wdiff rfc8659.original rfc8659.txt

Network Working Group

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) P. Hallam-Baker
Internet-Draft
Request for Comments: 8659 Venture Cryptography
Obsoletes: 6844 (if approved) R. Stradling
Intended status:
Category: Standards Track Sectigo
Expires: December 1, 2019
ISSN: 2070-1721 J. Hoffman-Andrews
Let's Encrypt
May 30,
November 2019

DNS Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) Resource Record
draft-ietf-lamps-rfc6844bis-07

Abstract

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
name. CAA Resource Records allow a public Certification Authority CA 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. CAs.

This document obsoletes RFC 6844.

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 an Internet Standards Track document.

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list It represents the consensus of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for a maximum publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.

Information about the current status of six months this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents obtained 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 December 1, 2019.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8659.

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
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described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Defined Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Relevant Resource Record Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1. Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1.1. Canonical Presentation Format . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. CAA issue Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3. CAA issuewild Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.4. CAA iodef Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.5. Critical Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.1. Use of DNS Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.2. Non-Compliance Non-compliance by Certification Authority . . . . . . . . 12
5.3. Mis-Issue by Authorized Certification Authority . . . . . 12
5.4. Suppression or Spoofing of CAA Records . . . . . . . . . 12
5.5. Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.6. Abuse of the Critical Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6. Deployment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.1. Blocked Queries or Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.2. Rejected Queries and Malformed Responses . . . . . . . . 14
6.3. Delegation to Private Nameservers . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.4. Bogus DNSSEC Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Differences versus RFC6844 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 from RFC 6844
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10.1.
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10.2.
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Acknowledgements
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

1. Introduction

The Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS Resource Record
allows a DNS domain name holder to specify the Certification
Authorities (CAs) authorized to issue certificates for that domain
name. Publication of CAA Resource Records allows a public
Certification Authority CA to
implement additional controls to reduce the risk of unintended
certificate mis-issue.

Like the TLSA record defined in DNS-Based Authentication of Named
Entities (DANE) [RFC6698], CAA records are used as a part of a
mechanism for checking PKIX [RFC6698] certificate data. The
distinction between the two specifications CAA and TLSA is that CAA records specify an
authorization control to be performed by a certificate
issuer CA before issue of issuing a
certificate and TLSA records specify a verification control to be
performed by a relying party Relying Party after the certificate is issued.

Conformance with a published CAA record is a necessary necessary, but not
sufficient
sufficient, condition for the issuance of a certificate.

Criteria for the inclusion of embedded trust anchor certificates in
applications are outside the scope of this document. Typically, such
criteria require the CA to publish a Certification Practices
Statement (CPS) that specifies how the requirements of the
Certificate Policy (CP) are achieved. It is also common for a CA to
engage an independent third-party auditor to prepare an annual audit
statement of its performance against its CPS.

A set of CAA records describes only current grants of authority to
issue certificates for the corresponding DNS domain name. Since
certificates are valid for a period of time, it is possible that a
certificate that is not conformant with the CAA records currently
published was conformant with the CAA records published at the time
that the certificate was issued. Relying parties Parties MUST NOT use CAA
records as part of certificate validation.

CAA records MAY be used by Certificate Evaluators as a possible
indicator of a security policy violation. Such use SHOULD take into
account of the possibility that published CAA records changed between
the time a certificate was issued and the time at which the
certificate was observed by the Certificate Evaluator.

2. Definitions

2.1. Requirements Language

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.

2.2. Defined Terms

The following terms are used in this document:

Certificate: An X.509 Certificate, as specified in [RFC5280].

Certificate Evaluator: A party other than a Relying Party that
evaluates the trustworthiness of certificates issued by
Certification Authorities.

Certification Authority (CA): An Issuer that issues certificates in
accordance with a specified Certificate Policy.

Certificate Policy (CP): Specifies the criteria that a Certification
Authority CA undertakes
to meet in its issue of certificates. See [RFC3647].

Certification Practices Statement (CPS): Specifies the means by
which the criteria of the Certificate Policy CP are met. In most cases, this will be
the document against which the operations of the
Certification Authority CA are audited.
See [RFC3647].

Domain Name: The label assigned to a node in the Domain Name System.

Domain Name System (DNS): The Internet naming system specified in
[RFC1034] and [RFC1035].

DNS Security (DNSSEC): Extensions to the DNS that provide
authentication services as specified in [RFC4033], [RFC4034],
[RFC4035], [RFC5155], and revisions.

Fully-Qualified any revisions to these specifications.

Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN): A Domain Name domain name that includes the
labels of all superior nodes in the Domain Name System. DNS.

Issuer: An entity that issues certificates. See [RFC5280].

Property: The tag-value portion of a CAA Resource Record.

Property Tag: The tag portion of a CAA Resource Record.

Property Value: The value portion of a CAA Resource Record.

Relevant Resource Record Set (Relevant RRset): A set of CAA Resource
Records resulting from applying the algorithm in Section 3 to a
specific FQDN or Wildcard Domain Name.

Relying Party: A party that makes use of an application whose
operation depends on the use of a certificate for making a
security decision. See [RFC5280].

Resource Record (RR): A particular entry in the DNS DNS, including the
owner name, class, type, time to live, and data, as defined in
[RFC1034] and [RFC2181].

Resource Record Set (RRSet): (RRset): A set of Resource Records RRs of a particular owner
name, class, and type. The time to live on all RRs within an RRSet
RRset is always the same, but the data may be different among RRs
in the RRSet.

Relevant Resource Record Set (Relevant RRSet): A set of CAA Resource
Records resulting from applying the algorithm in Section 3 to a
specific Fully-Qualified Domain Name or Wildcard Domain Name.

Relying Party: A party that makes use of an application whose
operation depends on use of a certificate for making a security
decision. See [RFC5280]. RRset.

Wildcard Domain Name: A Domain Name domain name consisting of a single asterisk
character followed by a single full stop "full stop" character ("*.")
followed by
a Fully-Qualified Domain Name. an FQDN.

3. Relevant Resource Record Set

Before issuing a certificate, a compliant CA MUST check for
publication of a Relevant RRSet. RRset. If such an RRSet RRset exists, a CA
MUST NOT issue a certificate unless the CA determines that either
(1) the certificate request is consistent with the applicable CAA Resource
Record set
RRset or (2) an exception specified in the relevant Certificate
Policy CP or Certification Practices Statement CPS
applies. If the Relevant
RRSet RRset for a Fully-Qualified Domain Name an FQDN or Wildcard Domain Name
contains no Property Tags that restrict issuance (for instance, if it
contains only iodef Property Tags, Tags or only Property Tags unrecognized
by the CA), CAA does not restrict issuance.

A certificate request MAY specify more than one Fully-Qualified
Domain Name FQDN and MAY specify
Wildcard Domain Names. Issuers MUST verify authorization for all the Fully-Qualified Domain Names
FQDNs and Wildcard Domain Names specified in the request.

The search for a CAA RRSet RRset climbs the DNS name tree from the
specified label up to to, but not including including, the DNS root '.' "." until a
CAA
RRSet RRset is found.

Given a request for a specific Fully-Qualified Domain Name X, FQDN X or a request for a Wildcard
Domain Name *.X, the Relevant Resource Record
Set RRset RelevantCAASet(X) is determined
as follows (in pseudocode):

Let CAA(X) be the RRSet RRset returned by performing a CAA record query
for the Fully-Qualified Domain Name FQDN X, according to the lookup algorithm specified in RFC 1034 section
Section 4.3.2 of [RFC1034] (in particular particular, chasing aliases). Let
Parent(X) be the Fully-Qualified Domain Name FQDN produced by removing the leftmost label of
X.

RelevantCAASet(domain):
while domain is not ".":
if CAA(domain) is not Empty:
return CAA(domain)
domain = Parent(domain)
return Empty

For example, processing CAA for the Fully-Qualified Domain Name FQDN "X.Y.Z" where there are
no CAA records at any level in the tree RelevantCAASet would have
the following steps:

CAA("X.Y.Z.") = Empty; domain = Parent("X.Y.Z.") = "Y.Z."
CAA("Y.Z.") = Empty; domain = Parent("Y.Z.") = "Z."
CAA("Z.") = Empty; domain = Parent("Z.") = "."
return Empty

Processing CAA for the Fully-Qualified Domain Name FQDN "A.B.C" where there is a CAA record
"issue example.com" at "B.C" would terminate early upon finding
the CAA record:

CAA("A.B.C.") = Empty; domain = Parent("A.B.C.") = "B.C."
CAA("B.C.") = "issue example.com"
return "issue example.com"

4. Mechanism

4.1. Syntax

A CAA Resource Record RR contains a single Property consisting of a tag-
value tag-value pair. A Fully-Qualified Domain Name
An FQDN MAY have multiple CAA RRs associated with it it, and a given
Property Tag MAY be specified more than once across those RRs.

The RDATA section for a CAA Resource Record RR contains one Property. A Property
consists of the following:

+0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-|0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-|
| Flags | Tag Length = n |
+----------------|----------------+...+---------------+
| Tag char 0 | Tag char 1 |...| Tag char n-1 |
+----------------|----------------+...+---------------+
+----------------|----------------+.....+----------------+
| Value byte 0 | Value byte 1 |.....| Value byte m-1 |
+----------------|----------------+.....+----------------+

Where n is the length specified in the Tag length Length field and m is the
number of remaining octets in the Value field. They are related by
(m = d - n - 2) where d is the length of the RDATA section.

The fields are defined as follows:

Flags: One octet containing the following field:

Bit 0, Issuer Critical Flag: If the value is set to '1', "1", the
Property is critical. A Certification Authority CA MUST NOT issue certificates for any
FQDN if the Relevant RRSet RRset for that FQDN contains a CAA
critical Property for an unknown or unsupported Property Tag.

Note that according to the conventions set out in [RFC1035], bit 0 is
the Most Significant Bit and bit 7 is the Least Significant Bit.
Thus, according to those conventions, the Flags value 1 means that
bit 7 is set set, while a value of 128 means that bit 0 is set according to this convention. set.

All other bit positions are reserved for future use.

To ensure compatibility with future extensions to CAA, DNS records
compliant with this version of the CAA specification MUST clear (set
to "0") all reserved flags flag bits. Applications that interpret CAA
records MUST ignore the value of all reserved flag bits.

Tag Length: A single octet containing an unsigned integer specifying
the tag length in octets. The tag length MUST be at least 1.

Tag: The Property identifier, identifier -- a sequence of US-ASCII ASCII characters.

Tags MAY contain US-ASCII ASCII characters 'a' "a" through 'z', 'A' "z", "A" through
'Z', "Z",
and the numbers 0 through 9. Tags MUST NOT contain any other
characters. Matching of tags is case insensitive.

Tags submitted for registration by IANA MUST NOT contain any
characters other than the (lowercase) US-ASCII ASCII characters 'a' "a" through
'z'
"z" and the numbers 0 through 9.

Value: A sequence of octets representing the Property Value.
Property Values are encoded as binary values and MAY employ sub-
formats.
sub-formats.

The length of the value Value field is specified implicitly as the
remaining length of the enclosing RDATA section.

4.1.1. Canonical Presentation Format

The canonical presentation format of the CAA record is:

CAA <flags> <tag> <value>

Where:

Flags: Is an An unsigned integer between 0 and 255.

Tag: Is a A non-zero-length sequence of US-ASCII ASCII letters and numbers in
lower case.
lowercase.

Value: The value Value field, expressed as either (1) a contiguous set of
characters without interior spaces, spaces or as (2) a quoted string. See
the <character-
string> <character-string> format specified in [RFC1035], Section 5.1,
but note that the
value Value field contains no length byte and is not
limited to 255 characters.

4.2. CAA issue Property

If the issue Property Tag is present in the Relevant RRSet RRset for a
Fully-Qualified Domain Name, an
FQDN, it is a request that Issuers Issuers:

1. Perform CAA issue restriction processing for the FQDN, and

2. Grant authorization to issue certificates containing that FQDN to
the holder of the issuer-domain-name or a party acting under the
explicit authority of the holder of the issuer-domain-name.

The CAA issue Property Value has the following sub-syntax (specified
in ABNF as per [RFC5234]).

issue-value = *WSP [issuer-domain-name *WSP]
[";" *WSP [parameters *WSP]]

issuer-domain-name = label *("." label)
label = (ALPHA / DIGIT) *( *("-") (ALPHA / DIGIT))

parameters = (parameter *WSP ";" *WSP parameters) / parameter
parameter = tag *WSP "=" *WSP value
tag = (ALPHA / DIGIT) *( *("-") (ALPHA / DIGIT))
value = *(%x21-3A / %x3C-7E)

For consistency with other aspects of DNS administration, FQDN values
are specified in letter-digit-hyphen Label (LDH-Label) form.

The following CAA record set RRset requests that no certificates be issued for
the FQDN 'certs.example.com' "certs.example.com" by any Issuer other than ca1.example.net
or ca2.example.org.

certs.example.com CAA 0 issue "ca1.example.net"
certs.example.com CAA 0 issue "ca2.example.org"

Because the presence of an issue Property Tag in the Relevant RRSet RRset
for an FQDN restricts issuance, FQDN owners can use an issue Property
Tag with no issuer-domain-name to request no issuance.

For example, the following RRSet RRset requests that no certificates be
issued for the FQDN 'nocerts.example.com' "nocerts.example.com" by any Issuer.

nocerts.example.com CAA 0 issue ";"

An issue Property Tag where the issue-value does not match the ABNF
grammar MUST be treated the same as one specifying an empty issuer-
domain-name.
issuer-domain-name. For example, the following malformed CAA RRSet RRset
forbids issuance:

malformed.example.com CAA 0 issue "%%%%%"

CAA authorizations are additive; thus, the result of specifying both
an empty issuer-domain-name and a non-empty issuer-domain-name is the
same as specifying just the non-empty issuer-domain-name.

An Issuer MAY choose to specify parameters that further constrain the
issue of certificates by that Issuer, Issuer -- for example, specifying that
certificates are to be subject to specific validation polices, policies,
billed to certain accounts, or issued under specific trust anchors.

For example, if ca1.example.net has requested that its customer
accountable.example.com to
account.example.com specify their account number "230123" in each of
the customer's CAA records using the (CA-defined) "account"
parameter, it would look like this:

accountable.example.com

account.example.com CAA 0 issue "ca1.example.net; account=230123"

The semantics of parameters to the issue Property Tag are determined
by the Issuer alone.

4.3. CAA issuewild Property

The issuewild Property Tag has the same syntax and semantics as the
issue Property Tag except that it only grants authorization to issue
certificates that specify a Wildcard Domain Name and each issuewild
properties take
Property takes precedence over each issue properties Property when specified.
Specifically:

Each issuewild properties Property MUST be ignored when processing a request for a
Fully-Qualified Domain Name
an FQDN that is not a Wildcard Domain Name.

If at least one issuewild Property is specified in the Relevant RRSet RRset
for a Wildcard Domain Name, all each issue properties Property MUST be ignored when
processing a request for that Wildcard Domain Name.

For example, the following RRSet RRset requests that _only_ ca1.example.net
issue certificates for "wild.example.com" or "sub.wild.example.com",
and that _only_ ca2.example.org issue certificates for
"*.wild.example.com" or "*.sub.wild.example.com). "*.sub.wild.example.com". Note that this
presumes that there are no CAA RRs for sub.wild.example.com.

wild.example.com CAA 0 issue "ca1.example.net"
wild.example.com CAA 0 issuewild "ca2.example.org"

The following RRSet RRset requests that _only_ ca1.example.net issue
certificates for "wild2.example.com", "*.wild2.example.com" "*.wild2.example.com", or
"*.sub.wild2.example.com".

wild2.example.com CAA 0 issue "ca1.example.net"

The following RRSet RRset requests that _only_ ca2.example.org issue
certificates for "*.wild3.example.com" or "*.sub.wild3.example.com".
It does not permit any Issuer to issue for "wild3.example.com" or
"sub.wild3.example.com".

wild3.example.com CAA 0 issuewild "ca2.example.org"
wild3.example.com CAA 0 issue ";"

The following RRSet RRset requests that _only_ ca2.example.org issue
certificates for "*.wild3.example.com" or "*.sub.wild3.example.com".
It permits any Issuer to issue for "wild3.example.com" or
"sub.wild3.example.com".

wild3.example.com CAA 0 issuewild "ca2.example.org"

4.4. CAA iodef Property

The iodef Property specifies a means of reporting certificate issue
requests or cases of certificate issue for domains for which the
Property appears in the Relevant RRSet, RRset, when those requests or
issuances violate the security policy of the Issuer or the FQDN
holder.

The Incident Object Description Exchange Format (IODEF) [RFC7970] is
used to present the incident report in machine-readable form.

The iodef Property Tag takes a URL as its Property Value. The URL
scheme type determines the method used for reporting:

mailto: The IODEF incident report is reported as a MIME email attachment to
an SMTP email that is submitted to the mail address specified.
The mail message sent SHOULD contain a brief text message to alert
the recipient to the nature of the attachment.

http or https: The IODEF report is submitted as a Web web service
request to the HTTP address specified using the protocol specified
in [RFC6546].

These are the only supported URL schemes.

The following RRSet RRset specifies that reports may be made by means of
email with the IODEF data as an attachment, a Web web service [RFC6546],
or both:

report.example.com CAA 0 issue "ca1.example.net"
report.example.com CAA 0 iodef "mailto:security@example.com"
report.example.com CAA 0 iodef "http://iodef.example.com/" "https://iodef.example.com/"

4.5. Critical Flag

The critical flag is intended to permit future versions of CAA to
introduce new semantics that MUST be understood for correct
processing of the record, preventing conforming CAs that do not
recognize the new semantics from issuing certificates for the
indicated FQDNs.

In the following example, the Property with a Property Tag of 'tbs' "tbs"
is flagged as critical. Neither the ca1.example.net CA nor any other
Issuer is authorized to issue for "new.example.com" (or any other
domains for which this is the Relevant RRSet) RRset) unless the Issuer has
implemented the processing rules for the 'tbs' "tbs" Property Tag.

new.example.com CAA 0 issue "ca1.example.net"
new.example.com CAA 128 tbs "Unknown"

5. Security Considerations

CAA records assert a security policy that the holder of an FDQN FQDN
wishes to be observed by Issuers. The effectiveness of CAA records
as an access control mechanism is thus dependent on observance of CAA
constraints by Issuers.

The objective of the CAA record properties described in this document
is to reduce the risk of certificate mis-issue rather than avoid
reliance on a certificate that has been mis-issued. DANE [RFC6698]
describes a mechanism for avoiding reliance on mis-issued
certificates.

5.1. Use of DNS Security

Use

The use of DNSSEC to authenticate CAA RRs is strongly RECOMMENDED but
not required. An Issuer MUST NOT issue certificates if doing so
would conflict with the Relevant RRSet, RRset, irrespective of whether the
corresponding DNS records are signed.

DNSSEC provides a proof of non-existence for both DNS Fully-Qualified
Domain Names FQDNs and RRSets
RRsets within FQDNs. DNSSEC verification thus enables an Issuer to
determine if whether the answer to a CAA record query (1) is empty
because the RRSet RRset is empty or if it (2) is non-empty but the response has
been suppressed.

Use

The use of DNSSEC allows an Issuer to acquire and archive a proof
that they were authorized to issue certificates for the FQDN.
Verification of such archives may be an audit requirement to verify
CAA record processing record-processing compliance. Publication of such archives may
be a transparency requirement to verify CAA record processing record-processing
compliance.

5.2. Non-Compliance Non-compliance by Certification Authority

CAA records offer CAs a cost-effective means of mitigating the risk
of certificate mis-issue: the cost of implementing CAA checks is very
small
small, and the potential costs of a mis-issue event include the
removal of an embedded trust anchor.

5.3. Mis-Issue by Authorized Certification Authority

Use

The use of CAA records does not prevent mis-issue by an authorized
Certification Authority,
CA, i.e., a CA that is authorized to issue certificates for the FQDN
in question by CAA records.

FQDN holders SHOULD verify that the CAs they authorize to issue
certificates for their FQDNs employ appropriate controls to ensure
that certificates are issued only to authorized parties within their
organization.

Such controls are most appropriately determined by the FQDN holder
and the authorized CA(s) directly and are thus out of outside the scope of
this document.

5.4. Suppression or Spoofing of CAA Records

Suppression of the a CAA record or insertion of a bogus CAA record could
enable an attacker to obtain a certificate from an Issuer that was
not authorized to issue for an affected FQDN.

Where possible, Issuers SHOULD perform DNSSEC validation to detect
missing or modified CAA record sets. RRsets.

In cases where DNSSEC is not deployed for a corresponding FQDN, an
Issuer SHOULD attempt to mitigate this risk by employing appropriate
DNS security controls. For example, all portions of the DNS lookup
process SHOULD be performed against the authoritative name server. nameserver.
Data cached by third parties MUST NOT be relied on as the sole source
of DNS CAA information but MAY be used to support additional anti-
spoofing
anti-spoofing or anti-suppression controls.

5.5. Denial of Service

Introduction of a malformed or malicious CAA RR could could, in theory theory,
enable a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack. This could happen by
modification of authoritative DNS records or by spoofing inflight DNS
responses.

This specific threat is not considered to add significantly to the
risk of running an insecure DNS service.

An attacker could, in principle, perform a DoS attack against an
Issuer by requesting a certificate with a maliciously long DNS name.
In practice, the DNS protocol imposes a maximum name length length, and CAA
processing does not exacerbate the existing need to mitigate DoS
attacks to any meaningful degree.

5.6. Abuse of the Critical Flag

A Certification Authority CA could make use of the critical flag to trick customers into
publishing records that prevent competing
Certification Authorities CAs from issuing
certificates even though the customer intends to authorize multiple
providers. This could happen if the customers were setting CAA
records based on data provided by the CA rather than generating those
records themselves.

In practice, such an attack would be of minimal effect effect, since any
competent competitor that found itself unable to issue certificates
due to lack of support for a Property marked critical should
investigate the cause and report the reason to the customer. The
customer will thus discover that they had been deceived.

6. Deployment Considerations

A CA implementing CAA may find that they receive errors looking up
CAA records. The following are some common causes of such errors, so
that CAs may provide guidance to their subscribers on fixing the
underlying problems.

6.1. Blocked Queries or Responses

Some middleboxes, middleboxes -- in particular particular, anti-DDoS appliances, appliances -- may be
configured to drop DNS packets of unknown types, or they may start
dropping such packets when they consider themselves under attack.
This generally manifests as a timed-out DNS query, query or as a SERVFAIL at
a local recursive resolver.

6.2. Rejected Queries and Malformed Responses

Some authoritative nameservers respond with REJECTED or NOTIMP when
queried for a Resource Record an RR type they do not recognize. At least one
authoritative resolver produces a malformed response (with the QR
(Query/Response) bit set to 0) "0") when queried for unknown Resource Record RR types.
Per
RFC 1034, [RFC1034], the correct response RCODE for unknown Resource Record RR types is
NOERROR. 0
("No error condition").

6.3. Delegation to Private Nameservers

Some FQDN administrators make the contents of a subdomain
unresolvable on the public Internet by delegating that subdomain to a
nameserver whose IP address is private. A CA processing CAA records
for such subdomains will receive SERVFAIL from its recursive
resolver. The CA MAY interpret that as preventing issuance. FQDN
administrators wishing to issue certificates for private FQDNs SHOULD
use split-horizon DNS with a publicly available nameserver, so that
CAs can receive a valid, empty CAA response for those FQDNs.

6.4. Bogus DNSSEC Responses

Queries for CAA Resource Records RRs are different from most DNS RR types, because a
signed, empty response to a query for CAA RRs is meaningfully
different from a bogus response. A signed, empty response indicates
that there is definitely no CAA policy set at a given label. A bogus
response may mean either a misconfigured zone, zone or an attacker
tampering with records. DNSSEC implementations may have bugs with
signatures on empty responses that go unnoticed, because for more
common Resource Record RR types like A and AAAA, the difference to an end user
between empty and bogus is irrelevant; they both mean a site is
unavailable.

In particular, at least two authoritative resolvers that implement
live signing had bugs when returning empty Resource Record sets RRsets for DNSSEC-signed
zones, in combination with mixed-case queries. Mixed-
case Mixed-case queries,
also known as DNS 0x20, are used by some recursive resolvers to
increase resilience against DNS poisoning attacks. DNSSEC-signing
authoritative resolvers are expected to copy the same capitalization
from the query into their ANSWER section, section but also to sign the
response as if they had used all lowercase. In particular, PowerDNS
versions prior to 4.0.4 had this bug.

7. Differences versus RFC6844 from RFC 6844

This document obsoletes RFC6844. [RFC6844]. The most important change is to
the
Certification "Certification Authority Processing section. RFC6844 Processing" section (now called
"Relevant Resource Record Set" (Section 3), as noted below).
[RFC6844] specified an algorithm that performed DNS tree-climbing not
only on the FQDN being
processed, processed but also on all CNAMEs and DNAMEs
encountered along the way. This made the processing algorithm very
inefficient when used on FQDNs that utilize many CNAMEs, CNAMEs and would
have made it difficult for hosting providers to set CAA policies on
their own FQDNs without setting potentially unwanted CAA policies on
their customers' FQDNs. This document specifies a simplified
processing algorithm that only performs tree climbing tree-climbing on the FQDN
being processed, and it leaves the processing of CNAMEs and DNAMEs up
to the CA's recursive resolver.

This document also includes a "Deployment Considerations" section
(Section 6) detailing experience gained with practical deployment of
CAA enforcement among CAs in the WebPKI.

This document clarifies the ABNF grammar for the issue and issuewild
tags and resolves some inconsistencies with the document text. In
particular, it specifies that parameters are separated with
semicolons. It also allows hyphens in Property Tags.

This document also clarifies the processing of a CAA RRset that is
not
empty, empty but contains no that does not contain any issue or issuewild tags.

This document removes the section titled "The CAA RR Type," merging
it with "Mechanism" (Section 4) because the definitions were mainly
duplicates. It moves the "Use of DNS Security" section into Security
Considerations.
Considerations (Section 5). It renames "Certification Authority
Processing" to "Relevant Resource Record Set," Set" (Section 3) and
emphasizes the use of that term to more clearly define which domains
are affected by a given RRset.

8. IANA Considerations

IANA is requested to add [[[ RFC Editor: Please replace with has added this RFC
]]] document as a reference for the Certification "Certification
Authority Restriction Flags Flags" and Certification "Certification Authority Restriction Properties registries,
Properties" registries and
update updated references to [RFC6844] within
those registries to refer instead to
[[[ RFC Editor: Please replace with this RFC ]]]. document. IANA is has also
requested to update
updated the CAA TYPE in the DNS Parameters "Resource Record (RR) TYPEs" subregistry
of the "Domain Name System (DNS) Parameters" registry with a
reference to [[[ RFC Editor: Please replace with this RFC ]]]. document.

9. Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following people who contributed
to the design and documentation of this work item: Corey Bonnell,
Chris Evans, Stephen Farrell, Jeff Hodges, Paul Hoffman, Tim
Hollebeek, Stephen Kent, Adam Langley, Ben Laurie, James Manger,
Chris Palmer, Scott Schmit, Sean Turner, and Ben Wilson.

10. References

10.1.

9.1. Normative References

[RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
STD 13, RFC 1034, DOI 10.17487/RFC1034, November 1987,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1034>.

[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>.

[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>.

[RFC2181] Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Clarifications to the DNS
Specification", RFC 2181, DOI 10.17487/RFC2181, July 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2181>.

[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>.

[RFC4034] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions",
RFC 4034, DOI 10.17487/RFC4034, March 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4034>.

[RFC4035] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security
Extensions", RFC 4035, DOI 10.17487/RFC4035, March 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4035>.

[RFC5155] Laurie, B., Sisson, G., Arends, R., and D. Blacka, "DNS
Security (DNSSEC) Hashed Authenticated Denial of
Existence", RFC 5155, DOI 10.17487/RFC5155, March 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5155>.

[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.

[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
(CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.

[RFC6546] Trammell, B., "Transport of Real-time Inter-network
Defense (RID) Messages over HTTP/TLS", RFC 6546,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6546, April 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6546>.

[RFC6698] Hoffman, P. and J. Schlyter, "The DNS-Based Authentication
of Named Entities (DANE) Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Protocol: TLSA", RFC 6698, DOI 10.17487/RFC6698, August
2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6698>.

[RFC6844] Hallam-Baker, P. and R. Stradling, "DNS Certification
Authority Authorization (CAA) Resource Record", RFC 6844,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6844, January 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6844>.

[RFC7970] Danyliw, R., "The Incident Object Description Exchange
Format Version 2", RFC 7970, DOI 10.17487/RFC7970,
November 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7970>.

[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

10.2.

9.2. Informative References

[RFC3647] Chokhani, S., Ford, W., Sabett, R., Merrill, C., and S.
Wu, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate
Policy and Certification Practices Framework", RFC 3647,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3647, November 2003,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3647>.

Acknowledgements

Authors' Addresses

Phillip Hallam-Baker
Venture Cryptography

Email: phill@hallambaker.com

Rob Stradling
Sectigo Ltd.

Email: rob@sectigo.com

Jacob Hoffman-Andrews
Let's Encrypt

Email: jsha@letsencrypt.org