From 2559003607d31cf754df841ac29d7fe5a29861b5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Rasmus Dahlberg <rasmus@mullvad.net>
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2022 17:39:34 +0100
Subject: persisted pads from meeting minutes
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archive/2022-01-04-proposal-tree-head-endpoints | 118 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
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+Proposal: change tree-head endpoints
+
+Background
+---
+Right now the get-tree-head-to-sign endpoint returns the signed tree head that
+witnesses should cosign. It does not return any cosignatures. One needs to
+wait until the to-sign tree head is finalized and served via
+get-tree-head-cosigned. We also have a get-tree-head-latest endpoint that is
+sort of hanging around for "debug purposes".
+
+It would be nice if a submitter could find required cosignatures without always
+having to wait for five minutes. The log will likely have received a majority
+of cosignatures after one minute, but a submitter currently needs to wait the
+full duration before getting access via the get-tree-head-cosigned endpoint.
+
+It would also be nice to consider if the get-tree-head-latest endpoint can be
+removed.
+
+Here is a rough break-down of how we think about the sigsum API's usage via
+roles:
+ * Submitter
+ * add-leaf, until HTTP status 200 OK which should mean "you have been sequenced".
+ * [fetching an inclusion proof for a signed tree head to "verify sequencing"
+ is not a recommended usage pattern, and does not prevent DoS. The only
+ difference is that the submitter would notice that the log has not
+ included with regards to the latest tree head sooner than with regards
+ to the cosigned tree head. In both cases, there is no proof that
+ submitter got 200 OK without getting sequenced.]
+ * Distributor
+ * get-tree-head-cosigned
+ * get-inclusion-proof
+ * [wants "enough" cosignatures, sooner rather than later is a soft requirement]
+ * Monitor
+ * get-leaves
+ * get-tree-head-cosigned
+ * might hit get-{consistency,inclusion}-proof depending on implementation
+ * [wants as many cosignatures as possible, does not care about ~minutes of waiting]
+ * Witness
+ * get-consistency-proof
+ * get-tree-head-to-sign
+ * add-cosignature
+ * [does not / should not care about other cosignatures; just that the
+ log signed and that the tree head is consistent with prior history as
+ observed by the witness]
+ * End-user
+ * [does not hit any of the log's endpoints]
+ * "The curious"
+ * the latest signed tree head, as fast as possible for quick debug
+ probably. "is the thing I'm doing working".
+ * the latest cosigned tree head, with as many cosignatures as possible
+ for archiving
+
+Keep in mind that the below proposal should not introduce the log's key hash as
+output on any API endpoint. We removed this and other redundant output because
+that reduces the risk of faulty implementations that operate on untrusted input.
+
+For example, in the same way that a faulty witness could verify "the wrong
+consistency proof" if it just verified the proof against the tree sizes that the
+log returned redundantly (as opposed to the tree sizes the witness asked for), a
+faulty witness could end-up cosigning a tree head with another log's context
+because "they just copied the key hash and used it because it was there".
+
+Note that we cannot add the key_hash and cosignature fields to the output of
+get-tree-head-to-sign. Our ASCII parser is so simple that it does not permit
+empty lists. So, we will either need a way to handle empty lists, or tweak our
+endpoints so that they still do what we want without having any empty list.
+
+[Both rgdd and ln5 would like to avoid complicating the ASCII parser.]
+
+Proposal
+---
+1. Remove the get-tree-head-latest endpoint. We no longer have any recommended
+usage-pattern for this endpoint and so it should be removed. Our strongest
+arguments for removal are "don't use a signed tree head, it is sort of like a
+promise", and "it does not even help you prove that the log's HTTP status 200 OK
+semantics were faulty".
+2. The get-tree-head-to-sign endpoint is kept as is, but renamed.
+ * Purpose: used by witnesses.
+3. Add an endpoint that returns the logs "to-cosign" tree head and all
+cosignatures that were collected thus far. If no cosignatures were received
+yet, return an error to avoid having an empty list as output.
+ * Purpose: used by distributors, but could also be used by a witness'
+ internal monitoring setup ("is my witness working, are the signatures really
+ showing up?").
+4. Keep an endpoint that serves the "finalized" cosigned tree head.
+ * Purpose: mainly used by monitors, but could also be used by distributor's
+ that don't mind the additional waiting or by parties that want to archive
+ cosigned tree heads.
+
+This proposal currently does not have a name for the above endpoints. Help
+wanted.
+
+Notes
+---
+A witness polls the "get-tree-head-to-sign" endpoint as before. Witnesses are
+recommended to poll the log at least once per minute at randomly selected times.
+
+After a successful add-cosignature request, a witness should not attempt to add
+the same cosignature again. A log can refresh their "to-sign tree head" to
+instruct witnesses to send their cosignatures again for the same tree size.
+
+A witness operator may check that their cosignatures appear on the
+"get-tree-head-cosigned endpoints". Such checking would likely be part of how
+the operator monitors that the witness operates correctly (i.e., it would not be
+something that the witness software does itself after a successful
+add-cosignature request).
+
+A submitter ("Signer" in Figure 1) that wants a cosigned tree head that
+satisifies a given policy as fast as possible can poll the "dynamic cosigned
+tree head endpoint". Keep in mind that polling more than a few times per minute
+would not let you obtain cosignatures much faster, see the above recommendation
+for how often witnesses should provide their cosignatures.
+
+A helpful reflection with regards to naming:
+ * "The log's to-sign STH shows up, it gets filled-up with cosignatures; the
+ previous cosigned tree head is served on a separate endpoint. Then
+ "prev=curr, curr=new". I.e., there is a time aspect here that might be
+ helpful for naming, although previous and current would be bad choices."
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