It will be regrettable and unfortunate moment to pass on such
opportunity to make the internet more secure, and please let me start
with listing the facts:
1_ ACME Server is CA server, if you consider it a CA server then you
don't need a third party to validate and secure the connection with such
server.
2_ DANE is great but will not be adopted and needs years or a
catastrophic failure by some CA to go mainstream, simply too many
parties has it in conflict with their business model.
3_ SPF and DKIM are used in plain TXT DNS records and they already
securing the internet the world.
4_ ACME protocol is utilizing DNS TXT record to authenticate the client
so both server and client has DNS handling procedure.
5_ There is huge security hole in providing the root certificates to
secure the internet, and in most cases it depends on the system store,
many antivirus software installs with default settings to intercept
HTTPS connection by injecting their own root certificate in system, many
things can go wrong with system store, even extensions in a browser can
do that.
So why not authenticate ACME server in different way than DANE TLSA
record and utilize TXT record similar to DKIM and make it a obligatory,
this will allow two parties to securely communicate with only one
requirement to trust one ACME server they already asking it for
certificates, those parties can build secure internet environment based
on one ACME server, even this protocol can evolve in future to issue
certificates with only IP and no domain name, is that something wrong ?
(listing few ideas, examples)
"acme.TLSA" TXT here you can copy the whole content of TLSA record in
JSON format encoded in base64url ( may be too much )
"acme.certs" TXT list the hash of the acme server certificates for
secure connection ( shouldn't be the root or CA certificate )
"acme.ckeys" TXT list the the certificates public keys in JWK format
with base64url encoding ( shouldn't be the root or CA certificate )
"acme.aKey" TXT contain one or more public keys (RSA or ECC) in JWK
(base64url) format this key can be used to authenticate responses from
acme server or only one critical response
"acme.dir" TXT the directory url encoded with base64url ( in this case
the client only need the server domain name like example.com or
staging.acme.example.com to get the acme directory )
"acme.chain" TXT url to download acme server certificate chain in secure
manner
"acme.store" TXT url to download the mini store for that acme server
certificate trust in secure manner ( if this adopted then there will be
many store provider like mozilla.com or android.com the client
application can get his own store form his own sources, client trust
Microsoft and its store but he can't be sure the store copy in his
Windows is not tainted )
Please consider discussion this.
Best regards
K. Obaideen
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