Re: Section 5.3: Mike McCormick's General Principals (Error Signaling)

On 2007-09-25 14:34:24 -0500, michael.mccormick@wellsfargo.com wrote:

> Normative section 5.3.2 OTOH is a specific agent requirement
> (redirection based on server certificate subject) that goes
> beyond anything I had proposed.  

Correct.

> If I interpret 5.3.2 correctly, it says when Alice types the URL
> "https://www.Bob.com" in her browser, but the browser encounters
> a server SSL certificate with a subject DN of "www.Carol.com",
> then Alice's browser would be silently redirected to URL
> "https://www.Carol.com".  This seems to create a new attack
> vector for Carol to divert https traffic from Bob's site to her
> own, without Alice being informed unless she happens to notice
> the change on her location bar.  Hopefully I misunderstood.

Your reading suggests a need for clarifying the language in that
section.

The idea is that, if there's a reasonably strong SSL certificate in
place, Alice be offered the possibility to navigate to Carol, by way
of an error page.

A quick mock-up (as good as that's possible in text/plain ;-):

	You tried to navigate to www.bob.com.  That site could not
	be reached.  Instead, you were connected to a site of Foobar
	Industries.

	[ Go back ] [ Take me to Foobar Industries ]

Cheers,
-- 
Thomas Roessler, W3C  <tlr@w3.org>