DANE Authentication for Network Clients Everywhere
charter-ietf-dance-01

# Objective

The DANE Authentication for Network Clients Everywhere (DANCE) WG seeks to
extend DANE (RFC 6698) to encompass TLS client authentication using
certificates or Raw Public Keys (RPK).

# Problem Statement

The process of establishing trust in public-key-authenticated identity
typically involves the use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and a shared
PKI root of trust between the parties exchanging public keys. A Certification
Authority (CA) is one example of a root of trust for a PKI, which can be then
used for establishing trust in certified public keys.

The DNS namespace, together with DNSSEC, forms the most widely-recognized
namespace and authenticated lookup mechanism on the Internet. DANE built on
this authenticated lookup mechanism to enable public key-based TLS
authentication which is resilient to impersonation, but only for TLS server
identities. However, the DANE WG did not define authentication for TLS client
identities.

In response to the challenges related to ambiguity between identically named
identities issued by different CAs, application owners frequently choose to
onboard client identities to a single private PKI with a limited CA set that is
specific to that vertical. This creates a silo effect where different parts of
large deployments can not communicate. Examples of where DANCE could be useful
includes SMTP transport client authentication, authentication of DNS
authoritative server to server zone file transfers over TLS, authentication to
DNS recursive servers, and Internet of Things (IoT) device identification.

# Scope of work

DANCE will specify the DANE-enabled TLS client authentication use cases and an
architecture describing the primary components and interaction patterns.

DANCE will define how DNS DANE records will represent client identities for TLS
connections.

DANCE will coordinate with the TLS working group to define any TLS protocol
updates required to support client authentication using DANE.

The DANCE scope of work will be initially limited to just TLS client
authentication. Future work may include using client identifiers for other
tasks including object security, or authenticating to other protocols.

# Deliverables:

* DANCE architecture and use cases (e.g., IoT, SMTP client,
authentication to DNS services) document (9 months)

* DANE client authentication and publication practices (6 months after
architecture)

* A TLS extension to indicate DANE identification capability and the
client's DANE identity name (6 months after architecture)