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authorRasmus Dahlberg <rasmus.dahlberg@kau.se>2021-10-05 14:52:52 +0200
committerRasmus Dahlberg <rasmus.dahlberg@kau.se>2021-10-05 14:52:52 +0200
commit5c02770b5bd7d43b9327623d3de9adeda2468e84 (patch)
treeae9d60c45133d8350621b4f9f1ac091446349594 /archive/2021-10-05-open-design-thoughts
parenta3a9757ebb349b70c3c060d12244c07dda08c4f6 (diff)
persisted pads from meeting minutes
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+Summary of design TODOs that could be considered
+------------------------------------------------
+Use HTTP GET for the three get* endpoints with input parameters?
+ * (Background: post with same key-value format as output. One parser, not two.)
+ * Motivation: makes URLs self-describing, i.e., a URL refers to some data object
+ * Use-case 1: can store URL to easily find data at a later point
+ * Use-case 2: can paste URL to easily show others what you did ("debugging")
+ * Use-case 3: can query log data using a regular browser
+ * Trade-off:
+ * Believer: n/a, does not use a sigsum log's api
+ * Claimant: needs to serialize with an additiional parser
+ * E.g., percent-encoding
+ * E.g., get-inclusion-proof/10/abcd... to say "tree_size 10, hash abcd..."
+ * Log: needs to deserialize the above with an additional parser
+ * This is the scary part. Get unauthenticated data from the internet
+ * Less scary because most, if not all, logs will use a memory safe language?
+ * Other
+ * If we want to go in this direction, any reason not to always HTTP GET?
+
+Make room for other rate limiting ideas than DNS?
+ * s/domain_hint/ownership_hint
+ * ownership_hint=dns:example.com
+
+Make room for other algorithms?
+ * Motivation: increases the log's utility
+ * Motivation: does not have to increase complexity that much
+ * Scope: raw algorithms like Ed25519, NIST p-256; no formats that add metadata
+ * Change in complexity would be:
+ * Trunnel:
+ * Before: u8 signature[32]
+ * After: struct Signature {
+ * u8 alg_id;
+ * union [alg_id] {
+ * Ed25519: u8 signature[32];
+ * ...
+ * }
+ * }
+ * ASCII: Signature=<hex encoding of Trunnel-serialized Signature struct>
+
+If not make room for other algorithms:
+ * Ed25519ph instead of Ed25519?
+ * Motivation: better for smart cards
+ * SHA512 truncated to 256 bits instead of SHA256?
+ * Motivation: Ed25519 uses SHA512 internally
+ * Motivation: faster
+ * (Background: SHA256 was picked somewhat arbitrarily, one of several OK choices.)
+
+Use TrustFabric's checkpoint format that sigsum helped with?
+ * Motivation: one (co)signed tree head format instead of two
+ * Trade-off: sigsum format already does what we want
+ * Checkpoints need timestamp extension
+ * Witnesses need to verify timestamp extension
+ * Trade-off: checkpoint format adds another (simple) parser into sigsum logging
+
+Al Cutter's idea to not have inclusion proof endpoint.
+ * Return proof on add-leaf request instead.
+ * First time: "not included yet"
+ * At a future time: "here is your proof"
+ * Motivation: automatic recovery from a lost request that had not been logged yet