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Publication protocol
The publication protocol is really two separate client/server
protocols, between different parties.
The first is a configuration protocol for the IRBE to use to configure
the publication engine, the second is the interface by which authorized
clients request publication of specific objects.
Much of the architecture of the publication protocol is borrowed from
the left-right protocol: like the left-right protocol, the publication
protocol uses CMS-wrapped XML over HTTPS with the same eContentType OID
and the same HTTPS content-type, and the overall style of the XML
messages is very similar to the left-right protocol. All operations
allow an optional "tag" attribute to allow batching.
The publication engine operates a single HTTPS server which serves both
of these subprotocols. The two subprotocols share a single server port,
but use distinct URLs.
Terminology
* IRBE: Internet Registry Back End
* IRDB: Internet Registry Data Base
* BPKI: Business PKI
* RPKI: Resource PKI
Publication control subprotocol
The control subprotocol reuses the message-passing design of the
left-right protocol. Configured objects support the "create", "set",
"get", "list", and "destroy" actions, or a subset thereof when the full
set of actions doesn't make sense.
<config/> object
The <config/> object allows configuration of data that apply to the
entire publication server rather than a particular client.
There is exactly one <config/> object in the publication server, and it
only supports the "set" and "get" actions -- it cannot be created or
destroyed.
Payload data which can be configured in a <config/> object:
* bpki_crl (element): This is the BPKI CRL used by the publication
server when signing the CMS wrapper on responses in the publication
subprotocol. As the CRL must be updated at regular intervals, it's
not practical to restart the publication server when the BPKI CRL
needs to be updated. Fortunately, the BPKI model doesn't require
use of a BPKI CRL between the IRBE and the publication server, so
we can use the publication control subprotocol to update the BPKI
CRL.
<client/> object
The <client/> object represents one client authorized to use the
publication server.
The <client/> object supports the full set of "create", "set", "get",
"list", and "destroy" actions. Each client has a "client_id" attribute,
which is used in responses and must be specified in "set", "get", or
"destroy" actions.
Payload data which can be configured in a <client/> object:
* base_uri (attribute): This is the base URI below which this client
is allowed to publish data. The publication server may impose
additional constraints in the case of a child publishing beneath
its parent.
* bpki_cert (element): BPKI CA certificate for this <client/>. This
is used as part of the certificate chain when validating incoming
TLS and CMS messages. If the bpki_glue certificate is in use
(below), the bpki_cert certificate should be issued by the
bpki_glue certificate; otherwise, the bpki_cert certificate should
be issued by the publication engine's bpki_ta certificate.
* bpki_glue (element): Another BPKI CA certificate for this
<client/>, usually not needed. Certain pathological
cross-certification cases require a two-certificate chain due to
issuer name conflicts. If used, the bpki_glue certificate should be
the issuer of the bpki_cert certificate and should be issued by the
publication engine's bpki_ta certificate; if not needed, the
bpki_glue certificate should be left unset.
Publication subprotocol
The publication subprotocol is structured somewhat differently from the
publication control protocol. Objects in the publication subprotocol
represent objects to be published or objects to be withdrawn from
publication. Each kind of object supports two actions: "publish" and
"withdraw". In each case the XML element representing hte object to be
published or withdrawn has a "uri" attribute which contains the
publication URI. For "publish" actions, the XML element body contains
the DER object to be published, encoded in Base64; for "withdraw"
actions, the XML element body is empty.
In theory, the detailed access control for each kind of object might be
different. In practice, as of this writing, access control for all
objects is a simple check that the client's "base_uri" is a leading
substring of the publication URI. Details of why access control might
need to become more complicated are discussed in a later section.
<certificate/> object
The <certificate/> object represents an RPKI certificate to be
published or withdrawn.
<crl/> object
The <crl/> object represents an RPKI CRL to be published or withdrawn.
<manifest/> object
The <manifest/> object represents an RPKI publication manifest to be
published or withdrawn.
Note that part of the reason for the batching support in the
publication protocol is because every publication or withdrawal action
requires a new manifest, thus every publication or withdrawal action
will involve at least two objects.
<roa/> object
The <roa/> object represents a ROA to be published or withdrawn.
Error handling
Error in this protocol are handled at two levels.
Since all messages in this protocol are conveyed over HTTPS
connections, basic errors are indicated via the HTTP response code. 4xx
and 5xx responses indicate that something bad happened. Errors that
make it impossible to decode a query or encode a response are handled
in this way.
Where possible, errors will result in a <report_error/> message which
takes the place of the expected protocol response message.
<report_error/> messages are CMS-signed XML messages like the rest of
this protocol, and thus can be archived to provide an audit trail.
<report_error/> messages only appear in replies, never in queries. The
<report_error/> message can appear on either the "forward" (IRBE as
client of RPKI engine) or "back" (RPKI engine as client of IRDB)
communication channel.
The <report_error/> message includes an optional "tag" attribute to
assist in matching the error with a particular query when using
batching, and also includes a "self_id" attribute indicating the
<self/> that issued the error.
The error itself is conveyed in the error_code (attribute). The value
of this attribute is a token indicating the specific error that
occurred. At present this will be the name of a Python exception; the
production version of this protocol will nail down the allowed error
tokens here, probably in the RelaxNG schema.
The body of the <report_error/> element itself is an optional text
string; if present, this is debugging information. At present this
capabilty is not used, debugging information goes to syslog.
Additional access control considerations.
As detailed above, the publication protocol is trivially simple. This
glosses over two bits of potential complexity:
* In the case where parent and child are sharing a repository, we'd
like to nest child under parent, because testing has demonstrated
that even on relatively slow hardware the delays involved in
setting up separate rsync connections tend to dominate
synchronization time for relying parties.
* The repository operator might also want to do some checks to assure
itself that what it's about to allow the RPKI engine to publish is
not dangerous toxic waste.
The up-down protocol includes a mechanism by which a parent can suggest
a publication URI to each of its children. The children are not
required to accept this hint, and the children must make separate
arrangements with the repository operator (who might or might not be
the same as the entity that hosts the children's RPKI engine
operations) to use the suggested publication point, but if everything
works out, this allows children to nest cleanly under their parents
publication points, which helps reduce synchronization time for relying
parties.
In this case, one could argue that the publication server is
responsible for preventing one of its clients (the child in the above
description) from stomping on data published by another of its clients
(the parent in the above description). This goes beyond the basic
access check and requires the publication server to determine whether
the parent has given its consent for the child to publish under the
parent. Since the RPKI certificate profile requires the child's
publication point to be indicated in an SIA extension in a certificate
issued by the parent to the child, the publication engine can infer
this permission from the parent's issuance of a certificate to the
child. Since, by definition, the parent also uses this publication
server, this is an easy check, as the publication server should already
have the parent's certificate available by the time it needs to check
the child's certificate.
The previous paragraph only covers a "publish" action for a
<certificate/> object. For "publish" actions on other objects, the
publication server would need to trace permission back to the
certificate issued by the parent; for "withdraw" actions, the
publication server would have to perform the same checks it would
perform for a "publish" action, using the current published data before
withdrawing it. The latter in turn implies an ordering constraint on
"withdraw" actions in order to preserve the data necessary for these
access control decisions; as this may prove impractical, the
publication server may probably need to make periodic sweeps over its
published data looking for orphaned objects, but that's probably a good
idea anyway.
Note that, in this publication model, any agreement that the repository
makes to publish the RPKI engine's output is conditional upon the
object to be published passing whatever access control checks the
publication server imposes.
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Generated on Thu Jun 12 18:21:05 2008 for RPKI Engine by doxygen
1.5.5
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