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A Reputation Query Protocol
draft-ietf-repute-query-http-05

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7072.
Authors Dr. Nathaniel S. Borenstein , Murray Kucherawy
Last updated 2013-05-05
Replaces draft-kucherawy-reputation-query-http
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Reviews
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state In WG Last Call
Document shepherd Dave Crocker
IESG IESG state Became RFC 7072 (Proposed Standard)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD Pete Resnick
Send notices to repute-chairs@tools.ietf.org, draft-ietf-repute-query-http@tools.ietf.org
draft-ietf-repute-query-http-05
REPUTE Working Group                                       N. Borenstein
Internet-Draft                                                  Mimecast
Intended status: Standards Track                            M. Kucherawy
Expires: November 6, 2013                                    May 5, 2013

                      A Reputation Query Protocol
                    draft-ietf-repute-query-http-05

Abstract

   This document defines a mechanism to conduct queries for reputation
   information over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol using JSON as the
   payload meta-format.

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 http://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 November 6, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 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
   (http://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
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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Terminology and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     2.1.  Key Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     2.2.  Other Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     3.1.  Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     3.2.  Syntax  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.3.  URI Template  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     3.4.  Response  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     3.5.  Protocol Support  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Appendix B.  Public Discussion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

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1.  Introduction

   This document defines a method to query a reputation data service for
   information about an entity, using the HyperText Transfer Protocol
   (HTTP) as the transport mechanism and JSON as the payload meta-
   format.

2.  Terminology and Definitions

   This section defines terms used in the rest of the document.

2.1.  Key Words

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [KEYWORDS].

2.2.  Other Definitions

   Other terms of importance in this document are defined in
   [I-D.REPUTE-MODEL] and [I-D.REPUTE-MEDIA-TYPE].

3.  Description

3.1.  Overview

   A reputation query made via [HTTP] encodes the question being asked
   in an HTTP GET method.

   The components to the question being asked comprise the following:

   o  The subject of the query;

   o  The name of the host, or the IP address, at which the reputation
      service is available;

   o  The name of the reputation application, i.e., the context within
      which the query is being made;

   o  Optionally, name(s) of the specific reputation assertions or
      attributies that are being requested.

   The name of the application, if given, MUST be one registered with
   IANA in the Reputation Applications Registry.  A server receiving a
   query about an unregistered application or one it does not explicitly
   support MUST return a 404 error code.

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3.2.  Syntax

   The syntax for the [URI] portion of the query is constructed using a
   template as per [URI-TEMPLATE].  (See Section 3.3.)  The following
   variables MUST be available during template expansion:

   application:  The name of the application reputation in whose context
      the request is being made.

   scheme:  The transport scheme the client will be using for the query.

   service:  The hostname or IP address being queried.

   subject:  The subject of the query.

   Which scheme(s) can be used depends on how the reputation service
   provider offers its services.  Thus, the template could include a
   specific scheme as a fixed string in the template, or it might offer
   it as a variable in the template.  If it is a variable, it is up to
   the client and server to negotiate out-of-band which schemes are
   supported for client queries.  Implementers need to be aware that the
   template could include a fixed scheme not supported by the client.

   For example, the following query template includes a fixed scheme,
   forcing clients to use the "http" URI scheme only:

       http://{service}/repute.php{?subject,application,assertion}

   However, this template allows the client to select the scheme to be
   used if, for example, the service is also available over the "https"
   URI scheme:

       {scheme}://{service}/repute.php{?subject,application,assertion}

   The following variables are OPTIONAL, but might be required by the
   template presented for a specific service:

   assertion:  A list of one or more specific assertions of interest to
      the client.  If absent, the server MUST infer that all available
      assertion information is being requested.

   Every application space has a set of assertions applicable to its own
   context.  [I-D.REPUTE-MEDIA-TYPE] defines a single assertion assumed
   to exist in any application that does not define its own assertion
   set.

   Other required or optional query parameters might be defined by
   documents that register new response sets with IANA.  Further, other

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   required or optional query parameters might be defined by specific
   reputation service providers, though these are private arrangements
   between client and server and will not be registered with IANA.

   Authentication between reputation client and server is outside the
   scope of this specificatin.  It could be provided through a variety
   of available transport-based or object-based mechanisms, including a
   later extension of this specification.

3.3.  URI Template

   The template is retrieved by requesting the [WELL-KNOWN-URI] "repute-
   template" from the host providing reputation service using HTTP.
   (The registration for this well-known URI is in Section 4.)  The
   server MUST return the template in a reply using the text/plain media
   type (see [MIME]), and SHOULD include an Expires field (see Section
   14.21 of [HTTP]) indicating a duration for which the template is to
   be considered valid by clients and not re-queried.

   If the template cannot be retrieved (i.e., any HTTP error is
   returned), the reputation query SHOULD be aborted and/or retried at a
   later time.  Clients SHOULD adhere to the expiration time presented
   in an Expires field, if present, or otherwise assume that the
   template is valid for no less than one day and SHOULD NOT repeat the
   query.

   The template is expanded, using the variables that are the parameters
   to the query, and then used as the target for the query itself.  For
   example, given the following template:

   {scheme}://{service}/{application}/{subject}/{assertion}

   A query about the use of the domain "example.org" in the "email-id"
   application context to a service run at "example.com", where that
   application declares a required "subject" parameter, requesting the
   "SPAM" reputation assertion, using HTTP to conduct the query with no
   specific client authentication information, would be formed as
   follows:

   http://example.com/email-id/example.org/spam

   Matching of the attribute name(s) in the template MUST be case-
   insensitive.

3.4.  Response

   The response is expected to be contained in a media type designed to
   deliver reputons.  An media type designed for this purpose,

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   "application/reputon+json", is defined in [I-D.REPUTE-MEDIA-TYPE].

3.5.  Protocol Support

   A client has to implement HTTP in order to retrieve the query
   template as described in Section 3.3.  Accordingly, a server can
   assume the client will be able to handle a URI template that produces
   a URI for the query using the "http" scheme.  If the template can
   yield a query string that uses some other URI scheme, there will need
   to be some out-of-band negotiation of which scheme(s) are supported
   by the service, and appropriate protocol support in the client.

4.  IANA Considerations

   This document registers the "repute-template" well-known URI in the
   Well-Known URI registry as defined by [WELL-KNOWN-URI], as follows:

   URI suffix:  repute-template

   Change controller:  IETF

   Specification document(s):  [this document]

   Related information:  none

5.  Security Considerations

   This document defines particular uses of existing protocols for a
   specific application.  In particular, the basic protocol used for
   this service is basic HTTP which is not secure without certain
   extensions.  As such, the protocol described here does not itself
   present new security considerations.

   Security considerations relevant to email and email authentication
   can be found in most of the documents listed in the References
   sections below.  Information specific to use of reputation services
   can be found in [I-D.REPUTE-CONSIDERATIONS].

   Reputation mechanisms represent an obvious security concern, in terms
   of the validity and use of the reputation information.  These issues
   are beyond the scope of this specification.

6.  References

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6.1.  Normative References

   [HTTP]     Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [I-D.REPUTE-MEDIA-TYPE]
              Borenstein, N. and M. Kucherawy, "A Media Type for
              Reputation Interchange", draft-ietf-repute-media-type
              (work in progress), November 2012.

   [I-D.REPUTE-MODEL]
              Borenstein, N. and M. Kucherawy, "A Model for Reputation
              Interchange", draft-iet-repute-model (work in progress),
              November 2012.

   [KEYWORDS]
              Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [MIME]     Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
              Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
              Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.

   [URI]      Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 3986,
              January 2005.

   [URI-TEMPLATE]
              Gregorio, J., Fielding, R., Hadley, M., Nottingham, M.,
              and D. Orchard, "URI Template", draft-gregorio-uritemplate
              (work in progress), September 2011.

   [WELL-KNOWN-URI]
              Nottingham, M. and E. Hammer-Lahav, "Defining Well-Known
              Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)", RFC 5785,
              April 2010.

6.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.REPUTE-CONSIDERATIONS]
              Kucherawy, M., "Operational Considerations Regarding
              Reputation Services", draft-ietf-repute-considerations
              (work in progress), November 2012.

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Appendix A.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank the following for their contributions
   to this work: Mark Nottingham, David F. Skoll, and Mykyta
   Yevstifeyev.

Appendix B.  Public Discussion

   Public discussion of this set of documents takes place on the
   domainrep@ietf.org mailing list.  See
   https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/domainrep.

Authors' Addresses

   Nathaniel Borenstein
   Mimecast
   203 Crescent St., Suite 303
   Waltham, MA  02453
   USA

   Phone: +1 781 996 5340
   Email: nsb@guppylake.com

   Murray S. Kucherawy
   2063 42nd Avenue
   San Francisco, CA  94116
   USA

   Email: superuser@gmail.com

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