hlandau@devever.net

General ACME Working Group Internet-Draft The CAA DNS record allows a domain to communicate issuance policy to CAs, but only allows a domain to define policy with CA-level granularity. However, the CAA specification also provides facilities for extension to admit more granular, CA-specific policy. This specification defines two such parameters, one allowing specific accounts of a CA to be identified by URI and one allowing specific methods of domain control validation as defined by the ACME protocol to be required.

This specification defines two parameters for the “issue” and “issuewild” properties of the Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS resource record . The first, “account-uri”, allows authorization conferred by a CAA policy to be restricted to specific accounts of a CA, which are identified by URIs. The second, “acme-methods”, allows the set of validation methods supported by an ACME based CA to validate domain control to be limited to a subset of the full set of methods which it supports.

In this document, the key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 and indicate requirement levels for compliant CAA-URI implementations.

A CAA parameter “account-uri” is defined for the “issue” and “issuewild” properties defined by . The value of this parameter, if specified, MUST be a URI identifying a specific CA account. “CA account” means an object maintained by a specific CA representing a specific entity, or group of related entities, which may request the issuance of certificates. The presence of this parameter constrains the property to which it is attached. A CA MUST only consider a property with an “account-uri” parameter to authorize issuance where the URI specified is an URI that the CA recognises as identifying the account making a certificate issuance request. If a certificate issuance request is made to a CA such that no account URI is available, because the request is made in the absence of any account or the account has no URI assigned to it, a CA MUST NOT consider any property having an “account-uri” parameter as authorizing issuance. If an CA finds multiple CAA records pertaining to it (i.e., having property “issue” or “issuewild” as applicable and a domain that the CA recognises as its own) with different “account-uri” parameters, the CA MUST NOT consider the CAA record set to authorize issuance unless at least one of the specified account URIs identifies the account of the CA by which issuance is requested. A property without an “account-uri” parameter matches any account. A property with an invalid or unrecognised “account-uri” parameter is unsatisfiable. The presence of an “account-uri” parameter does not replace or supercede the need to validate the domain name specified in an “issue” or “issuewild” record in the manner described in the CAA specification. CAs MUST still perform such validation. For example, a CAA property which specifies a domain name belonging to CA A and an account URI identifying an account at CA B is unsatisfiable.

An ACME registration object MAY be identified by setting the “account-uri” parameter to the URI of the ACME registration object. Implementations of this specification which also implement ACME MUST recognise such URIs.

The “account-uri” specification provides a general mechanism to identify entities which may request certificate issuance via URIs. The use of specific kinds of URI may be specified in future RFCs, and CAs not implementing ACME MAY assign and recognise their own URIs arbitrarily.

A CAA parameter “acme-methods” is also defined for the “issue” and “issuewild” properties. The value of this parameter, if specified, MUST be a comma-separated string of ACME challenge method names. The use of this parameter is specific to ACME and CAs implementing it. The presence of this parameter constrains the property to which it is attached. A CA MUST only consider a property with the “acme-methods” parameter to authorize issuance where the name of the challenge method being used is one of the names listed in the comma separated list. The special method value “non-acme” is defined. Where a CA supports both ACME and the “acme-methods” parameter, but also allows the issuance of certificates by other means, it MUST ensure that all of its other issuance channels recognise the “acme-methods” parameter (see section 5.7). For the purposes of validation, such non-ACME transactions shall be considered to have a method name of “non-acme”. Thus, domains implementing CAA which wish to nominate a CA which supports issuance via both ACME and non-ACME means can choose whether to allow one or both.

This specification describes an extension to the CAA record specification increasing the granularity at which CAA policy can be expressed. This allows the set of entities capable of successfully requesting issuance of certificates for a given domain to be restricted beyond that which would otherwise be possible, while still allowing issuance for specific accounts of a CA. This improves the security of issuance for domains which choose to employ it, when combined with a CA which implements this specification.

Suppose that CA A recognises “a.example.com” as identifying itself, CA B is a subsidiary of CA A which recognises both “a.example.com” and “b.example.com” as identifying itself. Suppose that both CA A and CA B issue account URIs of the form “account-id:1234” If the CA domain name in a CAA record is specified as “a.example.com” then this could be construed as identifying account number 1234 at CA A or at CA B. These may be different accounts, creating ambiguity. Thus, CAs MUST ensure that the URIs they recognise as pertaining to a specific account of that CA are unique within the scope of all domain names which they recognise as identifying that CA for the purpose of CAA record validation. It is RECOMMENDED that CAs satisfy this requirement by using URIs which include an authority: “https://a.example.com/account/1234”

The CAA specification governs the act of issuance by a CA. In some cases, a CA may establish authorization for an account to request certificate issuance for a specific domain separately to the act of issuance itself. Such authorization may occur substantially prior to a certificate issuance request. The CAA policy expressed by a domain may have changed in the meantime, creating the risk that a CA will issue certificates in a manner inconsistent with the presently published CAA policy. CAs SHOULD consider adopting practices to reduce the risk of such circumstances. Possible countermeasures include issuing authorizations with very limited validity periods, such as an hour, or revalidating the CAA policy for a domain at certificate issuance time.

Where a domain chooses to secure its nameservers using DNSSEC, the authenticity of its DNS data can be assured, providing that a CA makes all DNS resolutions via an appropriate, trusted DNSSEC-validating resolver. A domain can use this property to protect itself from the threat posed by a global adversary capable of performing man-in-the-middle attacks, which is not ordinarily mitigated by the “domain validation” model. In order to facilitate this, a CA validation process must either rely solely on information obtained via DNSSEC, or meaningfully bind the other parts of the validation transaction using material obtained via DNSSEC. The CAA parameters described in this specification can be used to ensure that only validation methods meeting these criteria are used. In particular, a domain secured via DNSSEC SHOULD either: Use the “account-uri” parameter to ensure that only accounts which it controls are authorized to obtain certificates, or Exclusively use validation methods which rely solely on information obtained via DNSSEC, and use the “acme-methods” parameter to ensure that only such methods are used.

Where a domain does not secure its nameservers using DNSSEC, or one or more of the CAs it authorizes do not perform CAA validation lookups using a trusted DNSSEC-validating resolver, use of the “account-uri” or “acme-methods” parameters does not confer additional security against an attacker capable of performing a man-in-the-middle attack against all validation attempts made by a CA, as such an attacker could simply fabricate the responses to DNS lookups for CAA records. In this case, the “account-uri” and “acme-methods” parameters still provide an effective means of administrative control over issuance, except where control over DNS is subdelegated (see below).

Because CAA records are located during validation by walking up the DNS hierarchy until one or more records are found, the use of the “account-uri” and “acme-methods” parameters, or any CAA policy, is not an effective way to restrict or control issuance for subdomains of a domain, where control over those subdomains is delegated to another party (such as via DNS delegation or by providing limited access to manage subdomain DNS records).

The CAA parameters specified in this specification rely on their being recognised by the CA named by an “issue” or “issuewild” CAA property. As such, the parameters are not an effective means of control over issuance unless a CA’s support for the parameters is established beforehand. CAs which implement this specification SHOULD make available documentation indicating as such, including explicit statements as to which parameters are supported. Domains configuring CAA records for a CA MUST NOT assume that the restrictions implied by the “account-uri” and “acme-methods” parameters are effective in the absence of explicit indication as such from that CA. CAs SHOULD also document whether they implement DNSSEC validation for DNS lookups done for validation purposes, as this affects the security of the “account-uri” and “acme-methods” parameters.

A CA MUST ensure that its support for the “account-uri” and “acme-methods” parameters is fully consistent for a given domain name which a CA recognises as identifying itself in a CAA “issue” or “issuewild” property. If a CA has multiple issuance systems (for example, an ACME-based issuance system and a non-ACME based issuance system, or two different issuance systems resulting from a corporate merger), it MUST ensure that all issuance systems recognise the same parameters. A CA which is unable to do this MAY still implement the parameters by splitting the CA into two domain names for the purposes of CAA processing. For example, a CA “example.com” with an ACME-based issuance system and a non-ACME-based issuance system could recognise only “acme.example.com” for the former and “example.com” for the latter, and then implement support for the “account-uri” and “acme-methods” parameters for “acme.example.com” only. A CA which is unable to ensure consistent processing of the “account-uri” or “acme-methods” parameters for a given CA domain name as specifiable in CAA “issue” or “issuewild” properties MUST NOT implement support for these parameters. Failure to do so will result in an implementation of these parameters which does not provide effective security.

None. As per the CAA specification, the parameter namespace for the CAA “issue” and “issuewild” properties has CA-defined semantics. This document merely specifies a RECOMMENDED semantic for parameters of the names “account-uri” and “acme-methods”.

In many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource. This specification defines the generic URI syntax and a process for resolving URI references that might be in relative form, along with guidelines and security considerations for the use of URIs on the Internet. The URI syntax defines a grammar that is a superset of all valid URIs, allowing an implementation to parse the common components of a URI reference without knowing the scheme-specific requirements of every possible identifier. This specification does not define a generative grammar for URIs; that task is performed by the individual specifications of each URI scheme. [STANDARDS-TRACK] The Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS Resource Record allows a DNS domain name holder to specify one or more Certification Authorities (CAs) authorized to issue certificates for that domain. CAA Resource Records allow a public Certification Authority to implement additional controls to reduce the risk of unintended certificate mis-issue. This document defines the syntax of the CAA record and rules for processing CAA records by certificate issuers. [STANDARDS-TRACK] Certificates in the Web's X.509 PKI (PKIX) are used for a number of purposes, the most significant of which is the authentication of domain names. Thus, certificate authorities in the Web PKI are trusted to verify that an applicant for a certificate legitimately represents the domain name(s) in the certificate. Today, this verification is done through a collection of ad hoc mechanisms. This document describes a protocol that a certificate authority (CA) and an applicant can use to automate the process of verification and certificate issuance. The protocol also provides facilities for other certificate management functions, such as certificate revocation.

The following shows an example DNS zone file fragment which nominates two account URIs as authorized to issue certificates for the domain “example.com”. Issuance is restricted to the CA “example.net”.

The following shows a zone file fragment which restricts the ACME methods which can be used; only ACME methods “dns-01” and “xyz-01” can be used.

The following shows an equivalent way of expressing the same restriction:

The following shows a zone file fragment in which one account can be used to issue with the “dns-01” method and one account can be used to issue with the “http-01” method.

The following shows a zone file fragment in which only ACME method “dns-01” can be used, but non-ACME methods of issuance are also allowed.