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OpenID Connect DNS-based Discovery
draft-sanz-openid-dns-discovery-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Vittorio Bertola , Marcos Sanz
Last updated 2017-10-18
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draft-sanz-openid-dns-discovery-00
Network Working Group                                         V. Bertola
Internet-Draft                                              Open-Xchange
Intended status: Informational                                   M. Sanz
Expires: April 21, 2018                                         DENIC eG
                                                        October 18, 2017

                   OpenID Connect DNS-based Discovery
                   draft-sanz-openid-dns-discovery-00

Abstract

   The following document describes a DNS-based mechanism for a client
   to discover an OpenID Identity Provider given an Identifier of the
   End-User, as a complementary alternative to the existing WebFinger-
   based mechanism.

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 April 21, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 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
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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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1.  Introduction

   "OpenID Connect Discovery 1.0" [OpenID.Discovery] uses WebFinger
   [RFC7033] to locate the OpenID Provider for an End-User in a process
   called "issuer discovery".  While this mechanism has been in place
   for quite some time now and it has proven to work, it presents some
   operational inconveniences: A (dedicated) WebFinger service has to be
   setup and operated on top of an HTTPS server.  Furthermore: in an
   OpenID deployment with distributed resources, each resource would
   have to be running its own WebFinger service to point to its issuer.
   This presents scaling/operating challenges, especially in a scenario
   where the deployment happens at Internet scale and each resource may
   use a different, personal domain name.

   This document presents a lightweight discovery mechanism based on top
   of DNS (and DNS has to be setup anyway for the WebFinger approach to
   work).  This so-called "DNS-based discovery" does not disrupt the
   existing discovery specification and is presented as an alternative
   discovery process, compatible to the existing issuer discovery
   process described in "OpenID Connect Discovery 1.0"
   [OpenID.Discovery] if interpreted as a so-called "out-of-band"
   mechanism.

   Additionally the mechanisms described in this document enrich the
   discovery process by allowing to discover not only the issuer, but
   also potential Claims Providers [OpenID.Core] available for a given
   End-User identifier.

2.  Requirements Notation and Conventions

   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 [RFC2119].

   Throughout this document, values are quoted to indicate that they are
   to be taken literally.  When using these values in protocol messages,
   the quotes MUST NOT be used as part of the value.

3.  DNS-based Discovery Resource Record

   The format defined here has been inspired by the DMARC [RFC7489] and
   DKIM [RFC6376] specifications and some text passages have been
   directly copied from those standards to allow for a reading without
   following references.

   DNS-based discovery metadata are stored as DNS TXT records in
   subdomains named "_openid".  The underscore construct is used to
   define a semantic scope for DNS records that are associated with the

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   parent domain (s.  "DNS Scoped Data Through Global '_Underscore'
   Naming of Attribute Leaves" [I-D.ietf-dnsop-attrleaf]).

   For example, the domain owner of "myname.example.com" would post
   OpenID configuration in a TXT record at "_openid.myname.example.com".
   This DNS-located OpenID metadata will hereafter be called the "OpenID
   record".

   To allow for the use of e-mail addresses as resources, the following
   additional rules are defined:

   o  In case the resource identifier contains at least one "@"
      character, the rightmost "@" character is replaced by the string
      "._openidemail.", which introduces an additional DNS subdomain
      inside the identifier's domain name.

   o  If any character in the resulting resource identifier is
      disallowed from use in domain names as per [RFC1035] section
      2.3.1, the punycoding algorithm defined in [RFC3492] is applied.

   Per [RFC1035] a TXT record can comprise several "character-string"
   objects.  Where this is the case, the evaluator of the OpenID record
   must concatenate these strings by joining together the objects in
   order and parsing the result as a single string.

   Content of OpenID records follow the extensible "tag=value" syntax
   for DNS-based key records defined in [RFC6376] and definition there
   applies.  Specifically:

   o  Values are a series of strings containing either plain text or
      "base64" text (as defined in [RFC2045], Section 6.8).  The
      definition of the tag will determine the encoding of each value.

   o  Unencoded semicolon (";") characters must not occur in the value,
      since that separates tag-value pairs.

   o  Whitespaces are allowed anywhere around tags.  In particular, any
      whitespace after the "=" and any whitespace before a terminating
      ";" is not part of the value; however, whitespace inside the value
      is significant.

   o  Tags must be interpreted in a case-sensitive manner.  Values must
      be processed as case sensitive unless the specific tag description
      of semantics specifies case insensitivity.  Host and domain names
      in this context are to be compared in a case insensitive manner,
      per [RFC4343].

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   o  Tags with duplicate names must not occur within a single tag-list;
      if a tag name does occur more than once, the entire tag-list is
      invalid.

   o  Tag=value pairs that represent the default value for optional
      records may be included to aid legibility.

   o  Unrecognized tags must be ignored.

   o  Tags that have an empty value are not the same as omitted tags.
      An omitted tag is treated as having the default value; a tag with
      an empty value explicitly designates the empty string as the
      value.

   Only tags defined in this document or in later extensions are to be
   processed; note that given the rules of the previous paragraph,
   addition of a new tag into the registered list of tags does not
   itself require a new version of OpenID record to be generated (with a
   corresponding change to the "v" tag's value, see later), but a change
   to any existing tags does require a new version.

   The following tags are introduced as the initial valid OpenID tags:

   o  v: Version (plain-text; REQUIRED).  Identifies the record
      retrieved as a OpenID record.  It must have the value of "OID1".
      The value of this tag must match precisely; if it does not or it
      is absent, the entire record must be ignored.  It must be the
      first tag in the list.

   o  iss: The designated hostname for the Issuer (plain-text;
      REQUIRED).  Internationalized domain names must be encoded as
      A-labels, as described in Section 2.3 of [RFC5890].  That hostname
      can be used as the issuer location of an OpenID Connect Discovery
      1.0 (Section 4) Configuration Request to discover its relevant
      OpenID endpoints.  The issuer can contain path components (e.g.
      "issuer.example.com/path").

   o  clp: The designated hostname for the Claims Provider (plain-text;
      OPTIONAL).  Internationalized domain names must be encoded as
      A-labels, as described in Section 2.3 of [RFC5890].  That hostname
      can be used by Identity Providers as a claim source for aggregated
      or distributed claims.  Support for Aggregated Claims and
      Distributed Claims is OPTIONAL in the OpenID Core specification,
      so is the usage of this tag.  The value of this tag can contain
      path components (e.g. "provider.example.com/path").

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    The following is an example of a valid OpenID record for the domain
               example.com according to this specification:

    _openid IN TXT "v=OID1;iss=auth.freedom-id.de;clp=identityagent.de"

                      Figure 1: Example OpenID record

4.  DNS-based Issuer Discovery Process

   DNS-based OpenID Provider Issuer discovery is the process of
   determining the location of the OpenID Provider with this
   specification.

   DNS-based issuer discovery requires the following information to make
   a discovery request:

   o  resource - Identifier for the target End-User that is the subject
      of the discovery request

   o  host - Hostname target of the discovery DNS query

   To start discovery of OpenID endpoints, the End-User supplies an
   Identifier to the Relying Party.  The RP applies the same
   normalization rules to the Identifier as described in "OpenID Connect
   Discovery 1.0" [OpenID.Discovery] to determine the Resource and Host.
   It is worth mentioning that as result of those rules the resource
   could exactly match the host (e.g. resource is "example.com" and host
   is "example.com").

   The RP will then follow the following lookup scheme:

   1.  The RP queries the DNS for an OpenID record at host.  A possibly
       empty set of records is returned.

   2.  Records that do not start with a "v=" tag that identifies the
       current version of this document, or an older version of this
       document supported by the RP, are discarded.  If a tag
       identifying the current version is found, all records identifying
       other versions are discarded.  If no tag identifying the current
       version is found, but other tags identifying older versions are,
       the records using the latest supported version are kept, and all
       others are discarded.

   3.  If the remaining set contains multiple records or no records, the
       DNS-based discovery process terminates.

   4.  If the retrieved OpenID record does not contain a valid iss tag,
       the process terminates.

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   5.  Once the Issuer has been extracted from the iss tag, the regular
       dynamic discovery process can be resumed in Section 4 "Obtaining
       OpenID Provider Configuration Information" of [OpenID.Discovery].

   As already mentioned in [OpenID.Discovery] it is also worth noting
   that no relationship can be assumed between the user input Identifier
   string and the resulting Issuer location.

5.  Security Considerations

   DNS-based discovery depends directly on the security of the DNS.
   OpenID records must be ignored if not deployed in parallel with
   DNSSEC [RFC4033].  DNSSEC validation of OpenID records MUST be
   performed at all time before using them for any purpose.  DNSSEC-
   validation errors must result in abortion of this DNS-based discovery
   process.

6.  IANA Considerations

   tbd

7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [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>.

   [RFC2045]  Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
              Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
              Bodies", RFC 2045, DOI 10.17487/RFC2045, November 1996,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2045>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC3492]  Costello, A., "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode
              for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications
              (IDNA)", RFC 3492, DOI 10.17487/RFC3492, March 2003,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3492>.

   [RFC4033]  Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
              Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
              RFC 4033, DOI 10.17487/RFC4033, March 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4033>.

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   [RFC4343]  Eastlake 3rd, D., "Domain Name System (DNS) Case
              Insensitivity Clarification", RFC 4343,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4343, January 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4343>.

   [RFC5890]  Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
              Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
              RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5890>.

7.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-dnsop-attrleaf]
              Crocker, D., "DNS Scoped Data Through Global '_Underscore'
              Naming of Attribute Leaves", draft-ietf-dnsop-attrleaf-02
              (work in progress), March 2017.

   [OpenID.Core]
              Sakimura, N., Bradley, J., Jones, M., de Medeiros, B., and
              C. Mortimore, "OpenID Connect Core 1.0", November 2014,
              <http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html>.

   [OpenID.Discovery]
              Sakimura, N., Bradley, J., Jones, M., and E. Jay, "OpenID
              Connect Discovery 1.0", November 2014,
              <http://openid.net/specs/
              openid-connect-discovery-1_0.html>.

   [RFC6376]  Crocker, D., Ed., Hansen, T., Ed., and M. Kucherawy, Ed.,
              "DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures", STD 76,
              RFC 6376, DOI 10.17487/RFC6376, September 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6376>.

   [RFC7033]  Jones, P., Salgueiro, G., Jones, M., and J. Smarr,
              "WebFinger", RFC 7033, DOI 10.17487/RFC7033, September
              2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7033>.

   [RFC7489]  Kucherawy, M., Ed. and E. Zwicky, Ed., "Domain-based
              Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance
              (DMARC)", RFC 7489, DOI 10.17487/RFC7489, March 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7489>.

Authors' Addresses

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   Vittorio Bertola
   Open-Xchange

   Email: vittorio.bertola@open-xchange.com
   URI:   https://www.open-xchange.com

   Marcos Sanz
   DENIC eG
   Kaiserstrasse 75 - 77
   Frankfurt am Main  60329
   Germany

   Email: sanz@denic.de
   URI:   https://www.denic.de

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