Network Working Group                                           M. Jones
Internet-Draft                                                 Y. Goland
Intended status: Standards Track                               Microsoft
Expires: January 12, 2012                                  July 11, 2011


                       Simple Web Discovery (SWD)
                  draft-jones-simple-web-discovery-01

Abstract

   Simple Web Discovery (SWD) defines a HTTPS GET based mechanism to
   discover the location of a given type of service for a given
   principal starting only with a domain name.

Requirements Language

   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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

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 January 12, 2012.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 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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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   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.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Simple Web Discovery Request  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  Simple Web Discovery Responses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.1.  Response Containing One or More Locations . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.2.  Redirecting All Simple Web Discovery Requests . . . . . . . 4
     3.3.  401 Unauthorized Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     3.4.  Other HTTP 1.1 Responses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Appendix A.  Document History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8





























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1.  Introduction

   Simple Web Discovery (SWD) defines a HTTPS GET based mechanism to
   discover the location of a given type of service for a given
   principal starting only with a domain name.  SWD requests use the
   x-www-form-urlencoded format to specify a URI for the principal and
   another URI for the type of service being sought.  If the request is
   successful then the response, by default, is a JSON object containing
   an array of URIs that point to where the principal has instances of
   services of the requested type.

   For example, let us say that a requester wants to discover where Joe
   keeps his calendar.  The requester could take Joe's e-mail address,
   joe@example.com and take from it its domain to create a HTTPS GET
   request of the following form:

GET /.well-known/simple-web-discovery?principal=mailto:joe@example.com&service=urn:adatum.com:calendar HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com

HTTP/1.1 200 O.K.
Content-Type: application/json

{
 "locations": ["http://calendars.proseware.com/calendars/joseph"]
}

   Note: The request-URI is left un-encoded in the above example for the
   sake of readability in the above example.


2.  Simple Web Discovery Request

   Domains that support SWD requests MUST make available a SWD server
   for their domain at the path .well-known/simple-web-discovery.  The
   syntax and semantics of ".well-known" are defined in RFC 5785
   [RFC5785]. "simple-web-discovery" MUST point to a SWD server
   compliant with this specification.

   SWD servers MUST support receiving SWD requests via TLS 1.2 as
   defined in RFC 5246 [RFC5246] and MAY support other transport layer
   security mechanisms of equivalent security.  SWD servers MUST reject
   SWD requests sent over plain HTTP or any other transport that does
   not provide both privacy and validation of the server's identity.

   A SWD server is queried using a HTTPS GET request with the previously
   specified path along with a query segment containing a x-www-form-
   urlencoded form as defined in HTML 4.01 [W3C.REC-html401-19991224].
   The form MUST contain two name/value pairs that MUST appear exactly



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   once, "principal" and "service".  Both name/value pairs MUST have
   values that are set to URIs (as defined in RFC 3986 [RFC3986]).  If
   any of the previous requirements are not met in a SWD request, then
   the request MUST be rejected with a 400 Bad Request.

   The SWD request form MAY contain additional name/value pairs but if
   those name/value pairs are not recognized by the SWD server then the
   SWD server MUST ignore them for processing purposes.

   The "principal" query component is a URI that identifies an entity.
   The "service" query component is a URI that identifies a service
   type.  The semantics of the SWD query is "Please return the
   location(s) of instances of the specified service type associated
   with the specified principal".  The definition of URIs used to
   identify principals and services are outside the scope of this
   specification.


3.  Simple Web Discovery Responses

3.1.  Response Containing One or More Locations

   Unless another content-type is negotiated, a 200 O.K. response to a
   SWD request that contains the information requested MUST return
   content of type application/json as defined in RFC 4627 [RFC4627].
   The JSON response MUST contain a JSON object that contains a member
   pair whose name is the string "locations" and whose value is an array
   of strings that are each a URI pointing to a location where the
   desired service type belonging to the specified principal can be
   found.  There are no semantics associated with the order in which the
   URIs are listed in the array.

   The JSON object MAY contain other members but a receiver of the
   object MAY ignore any member pairs whose name it does not recognize.

3.2.  Redirecting All Simple Web Discovery Requests

   SWD requests by definition start off by being issued to the .well-
   known/simple-web-discovery location.  But locating a SWD server at a
   root location can prove inconvenient.  To enable service level
   redirection a SWD server MAY return a 200 O.k. to an HTTPS request
   with a content type of application/json (or whatever other content
   type has been negotiated) that contains a JSON object that contains a
   member pair whose name is the string "SWD_service_redirect" whose
   value is a JSON object with a member pair whose name is "location"
   and whose value is a string that encodes a URI.  Optionally the JSON
   object value of "SWD_service_redirect" MAY also contain a member
   whose name is "expires" and whose value is a JSON number that encodes



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   an integer.

   A SWD compliant client MUST support the "SWD_service_redirect"
   response.

   The JSON objects MAY contain other members but a receiver of the
   objects MAY ignore any pairs whose name it does not recognize.

   The "location" member identifies the URI that the caller MUST
   redirect all SWD requests for that domain to until the "expires" time
   is met.  SWD requests for the redirected domain MUST be constructed
   by taking the URI returned in the "location" and using it as the base
   URI to which the SWD form arguments are then added as query
   parameters.  The location URI MUST NOT include a query component.

GET /.well-known/simple-web-discovery?principal=mailto:joe@example.com&service=urn:adatum.com:calendar HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com

HTTP/1.1 200 O.K.
Content-Type: application/json

{
 "SWD_service_redirect":
  {
   "location": "https://swd.proseware.com/swd_server",
   "expires": 1300752001
  }
}

GET /swd_server?principal=mailto:joe@example.com&service=urn:adatum.com:calendar HTTP/1.1
Host: swd.proseware.com

HTTP/1.1 200 O.K.
Content-Type: application/json

{
 "locations": ["http://calendars.proseware.com/calendars/joseph"]
}

   Note: The request-URIs are left un-encoded in the above example for
   the sake of readability in the above example.

   The "location" URI MUST be an HTTPS URL.

   The optional "expires" member identifies the point in time at which
   the caller MUST NOT redirect its SWD requests for that domain to the
   previously obtained "location" and MUST instead return to the .well-
   known/simple-web-discovery location.  The value of the "expires"



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   member MUST encode the number of seconds from 1970-01-01T0:0:0Z as
   measured in UTC until the desired date/time.  See RFC 3339 [RFC3339]
   for details regarding date/times in general and UTC in particular.
   If the "expires" value is in the past or if the value is more than
   one hour in the future then the response MUST be treated as if it
   didn't contain an "expires" value.

   If the "expires" value is omitted or if its value is incorrect then
   the "expires" value MUST be treated as having a value of exactly one
   hour into the future.

   If a JSON response is received that contains both a member pair with
   the name "SWD_service_redirect" and a member pair with the name
   "locations" as children of the object root then the
   "SWD_service_redirect" member pair MUST be ignored.

3.3.  401 Unauthorized Response

   A SWD server MAY respond to a request with a 401 Unauthorized
   Response, as described in RFC 2616 [RFC2616], Section 10.  Per the
   RFC, the request MAY be repeated with a suitable Authorization header
   field.  Authorization information may be communicated in this manner,
   including a JSON Web Token [JWT].

3.4.  Other HTTP 1.1 Responses

   A SWD server MAY return other HTTP 1.1 responses, including 404 Not
   Found, 400 Bad Request, and 403 Forbidden.  SWD implementations MUST
   correctly handle these responses.


4.  IANA Considerations

   Per RFC 5785 [RFC5785], the following registration template is
   offered:

   URI suffix  simple-web-discovery

   Change controller  IETF

   Specification document  This RFC


5.  Security Considerations

   SWD responses can contain confidential information.  Therefore a,
   general approach is used to require TLS in all cases.  But TLS can
   only provide for privacy and server validation, it cannot validate



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   that the requester is authorized to see the results of a query.  The
   exact mechanism used to determine if the requester is authorized to
   see the result of the query is outside the scope of this
   specification.

   Because SWD responses can contain confidential information, the
   requestor may need authorization to receive them.  Standard HTTP
   authorization mechanisms MAY be employed to request authorized
   access, including the use of an HTTP Authorization header field in
   requests, which in turn, may contain a JSON Web Token [JWT], among
   other authorization data formats.

   The ability to redirect an entire SWD server as defined in this
   document is an obvious attack point.  This is another reason why we
   have mandated TLS, so as to be sure that the redirect can only be
   received over a secure connection.  We have also put in the upper
   limit of 60 minutes for a redirect so as to provide a path for
   regaining control over queries should a successful attack be launched
   to return false redirects.

   The "SWD_service_redirect" capability may cause unanticipated
   failures in cases where a requestor may have permissions to discover
   content at the original SWD endpoint but not the one redirected to,
   or vice-versa.


6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2616]  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.

   [RFC3339]  Klyne, G., Ed. and C. Newman, "Date and Time on the
              Internet: Timestamps", RFC 3339, July 2002.

   [RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
              RFC 3986, January 2005.

   [RFC4627]  Crockford, D., "The application/json Media Type for
              JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)", RFC 4627, July 2006.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security



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              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.

   [RFC5785]  Nottingham, M. and E. Hammer-Lahav, "Defining Well-Known
              Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)", RFC 5785,
              April 2010.

   [W3C.REC-html401-19991224]
              Jacobs, I., Hors, A., and D. Raggett, "HTML 4.01
              Specification", World Wide Web Consortium
              Recommendation REC-html401-19991224, December 1999,
              <http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224>.

6.2.  Informative References

   [JWT]      Jones, M., Balfanz, D., Bradley, J., Goland, Y., Panzer,
              J., Sakimura, N., and P. Tarjan, "JSON Web Token (JWT)",
              July 2011.


Appendix A.  Document History

   -01

   o  Refresh draft before expiration of -00.  No normative changes.

   -00

   o  Initial version.


Authors' Addresses

   Michael B. Jones
   Microsoft

   Email: mbj@microsoft.com
   URI:   http://self-issued.info/


   Yaron Y. Goland
   Microsoft

   Email: yarong@microsoft.com








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