Per-Entity Metadata Working Group

["Cantor, Scott" <>]

> The key word on the subject line is "deploy." Personally, I'm not
> convinced that the benefits of TLS outweigh the costs (especially if
> we tighten validUntil) but in order to advance the discussion, let me
> ask the relevant deployment questions:

To be honest, I really didn't consider it likely we'd get the validUntil 
window tight enough to really give me the warm fuzzies. I would be very happy 
to see it happen, obviously, but I understand the difficulties. I do think 
that the issues with aggregates and MDQ are very different. The longer window 
on the aggregate works mainly because the updates are much less frequent and 
less predictable in terms of timing.

> 1) The metadata signing key also signs the TLS server certificate.
> 2) TLS certificates are short-lived, on the order of days.
> 3) Revocation is not necessary (since TLS certificates are short-lived).
> 
> The above deployment has teeth but I'm afraid it is nontrivial to
> implement. Are there other deployment scenarios that are easier to
> implement yet meet our needs?

I was pretty open on the call that I didn't think we had adequately studied 
the issues here. I *lean* toward a self-signed certificate, because I pretty 
much always do when it comes to server-side use cases. But I haven't thought 
it through either.

-- Scott