Hi,

On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 6:50 AM Robert Wilton via Datatracker
<nore...@ietf.org> wrote:
>
> Robert Wilton has entered the following ballot position for
> draft-ietf-dnsop-server-cookies-04: No Objection
>
> ...
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> COMMENT:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for this document, I found it easy to read.  I have a couple of minor
> questions/comments related to the lifecycles.
>
> Section 3:
>
>    Except for when the Client IP address changes, there is no need to
>    change the Client Cookie often.  It is reasonable to change the
>    Client Cookie then only if it has been compromised or after a
>    relatively long period of time such as no longer than a year.  Client
>    Cookies are not expected to survive a program restart.
>
> It isn't clear to me why it is necessary to put an upper bound a on when a
> client cookie needs to be changed at all.  What is the benefit of changing the
> client cookie once a year?

This is normal crypto hygiene. It is unsafe to trust a key/cookie
forever. Sooner or later it will get compromised by loss, accident,
whatever. Given this, an upper bound needs to be recommended. If it
were up to me, I would have said a month and that is in fact what it
says in RFC 7873 as follows:

   The longer a secret is used, the higher the probability that it has
   been compromised.  Thus, clients and servers are configured with a
   lifetime setting for their secret, and they roll over to a new secret
   when that lifetime expires, or earlier due to deliberate jitter as
   described below.  The default lifetime is one day, and the maximum
   permitted is one month.  To be precise and to make it practical to
   stay within limits despite long holiday weekends, daylight saving
   time shifts, and the like, clients and servers MUST NOT continue to
   use the same secret in new requests and responses for more than
   36 days and SHOULD NOT continue to do so for more than 26 hours.

Of course how often to change is a judgement call on which opinions will differ.

Assuming you do plan to change it periodically, another consideration
is operational. Say security considerations would mean you should
change it at least every 5 years. What is the chance that, after five
years, anyone will even remember to do it or even remember how to do
it? So the interval should be short enough that operational experience
is kept up.

Thanks,
Donald
=============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
 2386 Panoramic Circle, Apopka, FL 33896 USA
 d3e...@gmail.com

> 5.  Updating the Server Secret
>
> I think that it would be useful to remind the reader that server secrets are
> expected to be updated on a semi-regular basis, as described in section 4.
>
> Regards,
> Rob

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