Re: FYI: proposal for client authentication in TLS

On Sat, Mar 08, 2014 at 11:39:12AM +0000, Martin Thomson wrote:
> Pursuant to our discussion on TLS renegotiation, I've submitted part 1
> of the solution I proposed as an internet draft.
> 
> http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-thomson-tls-care/
> 
> If we agree to a mechanism whereby we augment the 401 status code with
> a "go away and make a new TLS connection with client authentication",
> then this is necessary, so that the server knows to request a client
> certificate.

Some comments:
- Reference to RFC 5764 (which is some DTLS extension). Did you mean
  RFC 6347 (DTLS 1.2)?
- "[...]need to authenticate can initial renegotiation, [...]".
  That sounds odd, should it be "initial" or "initiate"?
- Under what circumstances server ignores the extension even if it
  is supported?

Some points:
- If the client has other active streams there, away might not be
  apropirate.
- The 401 www-authenticate header value might contain some information
  about acceptable client certificates (similarly to TLS 
  CertificateRequest), so the client can pick apropriate cerificate
  before initiating new connection.
- The proper client certificate might have been issued by the server
  or service provoder. Or even be self-signed[1].


[1] I haven't seen self-signed client certs for HTTPS, but I have
seen those for e.g. IRCS (Internet Relay Chat over TLS).


-Ilari

Received on Saturday, 8 March 2014 12:44:13 UTC