency service publishes the mirrored CA state using the
same interface as Section 8. The protocol between the relying party
and transparency service is out of scope of this document. The
relying party MAY use the interface defined here, or an existing
application-specific authenticated channel.
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As discussed in Section 13.1, relying parties MUST ensure that any
validity windows obtained were asserted by the CA. This SHOULD be
done by having the transparency service forward the CA's signature,
with the relying party verifying it. However, if the transparency
service already maintains a trusted, authenticated channel to the
relying parties (e.g. a software or root store update channel),
relying parties MAY rely on the transparency service to validate the
signature on their behalf, rather than sending it over this channel.
Although described as a single service for clarity, the transparency
service may be implemented as a combination of services run by
multiple entities, depending on security goals. For example
deployments, this section first describes a single trusted service,
then it describes other possible models where trust is divided
between entities.
7.1. Single Trusted Service
Some relying parties regularly contact a trusted update service,
either for software updates or to update individual components, such
as the services described in [CHROMIUM] and [FIREFOX]. Where these
services are already trusted for the components such as the trust
anchor list or certificate validation software, a single trusted
transparency service may be a suitable model.
The transparency service maintains a mirror of the CA's latest batch
number, and batch state. Roughly once every batch_duration, it polls
the CA's HTTP interface (see Section 8) and runs the following steps:
1. Fetch the CA's latest batch number. If this fetch fails, abort
this procedure with an error.
2. Let new_latest_batch be the result and old_latest_batch be the
currently mirrored value. If new_latest_batch equals
old_latest_batch, finish this procedure without reporting an
error.
3. If new_latest_batch is less than old_latest_batch, abort this
procedure with an error.
4. If the issuance time for batch new_latest_batch is after the
current time (see Section 5.1), abort this procedure with an
error.
5. For all i such that old_latest_batch < i <= new_latest_batch:
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1. Fetch the signature, tree head, and abridged assertion list
for batch i. If this fetch fails, abort this procedure with
an error.
2. Compute the tree head for the assertion list, as described in
Section 5.4.1. If this value does not match the fetched tree
head, abort this procedure with an error.
3. Compute the ValidityWindow structure and verify the
signature, as described in Section 5.4.2. Set tree_heads[0]
to the tree head fetched above. Set the other values in
tree_heads to the previously mirrored values. If signature
verification fails, abort this procedure with an error.
4. Set the mirrored latest batch number to i and save the
fetched batch state.
[[TODO: If the mirror gets far behind, if the CA just stops
publishing for a while, it may suddenly have to catch up on many
batches. Should we allow the mirror to catch up to the latest
validity window and skip the intervening batches? The intervening
batches are guaranteed to have been expired #37 ]]
7.2. Single Update Service with Multiple Mirrors
If the relying party has a trusted update service, but the update
service does not have the resources to mirror the full batch state,
the transparency service can be composed of this update service and
several, less trusted mirrors. In this model, the mirrors are not
trusted to serve authoritative trust anchor information to relying
parties, but the update service trusts at least half of them to
faithfully and consistently mirror the batch state.
Each mirror follows the procedure in Section 7.1 to maintain and
publish a mirror of the CA's batch state.
The update server maintains the latest validity window validated to
appear in all mirrors. It updates this by polling the mirrors and
running the following steps:
1. For each mirror, fetch the latest batch number.
2. Let new_latest_batch be the highest batch number that is bounded
by the value fetched from at least half of the mirrors. Let
old_latest_batch be the batch number of the currently stored
validity window.
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3. If new_latest_batch equals old_latest_batch, finish this
procedure without reporting an error.
4. If new_latest_batch is less than old_latest_batch, abort this
procedure with an error.
5. If the issuance time for batch new_latest_batch is after the
current time (see Section 5.1), abort this procedure with an
error.
6. Fetch the validity window with new_latest_batch from each mirror
that returned an equal or higher latest batch number. If any
fetches fail, or if the results do not match across all mirrors,
abort this procedure with an error.
7. Verify the validity window signature, as described in
Section 5.4.2. If the signature is invalid, abort this procedure
with an error.
8. If the old and new validity windows contain overlapping batch
numbers, verify that the tree hashes match. If not, abort this
procedure with an error.
9. Update the saved validity window with the new value.
Compared to Section 7.1, this model reduces trust in the mirror
services, but can delay certificate usability if some of the mirrors
consume CA updates too slowly. This can be tuned by adjusting the
threshold in step 2.
In a transparency service using this model, each mirror independently
publishes the batch state via Section 8.
7.3. Multiple Transparency Services
Relying parties without a trusted update service can fetch from
mirrors directly. Rather than relying on the update service to fetch
the validity window state, the relying party runs the procedure
described in Section 7.2, and uses the saved validity window to
verify certificates.
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7.4. Monitors
Monitors in this document are analogous to monitors in [RFC6962].
Monitors watch an implementation of the HTTP APIs in Section 8 to
verify correct behavior and watch for certificates of interest. This
is typically the transparency service. A monitor needs to, at least,
inspect every new batch. It may also maintain a copy of the batch
state.
It does so by following the procedure in Section 7.1, fetching from
the service being monitored. If the procedure fails for a reason
other than the service availability, this should be viewed as
misbehavior on the part of the service. If the procedure fails due
to service availability and the service remains unavailable for an
extended period, this should also be viewed as misbehavior. If the
monitor is not maintaining a copy of the batch state, it skips saving
the abridged assertions.
[RFC6962] additionally defines the role of auditor, which validates
that Signed Certificate Timestamps (SCTs) and Signed Tree Heads
(STHs) in Certificate Transparency are correct. There is no analog
to SCTs in this document. The signed validity window structure
(Section 5.4.2) is analogous to an STH, but consistency is checked
simply by ensuring overlapping tree heads match, so this document
does not define this as an explicit role. If two inconsistent signed
validity windows are ever observed from a Merkle Tree CA, this should
be viewed as misbehavior on the part of the CA.
8. HTTP Interface
[[TODO: This section hasn't been written yet. For now, this is just
an informal sketch. The real text will need to define request/
response formats more precisely, with MIME types, etc. #12 ]]
CAs and transparency services publish state over an HTTP [RFC9110]
interface described below.
CAs and any components of the transparency service that maintain
validity window information implement the following interfaces:
* GET {prefix}/latest returns the latest batch number.
* GET {prefix}/validity-window/latest returns the ValidityWindow
structure and signature (see Section 5.4.2) for the latest batch
number.
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* GET {prefix}/validity-window/{number} returns the ValidityWindow
structure and signature (see Section 5.4.2) for batch number, if
it is in the "issued" state, and a 404 error otherwise.
* GET {prefix}/batch/{number}/info returns the validity window
signature and tree head for batch number, if batch number is in
the "issued" state, and a 404 error otherwise.
CAs and any components of the transparency service that mirror the
full abridged assertion list additionally implement the following
interface:
* GET {prefix}/batch/{number}/assertions returns the abridged
assertion list for batch number, if number is in the issued state,
and a 404 error otherwise.
If the interface is implemented by a distributed service, with
multiple servers, updates may propagate to servers at different
times, which will cause temporary inconsistency. This inconsistency
can impede this system's transparency goals (Section 13.4).
Services implementing this interface SHOULD wait until batch state is
fully propagated to all servers before updating the latest batch
number. That is, if any server returns a latest batch number of N in
either of the first two HTTP endpoints, batch numbers N and below
SHOULD be available under the last three batch-number-specific HTTP
endpoints in all servers. If this property does not hold at any
time, it is considered a service unavailability.
Individual servers in a service MAY return different latest batch
numbers. Individual servers MAY also differ on whether a batch
number has a response available or return a 404 error. Provided the
above consistency property holds, these two inconsistencies do not
constitute service unavailability.
Section 11.5 discusses service availability requirements.
[[TODO: Once a batch has expired, do we allow a CA to stop publishing
it? The transparency service can already log it for as long, or as
little, as it wishes. We effectively have CT log temporal sharding
built into the system. #2 ]]
[[TODO: If we have the validity window endpoint, do we still need to
separate "info" and "assertions"? #12]]
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9. ACME Extensions
[[TODO: This section hasn't been written yet. Instead, what follows
is an informal sketch and design discussion. #13 ]]
See Section 11.4 for the overall model this should target.
Define ACME [RFC8555] extensions for requesting these. We probably
need to add a new field in the Order object (Section 9.7.2 of
[RFC8555] to request this. Also a new MIME type for the thing being
fetched Section 7.4.2 of [RFC8555]. This format should capture
additional metadata per Section 6.3.
Otherwise, the long issuance time is already modeled by the allowance
for the "processing" state taking a while. The ACME server should
use the Retry-After header so the subscriber knows when to query
again.
Also use [I-D.draft-ietf-acme-ari] to move the renewal logic in
Section 11.2 from the subscriber to the ACME server.
Per Section 11.4, a subscriber may need multiple certificates. That
should be a service provided by the ACME server. Come up with a
scheme to mint multiple orders from a single newOrder request, or
request multiple certificates off of a single order. (Note different
certificates may have different processing time. It seems an ACME
order only transitions from the "processing" state to the "valid"
state once, so the former is probably better.)
We should also define a certificate request format, though it is
broadly just reusing the Assertion structure. If the CA wishes to
check possession of the private key, it'll need to come with a
signature or do some online operation (e.g. if it's a KEM key). This
is inherently protocol-specific, because the mechanism needs to
coexist with the target protocol. (Signed CSRs implicitly assume the
target protocol's signature payloads cannot overlap with that of a
CSR.)
10. Use in TLS
10.1. TLS Subjects
This section describes the SubjectType for use with TLS [RFC8446].
The SubjectType value is tls, and the subject_info field contains a
TLSSubjectInfo structure, defined below:
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enum { tls(0), (2^16-1) } SubjectType;
struct {
SignatureScheme signature;
opaque public_key<1..2^16-1>;
/* TODO: Should there be an extension list? #38 */
} TLSSubjectInfo;
A TLSSubjectInfo describes a TLS signing key. The signature field is
a SignatureScheme Section 4.2.3 of [RFC8446] value describing the key
type and signature algorithm it uses for CertificateVerify.
The public_key field contains the subscriber's public key. The
encoding is determined by the signature field as follows:
RSASSA-PSS algorithms: The public key is an RSAPublicKey structure
[RFC8017] encoded in DER [X.690]. BER encodings which are not DER
MUST be rejected.
ECDSA algorithms: The public key is a
UncompressedPointRepresentation structure defined in
Section 4.2.8.2 of [RFC8446], using the curve specified by the
SignatureScheme.
EdDSA algorithms: The public key is the byte string encoding defined
in [RFC8032]
This document does not define the public key format for other
algorithms. In order for a SignatureScheme to be usable with
TLSSubjectInfo, this format must be defined in a corresponding
document.
[[TODO: If other schemes get defined before this document is done,
add them here. After that, it's on the other schemes to do it. #39
]]
10.2. The Bikeshed Certificate Type
[[TODO: Bikeshed is a placeholder name until someone comes up with a
better one. #15]]
This section defines the Bikeshed TLS certificate type, which may be
negotiated with the client_certificate_type, server_certificate_type
[RFC7250], or cert_type [RFC6091] extensions. It can only be
negotiated with TLS 1.3 or later. Servers MUST NOT negotiate it in
TLS 1.2 or below. If the client receives a ServerHello that
negotiates it in TLS 1.2 or below, it MUST abort the connection with
an illegal_parameter alert.
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[[TODO: None of these three extensions is quite right for client
certificates because the negotiation isn't symmetric. See discussion
in Section 10.4. We may need to define another one. #18]]
When negotiated, the Certificate message MUST contain a single
CertificateEntry structure. CertificateEntry is updated as follows:
enum { Bikeshed(TBD), (255) } CertificateType;
struct {
select (certificate_type) {
/* Certificate type defined in this document */
case Bikeshed:
BikeshedCertificate certificate;
/* From RFC 7250 */
case RawPublicKey:
opaque ASN1_subjectPublicKeyInfo<1..2^24-1>;
case X509:
opaque cert_data<1..2^24-1>;
/* Additional certificate types based on the
"TLS Certificate Types" registry */
};
Extension extensions<0..2^16-1>;
} CertificateEntry;
The subject_type field in the certificate MUST be of type tls
(Section 10.1). The CertificateVerify message is computed and
processed as in [RFC8446], with the following modifications:
* The signature is computed and verified with the key described in
the TLSSubjectInfo. The relying party uses the key decoded from
the public_key field, and the subscriber uses the corresponding
private key.
* The SignatureScheme in the CertificateVerify MUST match the
signature field in the TLSSubjectInfo.
The second modification differs from [RFC8446]. Where [RFC8446]
allowed an id-rsaEncryption key to sign both rsa_pss_rsae_sha256 and
rsa_pss_rsae_sha384, TLSSubjectInfo keys are specific to a single
algorithm. Future documents MAY relax this restriction for a new
SignatureScheme, provided it was designed to be used concurrently
with the value in TLSSubjectInfo. In particular, the underlying
signature algorithm MUST match, and there MUST be appropriate domain
separation between the two modes. For example,
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[I-D.draft-ietf-tls-batch-signing] defines new SignatureSchemes, but
the same keypair can be safely used with one of the new values and
the corresponding base SignatureScheme.
If this certificate type is used for either the client or server
certificate, the ALPN [RFC7301] extension MUST be negotiated. If no
application protocol is selected, endpoints MUST close the connection
with a no_application_protocol alert.
[[TODO: Suppose we wanted to introduce a second SubjectType for TLS,
either to add new fields or capture a new kind of key. That would
need to be negotiated. We could use another extension, but defining
a new certificate type seems most natural. That suggests this
certificate type isn't about negotiating BikeshedCertificate in
general, but specifically SubjectType.tls and TLSSubjectInfo. So
perhaps the certificate type should be TLSSubjectInfo or BikeshedTLS.
#7 ]]
10.3. The Trust Anchors Extension
The TLS trust_anchors extension which implements certificate
negotiation (see Section 6.3). The extension body is a TrustAnchors
structure, defined below:
enum { trust_anchors(TBD), (2^16-1) } ExtensionType;
struct {
TrustAnchor trust_anchors<1..2^16-1>;
} TrustAnchors;
This extension carries the relying party's trust anchor set, computed
as described in Section 6.3. When the client is the relying party
for a server certificate, the extension is sent in the ClientHello.
When the server is the relying party for a client certificate, the
extension is sent in the CertificateRequest message. This extension
is only defined for use with TLS 1.3 and later. It MUST be ignored
when negotiating TLS 1.2.
When the subscriber receives this extension, selects a certificate
from its certificate set, as described in Section 6.3. If none
match, it does not negotiate the Bikeshed type and selects a
different certificate type. [[TODO: This last step does not work.
See Section 10.4]]
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10.4. Certificate Type Negotiation
[[TODO: We may need a new certificate types extension, either in this
document or a separate one. For now, this section just informally
describes the problem. #18 ]]
The server certificate type is negotiated as follows:
* The client sends server_certificate_type in ClientHello with
accepted certificate types.
* The server selects a certificate type to use, It sends it in
server_certificate_type in EncryptedExtensions.
* The server sends a certificate of the server-selected type in
Certificate.
This model allows the server to select its certificate type based on
not just server_certificate_type, but also other ClientHello
extensions like certificate_authorities or trust_anchors
(Section 10.3). In particular, if there is no match in
trust_anchors, it can fallback to X.509, rather than staying within
the realm of BikeshedCertificate.
However, the client certificate type is negotiated differently:
* The client sends client_certificate_type in ClientHello with
certificates it can send
* The server selects a certificate type to request. It sends it in
client_certificate_type in EncryptedExtensions.
* The server requests a client certificate in CertificateRequest
* The client sends a certificate of the server-selected type in
Certificate.
Here, the client (subscriber) does not select the certificate type.
The server (relying party) does. Moreover, this selection is made
before the client can see the server's certificate_authorities or
trust_anchors value, in CertificateRequest. There is no opportunity
for the client to fallback to X.509.
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The cert_types extension behaves similarly, but additionally forces
the client and server types to match. These extensions were defined
when TLS 1.2 was current, but TLS 1.3 aligns the client and server
certificate negotiation. Most certificate negotiation extensions,
such as certificate_authorities or compress_certificate [RFC8879] can
be offered in either direction, in ClientHello or CertificateRequest.
They are then symmetrically accepted in the Certificate message.
A more corresponding TLS 1.3 negotiation would be to defer the client
certificate type negotiation to CertificateRequest, with the server
offering the supported certificate types. The client can then make
its selection, taking other CertificateRequest extensions into
account, and indicate its selection in the Certificate message.
Two possible design sketches:
10.4.1. Indicate in First CertificateEntry
We can have the subscriber indicate the certificate type in an
extension of the first CertificateEntry. One challenge is the
extensions come after the certificate, so the relying party must seek
to the extensions field independent of the certificate type. Thus
all certificate types must be updated to use a consistent opaque
cert_data<0..2^24> syntax, with any type-specific structures embedded
inside.
RawPublicKey and X509 already meet this requirement. OpenPGP and
Bikeshed need an extra length prefix.
10.4.2. Change Certificate Syntax
Alternatively, we can negotiate an extension that changes the syntax
to Certificate to:
struct {
CertificateType certificate_type;
opaque certificate_request_context<0..2^8-1>;
CertificateEntry certificate_list<0..2^24-1>;
} Certificate;
The negotiation can be:
* Client sends its accepted certificate types in ClientHello.
Offering this new extension also signatures it is willing to
accept the new message format. Unlike the existing extensions, an
X.509-only client still sends the extension with just X509 in the
list.
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* Server, if it implements the new syntax, acknowledges the syntax
change with an empty extension in EncryptedExtensions. (It
doesn't indicate its selection yet.)
* If both of the above happen, Certificate's syntax has changed.
Server indicates its selection with the certificate_type field
* Server can also send this extension in CertificateRequest to offer
non-X.509 certificate types
* Client likewise indicates its selection with the certificate_type
field.
This is a bit cleaner to parse, but the negotiation is more complex.
11. Deployment Considerations
11.1. Fallback Mechanisms
Subscribers using Merkle Tree certificates SHOULD additionally
provision certificates from another PKI mechanism, such as X.509.
This ensures the service remains available to relying parties that
have not recently fetched validity window updates, or lack
connectivity to the transparency service.
If the pipeline of updates from the CA to the transparency service to
relying parties is interrupted, certificate issuance may halt, or
newly issued certificates may no longer be usable. When this
happens, the optimization in this document may fail, but fallback
mechanisms ensure services remain available.
11.2. Rolling Renewal
When a subscriber requests a certificate, the CA cannot fulfill the
request until the next batch is ready. Once published, the
certificate will not be accepted by relying parties until the batch
state is mirrored by their respective transparency services, then
pushed to relying parties.
To account for this, subscribers SHOULD request a new Merkle Tree
certificate significantly before the previous Merkle Tree certificate
expires. Renewing halfway into the previous certificate's lifetime
is RECOMMENDED. Subscribers additionally SHOULD retain both the new
and old certificates in the certificate set until the old certificate
expires. As the new tree hash is delivered to relying parties,
certificate negotiation will transition relying parties to the new
certificate, while retaining the old certificate for clients that are
not yet updated.
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11.3. Deploying New Keys
Merkle Tree certificates' issuance delays make them unsuitable when
rapidly deploying a new service and reacting to key compromise.
When a new service is provisioned with a brand new Merkle Tree
certificate, relying parties will not yet have received a validity
window containing this certificate from the transparency service and
can therefore not validate this certificate until receiving them.
The subscriber SHOULD, in parallel, also provision a certificate
using another PKI mechanism (e.g. X.509). Certificate negotiation
will then switch over to serving the Merkle Tree certificate as
relying parties are updated.
If the service is performing a routine key rotation, and not in
response to a known compromise, the subscriber MAY use the process
described in Section 11.2, allowing certificate negotiation to also
switch the private key used. This slightly increases the lifetime of
the old key but maintains the size optimization continuously.
If the service is rotating keys in response to a key compromise, this
option is not available. Instead, the service SHOULD immediately
discard the old key and request a more immediate issuance mechanism.
As in the initial deployment case, it SHOULD request a Merkle Tree
certificate in parallel, which will restore the size optimization
over time.
11.4. Agility and Extensibility
Beyond negotiating Merkle Tree certificates, certificate negotiation
can also handle variations in which CAs a relying party trusts. With
a single certificate, the subscriber is limited to the intersection
of these sets. Instead, Section 6.3 allows a subscriber to maintain
multiple certificates that, together, encompass the relying parties
it supports.
This improves trust agility. If a relying party distrusts a CA, a
subscriber can include certificates from both the distrusted CA and a
replacement CA. This allows the distrusting relying party to request
the replacement CA, while existing relying parties, which may not
trust the replacement CA, can continue to use the distrusted CA.
Likewise, an entity operating a CA may deploy a second CA to rotate
key material. The certificate set can include both the new and old
CA to ensure a smooth transition.
Moreover, Section 6.3 allows subscribers to select certificates
without recognizing either the CA or the ProofType. Only the
Assertion structure directly impacts the application protocol on the
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subscriber's side. This allows for a more flexible deployment model
where ACME servers, or other certificate management services,
assemble the certificate set:
Instead of each subscriber being individually configured with the CAs
to use, the ACME server can provide multiple certificates, covering
all supported relying parties. As relying party requirements evolve,
CAs rotate keys, or new ProofTypes are designed, the ACME server is
updated to incorporate these into certificate sets. As the PKI
evolves, subscribers are automatically provisioned appropriately.
11.5. Batch State Availability
CAs and transparency services serve an HTTP interface defined in
Section 8. This service may be temporarily unavailable, either from
service outage or if the service does not meet the consistency
condition mid-update. Exact availability requirements for these
services are out of scope for this document, but this section
provides some general guidance.
If the CA's interface becomes unavailable, the transparency service
will be unavailable to update. This will prevent relying parties
from accepting new certificates, so subscribers will need to use
fallback mechanisms per Section 11.1. This does not compromise
transparency goals per Section 13.4.2. However, a CA which is
persistently unavailable may not offer sufficient benefit to be used
by subscribers or trusted by relying parties.
However, if the transparency service's interface becomes unavailable,
monitors will be unable to check for unauthorized certificates. This
does compromise transparency goals. Mirrors of the batch state
partially mitigate this, but service unavailability may prevent
mirrors from replicating a batch that relying parties accept.
11.6. Trust Anchor List Size
Section 6.3 and Section 10.3 involve the relying party sending a list
of TrustAnchor values to aid the subscriber in selecting
certificates. A sufficiently large list may be impractical to fit in
a ClientHello and require alternate negotiation mechanisms or a
different PKI structure. To reduce overhead, issuer_id values SHOULD
be short, no more than eight bytes long.
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12. Privacy Considerations
The negotiation mechanism described in Section 6.3 and Section 10.3
presumes the relying party's trust anchor list is not sensitive. In
particular, information sent in a TLS ClientHello is unencrypted
without the Encrypted ClientHello extension
[I-D.draft-ietf-tls-esni].
This mechanism SHOULD NOT be used in contexts where the list reveals
information about an individual user. For example, a web browser may
support both a common set of trust anchors configured by the browser
vendor, and a set of user-specified trust anchors. The common trust
anchors would only reveal which browser is used, while the user-
specified trust anchors may reveal information about the user. In
this case, the trust anchor list SHOULD be limited to the common
trust anchors.
Additionally, even if all users are served the same updates,
individual users may fetch from the transparency service at different
times, resulting in variation in the trust anchor list. Like other
behavior changes triggered by updates, this may, when combined with
other sources of user variation, lead to a fingerprinting attack
[RFC6973].
13. Security Considerations
13.1. Authenticity
A key security requirement of any PKI scheme is that relying parties
only accept assertions that were certified by a trusted certification
authority. This is achieved by the following two properties:
* The relying party MUST NOT accept any validity window that was not
authenticated as coming from the CA.
* For any tree head computed from a list of assertions as in
Section 5.4.1, it is computationally infeasible to construct an
assertion not this list, and some inclusion proof, such that the
procedure in Section 6.2 succeeds.
Section 7 discusses achieving the first property.
The second property is achieved by using a collision-resistant hash
in the Merkle Tree construction. The HashEmpty, HashNode, and
HashAssertion functions use distinct initial bytes when calling the
hash function, to achieve domain separation.
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13.2. Cross-protocol attacks
Using the same key material in different, incompatible ways risks
cross-protocol attacks when the two uses overlap. To avoid this,
Section 5.1 forbids the reuse of Merkle Tree CA private keys in
another protocol. A CA MUST NOT generate signatures with its private
key, except as defined in Section 5.4.2, or an extension of this
protocol. Any valid signature of a CA's public_key that does not
meet these requirements indicates misuse of the private key by the
CA.
To reduce the risk of attacks if this guidance is not followed, the
LabeledValidityWindow structure defined in Section 5.4.2 includes a
label string, and the CA's issuer_id. Extensions of this protocol
MAY be defined which reuse the keys, but any that do MUST use a
different label string and analyze the security of the two uses
concurrently.
Likewise, key material included in an assertion (Section 4) MUST NOT
be used in another protocol, unless that protocol was designed to be
used concurrently with the original purpose. The Assertion structure
is designed to facilitate this. Where X.509 uses an optional key
usage extension (see Section 4.2.1.3 of [RFC5280]) and extended key
usage extension (see Section 4.2.1.12 of [RFC5280]) to specify key
usage, an Assertion is always defined first by a SubjectType value.
Subjects cannot be constructed without first specifying the type, and
subjects of different types cannot be accidentally interpreted as
each other.
The TLSSubjectInfo structure additionally protects against cross-
protocol attacks in two further ways:
* A TLSSubjectInfo specifies the key type not with a
SubjectPublicKeyInfo Section 4.1.2.7 of [RFC5280] object
identifier, but with a SignatureScheme structure. Where [RFC8446]
allows an id-rsaEncryption key to sign both rsa_pss_rsae_sha256
and rsa_pss_rsae_sha384, this protocol specifies the full
signature algorithm parameters.
* To mitigate cross-protocol attacks at the application protocol
[ALPACA], this document requires connections using it to negotiate
the ALPN [RFC7301] extension.
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13.3. Revocation
Merkle Tree certificates avoid sending an additional signature for
OCSP responses by using a short-lived certificates model. Per
Section 5.1, Merkle Tree CA's certificate lifetime MUST be set such
that certificate expiration replaces revocation. Existing revocation
mechanisms like CRLs and OCSP are themselves short-lived, signed
messages, so a low enough certificate lifetime provides equivalent
revocation capability.
Relying parties with additional sources of revocation such as
[CRLite] or [CRLSets] SHOULD provide a mechanism to express revoked
assertions in such systems, in order to opportunistically revoke
assertions in up-to-date relying parties sooner. It is expected
that, in most deployments, relying parties can fetch this revocation
data and Merkle Tree CA validity windows from the same service.
[[TODO: Is it worth defining an API for Merkle Tree CAs to publish a
revocation list? That would allow automatically populating CRLite
and CRLSets. Maybe that's a separate document. #41]]
13.4. Transparency
The transparency service does not prevent unauthorized certificates,
but it aims to provide comparable security properties to Certificate
Transparency [RFC6962]. If a subscriber presents an acceptable
Merkle Tree certificate to a relying party, the relying party should
have assurance it was published in some form that monitors and, in
particular, the subject of the certificate will be able to notice.
13.4.1. Unauthorized Certificates
If a Merkle Tree certificate was unauthorized, but seen and mirrored
by the transparency service, the relying party may accept it.
However, provided the transparency service is operating correctly,
this will be detectable. Unlike Certificate Transparency, Merkle
Tree certificates achieve this property without a Maximum Merge Delay
(MMD). Certificates are fully mirrored by the transparency service
before the relying party will accept them. However, this comes at
the cost of immediate issuance, as described in Section 11.
If the unauthorized certificate was not seen by the transparency
service, the relying party will reject it. In order to accept a
certificate, the relying party must have been provisioned with the
corresponding tree head. A correctly operating transparency service
will never present relying parties with tree heads unless the
corresponding certificates have all been mirrored.
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Unlike Certificate Transparency, the transparency service will not
provide the preimages for subject_info_hash, only the hashed values.
This is intended to reduce serving costs, particularly with large
post-quantum keys. As a result, monitors look for unrecognized
hashes instead of unrecognized keys. Any unrecognized hash, even if
the preimage is unknown, indicates an unauthorized certificate.
This optimization complicates studies of weak public keys, e.g.
[SharedFactors]. Such studies will have to retrieve the public keys
separately, such as by connecting to the TLS servers, or fetching
from the CA if it retains the unabridged assertion. This document
does not define a mechanism for doing this.
13.4.2. Misbehaving Certification Authority
Although CAs in this document publish structures similar to a
Certificate Transparency log, they do not need to function correctly
to provide transparency.
A CA could violate the append-only property of its batch state, and
present differing views to different parties. Unlike a misbehaving
Certificate Transparency log, this would not compromise transparency.
Whichever view is presented to the transparency service at the time
of updates determines the canonical batch state for both relying
parties and monitors. Certificates that are consistent with only the
other view will be rejected by relying parties. If the transparency
service observes both views, the procedures in Section 7 will prevent
the new, conflicting view from overwriting the originally saved view.
Instead, the update process will fail and further certificates will
not be accepted.
A CA could also sign a validity window containing an unauthorized
certificate and feign an outage when asked to serve the corresponding
assertions. However, if the assertion list was never mirrored by the
transparency service, the tree head will never be pushed to relying
parties, so the relying party will reject the certificate. If the
assertion list was mirrored, the unauthorized certificate continues
to be available to monitors.
As a consequence, monitors MUST use the transparency service's view
of the batch state when monitoring for unauthorized certificates. If
the transparency service is a collection of mirrors, as in
Section 7.2 or Section 7.3, monitors MUST monitor each mirror.
Monitors MAY optionally monitor the CA directly, but this alone is
not sufficient to avoid missing certificates.
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13.4.3. Misbehaving Transparency Service
This document divides CA and transparency service responsibilities
differently from how [RFC6962] divides CA and Certificate
Transparency log. The previous section describes the implications of
a failure to meet the log-like responsibilities of a CA, provided the
transparency service is operating correctly.
For the remainder of log-like responsibilities, the relying party
trusts its choice of transparency service deployment to ensure the
validity windows it uses are consistent with what monitors observe.
Otherwise, a malicious transparency service and CA could collude to
cause a relying party to accept an unauthorized certificate not
visible to monitors. Where a single trusted service is not
available, the Section 7 discusses possible deployment structures
where the transparency service is a collection of mirrors, all or
most of whom must collude instead.
13.5. Security of Fallback Mechanisms
Merkle Tree certificates are intended to be used as an optimization
over other PKI mechanisms. More generally, Section 6.3 and
Section 11.4 allow relying parties to support many kinds of
certificates, to meet different goals. This document discusses the
security properties of Merkle Tree certificates, but the overall
system's security properties depend on all of a relying party's trust
anchors.
In particular, in relying parties that require a publicly auditable
PKI, the supported fallback mechanisms must also provide a
transparency property, either with Certificate Transparency [RFC6962]
or another mechanism.
14. IANA Considerations
IANA is requested to create the following entry in the TLS
ExtensionType registry [RFC8447]. The "Reference" column should be
set to this document.
+=======+================+=========+===========+=============+
| Value | Extension Name | TLS 1.3 | DTLS-Only | Recommended |
+=======+================+=========+===========+=============+
| TBD | trust_anchors | CH, CR | N | TBD |
+-------+----------------+---------+-----------+-------------+
Table 1: Additions to the TLS ExtensionType Registry
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IANA is requested to create the following entry in the TLS
Certificate Types registry [RFC8447]. The "Reference" column should
be set to this document.
+=======+==========+=============+
| Value | Name | Recommended |
+=======+==========+=============+
| TBD | Bikeshed | TBD |
+-------+----------+-------------+
Table 2: Additions to the TLS
Certificate Types Registry
[[ TODO: Define registries for the enums introduced in this document.
#42]]
* SubjectType
* ClaimType
* ProofType
15. References
15.1. Normative References
[I-D.draft-ietf-uta-rfc6125bis]
Saint-Andre, P. and R. Salz, "Service Identity in TLS",
Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-uta-
rfc6125bis-15, 10 August 2023,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-uta-
rfc6125bis-15>.
[POSIX] "IEEE Standard for Information Technology--Portable
Operating System Interface (POSIX(TM)) Base
Specifications, Issue 7", IEEE,
DOI 10.1109/ieeestd.2018.8277153, ISBN ["9781504445429"],
January 2018,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/ieeestd.2018.8277153>.
[RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
STD 13, RFC 1034, DOI 10.17487/RFC1034, November 1987,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1034>.
[RFC1123] Braden, R., Ed., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
Application and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1123, October 1989,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1123>.
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[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC5890] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5890>.
[RFC6091] Mavrogiannopoulos, N. and D. Gillmor, "Using OpenPGP Keys
for Transport Layer Security (TLS) Authentication",
RFC 6091, DOI 10.17487/RFC6091, February 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6091>.
[RFC7250] Wouters, P., Ed., Tschofenig, H., Ed., Gilmore, J.,
Weiler, S., and T. Kivinen, "Using Raw Public Keys in
Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Datagram Transport
Layer Security (DTLS)", RFC 7250, DOI 10.17487/RFC7250,
June 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7250>.
[RFC7301] Friedl, S., Popov, A., Langley, A., and E. Stephan,
"Transport Layer Security (TLS) Application-Layer Protocol
Negotiation Extension", RFC 7301, DOI 10.17487/RFC7301,
July 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7301>.
[RFC8017] Moriarty, K., Ed., Kaliski, B., Jonsson, J., and A. Rusch,
"PKCS #1: RSA Cryptography Specifications Version 2.2",
RFC 8017, DOI 10.17487/RFC8017, November 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8017>.
[RFC8032] Josefsson, S. and I. Liusvaara, "Edwards-Curve Digital
Signature Algorithm (EdDSA)", RFC 8032,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8032, January 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8032>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
[RFC8446] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446>.
[RFC8447] Salowey, J. and S. Turner, "IANA Registry Updates for TLS
and DTLS", RFC 8447, DOI 10.17487/RFC8447, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8447>.
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[RFC8555] Barnes, R., Hoffman-Andrews, J., McCarney, D., and J.
Kasten, "Automatic Certificate Management Environment
(ACME)", RFC 8555, DOI 10.17487/RFC8555, March 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8555>.
[RFC9110] Fielding, R., Ed., Nottingham, M., Ed., and J. Reschke,
Ed., "HTTP Semantics", STD 97, RFC 9110,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9110, June 2022,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110>.
[SHS] Dang, Q., "Secure Hash Standard", National Institute of
Standards and Technology, DOI 10.6028/nist.fips.180-4,
July 2015, <https://doi.org/10.6028/nist.fips.180-4>.
[X.690] ITU-T, "Information technology - ASN.1 encoding Rules:
Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical
Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules
(DER)", ISO/IEC 8824-1:2021 , February 2021.
15.2. Informative References
[ALPACA] Brinkmann, M., Dresen, C., Merget, R., Poddebniak, D.,
Müller, J., Somorovsky, J., Schwenk, J., and S. Schinzel,
"ALPACA: Application Layer Protocol Confusion - Analyzing
and Mitigating Cracks in TLS Authentication", August 2021,
<https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/
presentation/brinkmann>.
[APPLE-CT] Apple, "Apple's Certificate Transparency policy", 5 March
2021, <https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205280>.
[CHROME-CT]
Google Chrome, "Chrome Certificate Transparency Policy",
17 March 2022,
<https://googlechrome.github.io/CertificateTransparency/
ct_policy.html>.
[CHROMIUM] Chromium, "Component Updater", 3 March 2022,
<https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/
components/component_updater/README.md>.
[CRLite] Larisch, J., Choffnes, D., Levin, D., Maggs, B., Mislove,
A., and C. Wilson, "CRLite: A Scalable System for Pushing
All TLS Revocations to All Browsers", IEEE, 2017 IEEE
Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP),
DOI 10.1109/sp.2017.17, May 2017,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/sp.2017.17>.
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[CRLSets] Chromium, "CRLSets", 4 August 2022,
<https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/
crlsets/>.
[Dilithium]
Bai, S., Ducas, L., Kiltz, E., Lepoint, T., Lyubashevsky,
V., Schwabe, P., Seiler, G., and D. Stehlé, "CRYSTALS-
Dilithium Algorithm Specifications and Supporting
Documentation", 8 February 2021, <https://pq-
crystals.org/dilithium/data/dilithium-specification-
round3-20210208.pdf>.
[Falcon] Fouque, P., Hoffstein, J., Kirchner, P., Lyubashevsky, V.,
Pornin, T., Prest, T., Ricosset, T., Seiler, G., Whyte,
W., and Z. Zhang, "Falcon: Fast-Fourier Lattice-based
Compact Signatures over NTRU", 10 January 2020,
<https://falcon-sign.info/falcon.pdf>.
[FIREFOX] Mozilla, "Firefox Remote Settings", 20 August 2022,
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/RemoteSettings>.
[I-D.draft-ietf-acme-ari]
Gable, A., "Automated Certificate Management Environment
(ACME) Renewal Information (ARI) Extension", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-acme-ari-03, 8
February 2024, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-ietf-acme-ari-03>.
[I-D.draft-ietf-tls-batch-signing]
Benjamin, D., "Batch Signing for TLS", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-tls-batch-signing-00, 13
January 2020, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
draft-ietf-tls-batch-signing-00>.
[I-D.draft-ietf-tls-esni]
Rescorla, E., Oku, K., Sullivan, N., and C. A. Wood, "TLS
Encrypted Client Hello", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-ietf-tls-esni-18, 4 March 2024,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tls-
esni-18>.
[LetsEncrypt]
Let's Encrypt, "Let's Encrypt Stats", 7 March 2023,
<https://letsencrypt.org/stats/>.
[MerkleTown]
Cloudflare, Inc., "Merkle Town", 7 March 2023,
<https://ct.cloudflare.com/>.
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[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
(CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5280>.
[RFC6066] Eastlake 3rd, D., "Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Extensions: Extension Definitions", RFC 6066,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6066, January 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6066>.
[RFC6960] Santesson, S., Myers, M., Ankney, R., Malpani, A.,
Galperin, S., and C. Adams, "X.509 Internet Public Key
Infrastructure Online Certificate Status Protocol - OCSP",
RFC 6960, DOI 10.17487/RFC6960, June 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6960>.
[RFC6962] Laurie, B., Langley, A., and E. Kasper, "Certificate
Transparency", RFC 6962, DOI 10.17487/RFC6962, June 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6962>.
[RFC6973] Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6973>.
[RFC8879] Ghedini, A. and V. Vasiliev, "TLS Certificate
Compression", RFC 8879, DOI 10.17487/RFC8879, December
2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8879>.
[SharedFactors]
Våge, H. F. and University of Bergen, "Finding shared RSA
factors in the Certificate Transparency logs", 13 May
2022, <https://bora.uib.no/bora-
xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/3001128/
Masters_thesis__for_University_of_Bergen.pdf>.
Acknowledgements
This document stands on the shoulders of giants and builds upon
decades of work in TLS authentication and X.509. The authors would
like to thank all those who have contributed over the history of
these protocols.
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The authors additionally thank Bob Beck, Ryan Dickson, Nick Harper,
Dennis Jackson, Ryan Sleevi, and Emily Stark for many valuable
discussions and insights which led to this document. We wish to
thank Mia Celeste in particular, whose implementation of an earlier
draft revealed several pitfalls.
Change log
*RFC Editor's Note:* Please remove this section prior to
publication of a final version of this document.
Since draft-davidben-tls-merkle-tree-certs-00
* Simpify hashing by removing the internal padding to align with
block size. #72
* Avoid the temptation of floating points. #66
* Require lifetime to be a multiple of batch_duration. #65
* Rename window to validity window. #21
* Split Assertion into Assertion and AbridgedAssertion. The latter
is used in the Merkle Tree and HTTP interface. It replaces
subject_info by a hash, to save space by not serving large post-
quantum public keys. The original Assertion is used everywhere
else, including BikeshedCertificate. #6
* Add proper context to every node in the Merkle tree. #32
* Clarify we use a single CertificateEntry. #11
* Clarify we use POSIX time. #1
* Miscellaneous changes.
Authors' Addresses
David Benjamin
Google LLC
Email: davidben@google.com
Devon O'Brien
Google LLC
Email: asymmetric@google.com
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Bas Westerbaan
Cloudflare
Email: bas@cloudflare.com
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