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Fetch and Validation of Verified Mark Certificates
draft-fetch-validation-vmc-wchuang-04

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Active".
Authors Wei Chuang , Marc Bradshaw , Thede Loder , Alex Brotman
Last updated 2023-04-07
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draft-fetch-validation-vmc-wchuang-04
Network                                                        W. Chuang
Internet-Draft                                                    Google
Intended status: Standards Track                             M. Bradshaw
Expires: 9 October 2023                                         Fastmail
                                                                T. Loder
                                                          Skyelogicworks
                                                              A. Brotman
                                                                 Comcast
                                                            7 April 2023

           Fetch and Validation of Verified Mark Certificates
                 draft-fetch-validation-vmc-wchuang-04

Abstract

   A description of how entities wishing to validate a Verified Mark
   Certificate (VMC) should retrieve and validate these documents.
   This document is a companion to BIMI core specification, which should
   be consulted alongside this document.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 9 October 2023.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2023 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components

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   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Fetch of Verified Mark Certificate  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  BIMI Assertion Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Verified Mark Certificate Fetch . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  Fetch Format  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Verified Mark Certificate Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Logotype Extension  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  SVG Indicators  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.3.  BIMI Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.4.  BIMI Extended Key Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.5.  Validity  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.6.  Certificate Transparency  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  Validation of Verified Mark Certificate . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.1.  Issuance and Profile Verification . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.2.  VMC Domain Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.3.  Validation of VMC Evidence Document . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Appendix  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     6.1.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   Brands Indicators or logos help people visually recognize products
   and services, and consequently their providers.  In the context of
   email, it can help users understand who a sender is.  Brand
   Indicators for Message Identification is a specification as described
   in [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi] for senders to associate and provide brand
   Indicators to email.  As noted in that document's security
   considerations, the potential for abuse with brand indicators is
   high, and in particular a risk for look-alike domains and copycat
   indicators.  One way to mitigate abuse is to validate brand ownership
   of some Indicators by some third-party and have that validation
   provably demonstrated through an X.509/PKIX [RFC5280] certificate as
   an evidence document [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi].  We call such
   certificates containing Indicators that meet the profile described
   later in this document Verified Mark Certificate (VMC).  This
   document provides a specification on how email receivers working on
   behalf of email users can fetch VMC from the Internet and how they
   can validate the content of the VMC.  With this, the email receiver
   can prove that the VMC was indeed issued by some trusted third-party

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   such as a Certification Authority (CA).

2.  Terminology

   BIMI: Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI)
   specification [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi] that combines DMARC-based message
   authentication with cryptographic methods to ensure the identity of a
   sender.

   BIMI Evidence Document: A document published by a Mark Verifying
   Authority (MVA) which in the context of a Verified Mark Certificate
   (VMC) is a Certification Authority (CA) to assert evidence of
   verification.

   Email Receivers: The entity or organization that receives and
   processes email.  Mail Receivers operate one or more Internet facing
   Mail Transport Agents (MTAs).

   End entity certificate: A non-CA certificate representing a user (or
   domain) of the PKI certificates.

   Indicator: A brand indicator displayed on a Mail User Agent (MUA
   e.g., an email client) when the sender's email meets the BIMI
   specification requirements.  The brand logo and other associated
   identity information is parsed from the Verified Mark Certificate.
   Immediate issuing CA certificate: A non-root CA certificate that
   issues end entity certificates.

   Root certificate: A self-signed CA certificate issued by the root CA
   to identify itself and to facilitate verification of certificates
   issued by Subordinate CAs.

   Verified Mark Certificate (VMC): An end entity certificate that meets
   the profile specified in this document and the Verified Mark
   Certificate Guideline document.

3.  Fetch of Verified Mark Certificate

   This section normatively describes the actions needed to receive and
   handle BIMI identified messages using Verified Mark Certificates that
   is built on the protocol described in the [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi].
   Receivers use these specified processes to fetch Verified Mark
   Certificates securely, and then to validate the certificates and
   their embedded Indicators.  If all requirements are met, receivers
   may then display the Indicators.  Details of these steps are
   described below, and the indicator display procedure is described
   here.

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3.1.  BIMI Assertion Record

   The sender declares associating BIMI to a domain via an Assertion
   record as normatively described by [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi].  That
   record describes the BIMI policy and that policy may include a means
   to find the BIMI Indicator via the publication of evidence documents.
   The email receiver uses [RFC1035] to look for the publication of the
   Assertion record as well as the lack of publication when [RFC1035]
   returns NXDOMAIN.  Assertion records containing the "a=" tag and
   associated populated value indicates that a sender has published a
   BIMI evidence document for use with that domain such a Verified Mark
   Certificate.  The evidence document may be found at a hosting service
   specified by the URI in the value.  The rest of this document
   describes the process for fetching and validating the Verified Mark
   Certificate with the clarification that other types of evidence
   document will have their own specification for fetch and validation.

3.2.  Verified Mark Certificate Fetch

   Verified Mark Certificates, in this specification, are published by
   the sender's web hosting service.  The service MUST use HTTPS
   protocol and SHOULD use TLS version v1.2 [RFC5246] or newer to avoid
   protocol security bugs with earlier versions of TLS.  That secure TLS
   connection MUST be established by using the protocol specified in
   [RFC8446].  The TLS certificate MUST have a valid issuance path to
   some client trusted server root CA certificate using the procedures
   in [RFC5280].

3.3.  Fetch Format

   Certificates fetched from the hosting service MUST be in PEM encoding
   [RFC7468].  To facilitate X.509/PKIX certificate issuance validation,
   the full issuance chain up to and optionally including the root CA
   certificate, MUST be present.  The downloaded file SHOULD be ordered
   by starting with the Verified Mark Certificate, followed by its
   issuer CA certificate and potential successive issuers all the way to
   the optional root CA certificate.  If the certificates appear out of
   issuance order, contain duplicates or more than one VMC, the receiver
   may choose to reject the validation.  The filename specified of the
   BIMI Assertion record "a=" tag URI SHOULD have a ".pem" file name
   extension.  Email receivers MAY cache the certificates and other
   evidence documents, and if so the receivers SHOULD set a Time-To-Live
   (TTL) on the cache entries as well as index by URI.  This document
   intentionally does not specify what that TTL value is.  If the sender
   wants force a certificate update, the sender MAY change the URI to a
   new unique location that will "bust the cache".

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4.  Verified Mark Certificate Profile

   The profile describes the metadata contained within the Verified Mark
   Certificate.  This section normatively describes a subset of the
   Verified Mark Certificate profile that pertains to the certificate
   issuance and validity verification.  The remaining content of the VMC
   profile is defined via guidance documents from the Authindicators
   (aka BIMI) Working Group, and in particular the process for obtaining
   that content (with some overlap).  For example, while this section
   defines a requirement for the VMC to contain the Logotype extension,
   the Authindicators' VMC Guidelines document defines the content of
   the logotype extension.  The following section describes the VMC
   profile checks using the profile described here as part of the VMC
   validation process.

4.1.  Logotype Extension

   Verified Mark Certificates MUST use logotype extension to carry the
   Indicators in the certificate as specified in [RFC3709].  That RFC
   uses secure URIs to specify the Indicators, and this specification
   calls for the Indicators to be embedded directly in the certificate
   via a DATA URI as defined by [RFC6170] and [RFC2397].

4.2.  SVG Indicators

   The Indicators image format MUST be SVG (an open W3C specification)
   as this helps with supporting different display resolutions that
   likely change in the future as SVG is a vectorized (meaning
   dimensionless) format.  We believe that constraining the Indicators
   to a single image type will help with interoperability.  This SVG
   MUST use the secure profile as defined by [RFC6170].  Non-
   normatively, to reiterate the secure profile defined there, it is
   summarized as:

   *  Use SVG Tiny profile

   *  No script

   *  No external resource references

   Additionally this document normatively specifies additional security
   restrictions on the SVG formatting as defined in
   [I-D.svg-tiny-ps-abrotman].  The SVG MUST be compressed to be space
   efficient, and base64 encoded for the DATA URI encoding as defined by
   [RFC6170] and [RFC2397].

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4.3.  BIMI Domain

   A Verified Mark Certificate MUST define one or more Subject
   Alternative Name (SAN) extension dNSName domain as defined by
   [RFC5280] that identifies the location of the BIMI Assertion record
   that was used to fetch the VMC.  There may be stronger properties
   that can be said about the relationship between the VMC and the
   Assertion record depending on the validation done on dNSName, but
   that is outside the scope of this document.  The domain name may
   either be the author or organizational name as defined in
   [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi] i.e. the Assertion record domain without the
   BIMI header selector or "default" selector and without the "_bimi"
   well-known label, meaning that it matches against any BIMI header
   selector including "default".  Alternatively the domain name may
   specify also the BIMI header selector or "default" selector along
   with the "_bimi" well-known label, and will only match against that
   specific selector.  If the domain is internationalized, it MUST
   follow canonicalization procedure specified in section 7.2 of
   [RFC5280].

4.4.  BIMI Extended Key Usage

   This document describes a new [RFC5280] Extended Key Usage OID that
   identifies Verified Mark Certificate as id-kp-
   BrandIndicatorforMessageIdentification.  Certificates conforming to
   the Verified Mark Certificate profile is distinguished by using this
   extended key usage.

   id-kp-BrandIndicatorforMessageIdentification OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= {id-kp 31 } OID.

   Verified Mark Certificates MUST contain an Extended Key Usage
   extension with the id-kp-BrandIndicatorforMessageIdentification OID.
   Also the CA certificate representing the immediate issuer of Verified
   Mark Certificates MUST also contain an Extended Key Usage extension
   with the id-kp-BrandIndicatorforMessageIdentification OID designating
   its usage.

4.5.  Validity

   A Verified Mark Certificate MUST specify a certificate validity
   period using the notBefore and notAfter fields.  It MUST also define
   a location to check for certificate revocation using a Certificate
   Revocation List (CRL) Distribution Point and that is encoded in the
   VMC as a [RFC5280] cRLDistributionPoints extension.

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4.6.  Certificate Transparency

   CT as specified provides transparency for the issued certificates.
   The Verified Mark Certificate MUST be logged to a set of Certificate
   Transparency (CT) logs, and the proof of that logging must be present
   in the certificate as a [RFC6962] SCT extension.  The SCT extension
   MUST contain one or more SCTs.

5.  Validation of Verified Mark Certificate

   Verified Mark Certificates provide the means to securely authenticate
   as well as identify the third-party Mark Verifying Authority which in
   this case is a Certification Authority by verifying the issuance
   chain.  It also provides the means to associate the Verified Mark
   Certificate to the BIMI Assertion record.  This section concludes
   with a BIMI validation procedure for determining whether the VMC is
   valid or not.  This should be used as part of a procedure in
   determining whether to display a BIMI Indicator based on a VMC.

5.1.  Issuance and Profile Verification

   To ensure the correctness of that certificate information, the
   receiver verifies the authenticity of the certificate, its validity
   and that it is a Verified Mark Certificate.  After the certificate is
   downloaded, the receiver MUST validate the certificate with the
   following procedure:

   1.  Validate the authenticity of the certificate by checking the
       certificate signatures, that the end-entity certificate issuance
       chain leads back to some BIMI root CA certificate, and confirm
       membership of the root CA certificate in the receiver's trusted
       BIMI root set following the path validation procedures specified
       in section 6.1 of [RFC5280].  The downloaded certificates MUST
       contain all intermediate CA certificates up to but not
       necessarily including the root certificates.

   2.  Check the validity of the certificates in the certificate chain
       using the procedures in section 4.1.2.5 of [RFC5280].

   3.  Check that the certificates in the certificate chain are not
       revoked using the procedures in section 6.3 of [RFC5280].  The
       end-entity certificate MUST identify the CRL by a
       cRLDistributionPoints extension.

   4.  Validate the proof of CT logging.  The receiver MUST find one or
       more SCTs, and validate that they are signed by a CT log
       recognized by the receiver using the procedures in [RFC6962].

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   5.  Verify that the end-entity certificate is a Verified Mark
       Certificate.  The certificate MUST contain an Extended-Key-Usage
       extension, and that it contains extended-key-usage is id-kp-
       BrandIndicatorforMessageIdentification.  The entity certificate
       must contain a logotype extension, and that it contains a SVG as
       described in [#svg_indicators].

5.2.  VMC Domain Verification

   Next the receiver checks VMC SAN dNSName domain name relationship to
   the Assertion Record domain name, to demonstrate that they mutually
   identify each other.  The following procedure allows the dNSName to
   either specify and thus match against the Assertion Record's domain
   name only, or selector + domain name.  To do this, the receiver
   creates two domain name sets: 1) selector-set and 2) domain-set.  The
   receiver iterates over the VMC SAN dNSName domain names and adds them
   to the domain name sets as follows.

   *  If the domain name contains "_bimi" i.e. prefixed with the labels
      <selector>._bimi, add to selector-set.

   *  Otherwise add the domain name to domain-set.

   Then check if the Assertion record domain matches by checking the
   following:

   *  Check if the Assertion record author or organizational domain
      names as defined in [draft-blank-ietf-bimi-01], which includes the
      <selector>._bimi prefix, is present in the selector-set.  If
      found, the VMC Domain Verification is considered to match.

   *  Check if the remaining Assertion record author or organizational
      domain name is present in the domain-set.  If found, the VMC
      Domain Verification is considered to match.

   If internationalization is present, the receiver MUST canonicalize
   the domain names using the internationalization procedures specified
   in section 7.2 of [RFC5280].

5.3.  Validation of VMC Evidence Document

   The following procedure combines the above steps to determine whether
   a VMC contains a valid BIMI Evidence Document.  This should be a part
   of a larger receiver defined procedure to determine whether to
   display a BIMI Indicator that may take into account other receiver
   specific signals such as reputation.

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   As a preamble, consider if the receiver supports VMC validation and
   an Assertion Record is found which has BIMI VMC location in the "a="
   tag value.  If so then validate the VMC using the following
   algorithm:

   1.  Use the mechanism in the "a=" tag location to retrieve the VMC,
       this MUST be a URI with HTTPS transport.

   2.  If the TLS connection setup as described in
       [#verified_mark_certificate_fetch] fails, then validation returns
       with an error.

   3.  If the evidence document does not contain a single valid VMC
       certificate chain then validation returns with an error.

   4.  Validate the VMC path validation procedure described in
       [#issuance_and_profile_verification].  If path validation fails
       then validation returns with an error.

   5.  Validate the VMC Domain relationship to the Assertion record as
       described in [#VMC_domain_verification] i.e. matches.  If the VMC
       Domain is not related to the Assertion record, then validation
       returns with an error.

   6.  Retrieve the SVG Indicator from the [Logotype] Extension (oid
       1.3.6.1.5.5.7.1.12) of the validated VMC.

   7.  Optionally, the receiver MAY choose to retrieve the SVG Indicator
       from the URI specified in the l= tag location of the Assertion
       Record and compare this to the SVG Indicator embedded within the
       VMC.  The receiver MAY fail validation if these Indicators
       differ.

   8.  Validate the certificate meets the remaining profile
       specification of the VMC as described in
       [#verified_mark_certificate_profile], otherwise validation
       returns with an error.

   9.  Proceed to the Indicator Validation as described in section 8.6
       in [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi].

6.  Appendix

6.1.  IANA Considerations

   IANA is kindly requested to reserve the following assignments for:

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   *  The LAMPS-Bimi-Certificate-2018 ASN.1 module in the "SMI Security
      for PKIX Extended Key Purpose" registry (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3).

   *  The BIMI certificate extended key usage (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.31).

7.  Normative References

   [I-D.blank-ietf-bimi]
              Blank, S., Goldstein, P., Loder, T., Zink, T., and M.
              Bradshaw, "Brand Indicators for Message Identification
              (BIMI)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-blank-
              ietf-bimi-02, 9 March 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-blank-ietf-
              bimi-02>.

   [I-D.svg-tiny-ps-abrotman]
              Brotman, A. and J. T. Adams, "SVG Tiny Portable/Secure",
              Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-svg-tiny-ps-
              abrotman-04, 9 October 2022,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-svg-tiny-ps-
              abrotman-04>.

   [RFC1035]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
              specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035,
              November 1987, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1035>.

   [RFC2397]  Masinter, L., "The "data" URL scheme", RFC 2397,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2397, August 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2397>.

   [RFC3709]  Santesson, S., Housley, R., and T. Freeman, "Internet
              X.509 Public Key Infrastructure: Logotypes in X.509
              Certificates", RFC 3709, DOI 10.17487/RFC3709, February
              2004, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3709>.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5246, August 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5246>.

   [RFC5280]  Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
              Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
              Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
              (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.

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   [RFC6170]  Santesson, S., Housley, R., Bajaj, S., and L. Rosenthol,
              "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure -- Certificate
              Image", RFC 6170, DOI 10.17487/RFC6170, May 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6170>.

   [RFC6962]  Laurie, B., Langley, A., and E. Kasper, "Certificate
              Transparency", RFC 6962, DOI 10.17487/RFC6962, June 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6962>.

   [RFC7468]  Josefsson, S. and S. Leonard, "Textual Encodings of PKIX,
              PKCS, and CMS Structures", RFC 7468, DOI 10.17487/RFC7468,
              April 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7468>.

   [RFC8446]  Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
              Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.

Authors' Addresses

   Weihaw Chuang
   Google
   Email: weihaw@google.com

   Marc Bradshaw
   Fastmail
   Email: marc@fastmailteam.com

   Thede Loder
   Skyelogicworks
   Email: thede@skyelogicworks.com

   Alex Brotman (ed)
   Comcast
   Email: alex_brotman@comcast.com

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