RPKI Validation Reconsidered

This document proposes an update to the certificate validation procedure specified in that reduces aspects of operational fragility in the management of certificates in the RPKI, while retaining essential security features.

As currently defined in section 7.2 of , validation of PKIX certificates that conform to the RPKI profile relies on the use of a path validation process where each certificate in the validation path is required to meet the certificate validation criteria. These criteria require in particular that the resources on each certificate in the validation path are “encompassed” by the resources on the issuing certificate. The first certificate in the path is required to be a trust anchor, and its resources are considered valid by definition. For example, in the following sequence:

All certificates in this scenario are considered valid in that the resources on each certificate are encompassed by the issuing certificate. ROA1 is valid because the specified prefix is encompassed by the embedded EE certificate, as required by .

The allocations recorded in the RPKI change as a result of resource transfers and some types of operational errors. For example, the CAs involved in transfer might choose to modify CA certificates in an order that causes some of these certificates to “over-claim” temporarily. It may also happen that a child CA does not voluntarily request a shrunk resource certificate when resources are being transferred or reclaimed by the parent. Furthermore some types of operational errors that may occur during management of RPKI databases also may create CA certificates that, temporarily, no longer encompass all of the resources in subordinate certificates. Consider the following sequence:

Here Certificate 2 from the previous example was re-issued by TA to CA1 and the prefix 198.51.100.0/24 was removed. However, CA1 failed to re-issue a new Certificate 3 to CA2. As a result Certificate 3 is now over-claiming and considered invalid, and by recursion the embedded Certificate 4 used for ROA1 is also invalid. And ROA1 is invalid because the specified prefix is no longer encompassed by a valid embedded EE certificate, as required by However, it should be noted that ROA1 does not make use of any of the address resources that were removed from CA1’s certificate, and thus it would be desirable if ROA1 could still be viewed as valid. Technically CA1 could re-issue a Certificate 3 to CA2 without 198.51.100.0/24, and then ROA1 would be considered valid according to . But as long as CA1 does not take this action, ROA1 remains invalid. It would be preferable if ROA1 could be considered valid.

The problem described above can be considered as a low probability problem today. However the potential impact on routing security would be high if an overclaim occurred near the apex of the RPKI hierarchy and would invalidate the entirety of the sub-tree located below this point. The changes proposed here to the validation procedure in do not change the probability of this problem, but limit the impact to just the overclaimed resources. This approach is intended to avoid causing CA certificates to be treated as completely invalid as a result of overclaims. However, these changes are designed to not degrade the security offered by the RPKI. Specifically, no ROAs or router certificates will be treated as valid if they contain only resources that are not encompassed by all superior certificates along a path to a trust anchor. The way this is achieved conceptually is by maintaining a set of verified resources for each certificate that is separate from the set of resources found in the resource extension on a certificate.

Step 6 of the Resource Certification Path Validation defined in section 7.2 of currently has the following on the validation of resources contained in the resource extension of certificates: The resource extension data is "encompassed" by the resource extension data contained in a valid certificate where this issuer is the subject (the previous certificate in the context of the ordered sequence defined by the certification path). The following is an amended specification to be used in place of this text. The Relying Party MUST keep a Verified Resource Set for the certificate independent of the RFC3779 extension itself, that is built up using the following approach: If the certificate under test is chosen as a Trust Anchor, then the Verified Resource Set of this certificate is equal to the RFC3779 resource extensions. If the certificate under test not chosen as a Trust Anchor, the Verified Resource Set is found by comparing this certificate to its parent certificate (the previous certificate in the context of the ordered sequence defined by the certification path) in the following way: For any of the resource extensions that use the "inherit" element as described in sections 2.2.3.5 and 3.2.3.3 of RFC 3779, the corresponding resources of this type should be taken from the parent certificate. For resource extensions that do no use the "inherit" element, the intersection of the resources on this certificate and the Verified Resource Set of the parent certificate MUST be used. If any resources on this certificate are not encompassed by the Verified Resource Set of the parent certificate, a warning SHOULD be issued to help operators rectify this situation. If the Verified Resource Set obtained this way is empty for all resource classes (IPv4, IPv6 and AS), then the certificate MUST be considered invalid.

Section 4 of currently has the following text on the validation of resources on a ROA: The IP address delegation extension [RFC3779] is present in the end-entity (EE) certificate (contained within the ROA), and each IP address prefix(es) in the ROA is contained within the set of IP addresses specified by the EE certificate's IP address delegation extension. The following is an amended specification to be used in place of this text. The Verified Resource Set of the end-entity (EE) certificate (contained within the ROA), contains each IP address prefix(es) in the ROA.

BGPsec Router Certificate Validation is defined in section 3.3 of . Path validation defined section 7 of is used as the first step in validation, and a number of additional constraints are applied. We propose that the text of the following two additions: BGPsec Router Certificates MUST NOT include the IP Resource extension. BGPsec Router Certificates MUST include the AS Resource Identifier Delegation extension. Is updated to the following: The Validated Resource Set of BGPsec Router Certificates MUST NOT include IP Resources. BGPsec Router Certificates MUST include the AS Resource Identifier Delegation extension and all AS resources included on this MUST be encompassed by the Validated Resource Set of the BGPsec Router Certificates.

Consider the following example under the amended approach:

As far as the authors can see there are no real new problems introduced by this approach.

No updates to the registries are suggested by this document.

TBA.