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1# JIT trust
2
3![JIT Trust logo](../doc-assets/jit-trust-logo.png)
4
5## Background
6
7Most systems using openssl rely on a system trust bundle that openssl was
8compiled to load at library init.  This is a bit expensive, since it
9instantiates over 120 CA X.509 certs, but most modern Linux systems don't really
10notice the permanent use of 1MB or so of heap from init, the advantage is client
11connections have all the trusted root certs available in memory to perform
12validation.
13
14![Using system trust bundles](../doc-assets/jit-trust-system-trust.png)
15
16For the kind of systems that choose mbedtls, they will typically either be
17burdened by or not even have enough ram to take this approach.
18
19If the device only connects to endpoints that are signed by a specific
20CA, you can just prepare the connection with the known trusted CA, that's
21the approach the examples take.  This method should still be used for critical
22connections to the cloud, for example provide the necessary CA cert in the
23Secure Streams policy, or at vhost creation time.
24
25![Using system trust bundles](../doc-assets/jit-trust-single-trust.png)
26
27However if you also have a browser type application that could connect anywhere,
28but you don't have heap spare to preload all the CAs, you need something like
29"JIT trust".
30
31## JIT trust overview
32
33The basic approach is to connect to the server to retrieve its certificates,
34then study the certificates to determine the identity of the missing trusted
35cert we should be trying to validate with.
36
37![JIT Trust overview](../doc-assets/jit-trust-overview.png)
38
39We attempt to get the trusted cert from some local or remote store, and retry
40the connection having instantiated the missing CA cert as trusted for that
41connection, if it is one that we do actually trust.  If it lies about what CA it
42needs to validate, or we do not trust the one it asks for, subsequent
43connections will fail.
44
45If it asked for a trusted CA that we trust, and the relationship was valid, the
46tls negotiation should then complete successfully, and we can cache the CA cert
47and the host -> CA cert pre-trust requirement so future connections can work
48first time.
49
50## Subject Key Id and Authority Key Id
51
52All of the certificates publish a unique-enough personal "Subject Key ID" or
53SKID blob.  These are typically 20-byte hashes based on the cert public key.
54
55When a server certificate is issued by the CA, an entry is made first in the
56certificate noting the SKID of the certificate that will be used to sign it,
57in an "Authority Key ID", or AKID, extension.  The certificate is then signed by
58the parent certificate private key to prove it was issued by the real owner of
59the CA or intermediate certificate.
60
61![X.509 validation paths](../doc-assets/jit-trust-paths.png)
62
63Basically this AKID on a certificate is guiding the validator with
64information about which certificate it claims is next in the chain of trust
65leading back to a trusted CA.  Lying about it doesn't help an attacker,
66because we're only using the AKID to get the CA certificate and then try to do
67the full signature check using it, if it's not really signed by the AKID cert it
68told, or anything else wrong, the actual validation will just fail.
69
70A chain that terminates in a CA certificate is complete, and can undergo full
71validation using the tls library.
72
73## Converting the Mozilla trust bundle for JIT trust
74
75Lws provides a bash script `./scripts/mozilla-trust-gen.sh` that can fetch the
76latest Mozilla CA trust bundle for certs usable for tls validation, and convert
77it to three different forms to allow maintaining the trust bundle in different
78ways for different kinds of device to consume.
79
80 - as a webroot directory, so you can server trusted DERs, with
81   symlink indexes to the CA certs by SKID and issuer/serial
82
83 - as an atomic binary blob, currently about 143KB, with structure
84   at the start pointing to DER certs and indexes inside
85
86 - a C-compiler friendly `uint8_t` array version of the blob,
87   so it can be compiled into .rodata directly if necessary.
88
89Currently there are 128 certs in the trust bundle, and the whole blob is about
90143KB uncompressed.
91
92## Considerations about maintaining the trust blob
93
94Mozilla update their trust bundle at intervals, and there have been at least
95three cases where they have removed or distrusted CAs from it by their own
96decision, because they have issued dangerous certificates, (like one for `*`
97that will validate anything at all).  Certifacte owners may also revoke their
98own certificates for any reason and issue replacements.
99
100The certs in the trust bundle expire, currently 10/128 will expire within 3
101years and 50/128 over the next 10 years.  So new and replacement certificates
102are also being added at intervals.
103
104Part of using the trust bundle is building in some way to update what is trusted
105over the lifetime of the device, which may exceed 10 years.
106
107Depending on the device, it may not be any problem to keep the trust blob in the
108firmware, and update the firmware ongoing every few months.  So you could build
109it into the firmware using the C array include file (the minimal example takes
110this approach).
111
112Another device may have difficulty updating the firmware outside of emergencies,
113it could keep the trust blob in a separate area and update it separately.
114Having it as a single blob makes it easy to fetch and update.
115
116Finally constrained devices, say in ESP32 class, may not have space or desire
117to store the trust blob in the device at all, it could query a remote server on
118demand to check for any trusted CA matching a given AKID and retrieve and cache
119it in volatile ram.  This would use the webroot produced by the script, via tls
120and a fixed CA cert outside this system.
121
122## Format of the JIT trust blob
123
124The trust blob layout is currently
125
126```
12700:  54 42 4c 42     Magic "TBLB"
12804:  00 01           MSB-first trust blob layout version
12906:  XX XX           MSB-first count of certificates
13008:  XX XX XX XX     MSB-first trust blob generation unix time
1310c:  XX XX XX XX     MSB-first offset from blob start of cert length table
13210:  XX XX XX XX     MSB-first offset from blob start of SKID length table
13314:  XX XX XX XX     MSB-first offset from blob start of SKID table
13418:  XX XX XX XX     MSB-first total blob length
135
1361c:  XX .. XX        DER certs (start at +0x1c)
137  :  XX .. XX        DER cert length table (MSB-first 16-bit per cert)
138  :  XX .. XX        SKID length table (8-bit per cert)
139  :  XX .. XX        SKID table (variable per cert)
140```
141
142## Enabling JIT Trust
143
144```
145$ cmake .. -DLWS_WITH_TLS_JIT_TRUST=1
146```
147
148## Minimal example for JIT Trust
149
150`minimal-examples/http-client/minimal-http-client-jit-trust` is built if JIT
151Trust is enabled at cmake and `-DLWS_WITH_MINIMAL_EXAMPLES=1`.  This is based on
152minimal-http-client, except the loading of the system trust bundle is defeated,
153so by default it does not trust anything and cannot complete any tls connection.
154It includes the mozilla trust blob as a header file when built.
155
156It tries to do an http client connection twice, the first time fails but JIT
157Trust determines which trusted CA cert is missing, retreives it from the trust
158blob and creates the necessary temporary vhost with the correct CA cert(s)
159trusted.  On the next retry, the connection succeeds.
160
161## Processing of x509 AKID and SKIDs
162
163We study each x509 cert sent by the server in turn.  We parse out the SKID and
164AKID on each one and stash them (up to 4 deep).
165
166After the initial validation fails due to lack of any trusted CA, lws has
167collected all the AKID and SKIDs that were in certs sent by the server.  Since
168these may be sent in any order, may be malicious, and may even contain the
169(untrusted) root CA, they are sorted into a trust path using the AKID and SKID
170relationships.
171
172To cover cross-signing and cases where the root cert(s) were wrongly sent by
173a misconfigured server, all of the AKIDs in the stash are queried against the
174trusted CA store.  In cross-signing, multiple intermediates are provided with
175the same SKID, that all match the server certificate AKID parent.  Since we
176might meet certificates that trust multiple valid CAs that can validate the
177certificate, we support up to three CA certs imported.
178
179A user `lws_system_ops` handler performs the query, so it can consist of any
180kind of backing store or remote lookup. Helpers are provided to query the JIT
181trust mozilla blob, so the system helper is small in the typical case, just
182calling lws helpers.
183
184The results (up to three CA certs to account for cross-signing scenarios) are
185collected and a 1hr TTL cache entry made for the hostname and the SKIDs of the
186matched CAs, if there is no existing JIT vhost with its tls context configured
187with the needed trusted CAs, one is created.
188
189When the connection is retried, lws checks the cache for the hostname having
190a binding to an existing JIT vhost, if that exists the connection proceeds
191bound to that.  If there is a cache entry but no JIT vhost, one is created using
192the information in the cache entry.
193
194## Efficiency considerations
195
196From cold, the JIT Trust flow is
197
1981. A sacrificial connection is made to get the server certs
1992. Query the JIT Trust database for AKIDs mentioned in the certs (this may be
200done asynchronously)
2013. Create a temporary vhost with the appropriate trusted certs enabled in it,
202   and add an entry in the cache for this hostname to the SKIDs of the CAs
203   enabled on this temporary vhost
2044. Retry, querying the cache to bind the connection to the right temporary vhost
205
206An lws_cache in heap is maintained so step 1 can be skipped while hostname->
207SKID items exist in the cache.  If the items expire or are evicted, it just
208means we have to do step 1 again.
209
210For a short time, the vhost created in step 3 is allowed to exist when idle, ie
211when no connections are actively using it.  In the case the vhost exists and
212the cache entry exists for the hostname, the connection can proceed successfully
213right away without steps 1 through 3.
214
215## APIs related to JIT Trust
216
217Systems that support JIT trust define an `lws_system_ops` callback
218that does whatever the system needs to do for attempting to acquire
219a trusted cert with a specified SKID or issuer/serial.
220
221```
222int (*jit_trust_query)(struct lws_context *cx, const uint8_t *skid, size_t skid_len, void *got_opaque);
223```
224
225The ops handler doesn't have to find the trusted cert immediately before
226returning, it is OK starting the process and later if successful calling a
227helper `lws_tls_jit_trust_got_cert_cb()` with the `got_opaque` from the query.
228This will cache the CA cert so it's available at the next connection retry for
229preloading.
230
231An helper suitable for `ops->jit_trust_query` using trust blob lookup in .rodata
232is provided in `lws_tls_jit_trust_blob_queury_skid()`, the callback above should
233be called with its results as shown in the minimal example.
234
235## Runtime tuning for JIT Trust
236
237The context creation info struct has a couple of runtime-tunable settings
238related to JIT Trust.
239
240`.jitt_cache_max_footprint`: default 0 means no limit, otherwise the hostname->
241SKID cache is kept below this many bytes in heap, by evicting LRU entries.
242
243`.vh_idle_grace_ms`: default 0 means 5000ms, otherwise sets the length of time
244a JIT Trust vhost is allowed to exist when it has no connections using it.
245Notice that, eg, h2 connections have their own grace period when they become
246idle, to optimize reuse, this period does not start until any h2 network
247connection bound to the vhost has really closed.
248
249## Considerations around http redirects
250
251HTTP redirects are transactions that tell the client to go somewhere else to
252continue, typically a 301 response with a Location: header explaining where to
253go.
254
255JIT Trust supports redirects to hosts with the same or different trust
256requirements, each step in the redirect is treated as a new connection that will
257fail, try to create a vhost with the right trust and work on the retry.
258
259Lws rejects by default protocol downgrades (https -> http) on redirects, the
260example used a context option `LCCSCF_ACCEPT_TLS_DOWNGRADE_REDIRECTS` to
261override this.
262
263## Works out of the box on recent mbedtls and openssl
264
265No modifications are needed to either tls library.
266
267## Compatibility Testing
268
269A list of the top 100 sites each from the US and the ROW were combined to
270produce 156 unqiue domain names [1]
271
272The Mbedtls build of JIT trust minimal example was run against each of these
273doing a GET on path `/` and restricted to h1 (`--server xxx --h1`).  In some
274cases, the server at the base domain name is broken or down, as verified using
275ssllabs.com as a second opinion.  These domains only resolve properly using
276`www.` prefix.
277
278In some cases the sites check the user agent and return a 4xx, these are taken
279as success for this test, since there was no problem at the tls layer.
280
281|site|h1|h2|comment|
282|---|---|---|---|
283|adobe.com|✓|✓||
284|allegro.pl|✓|✓||
285|allrecipes.com|✓|✓||
286|amazon.co.jp|✓|✓||
287|amazon.com|✓|✓||
288|amazon.co.uk|✓|✓||
289|amazon.de|✓|✓||
290|amazon.fr|✓|✓||
291|amazon.in|✓|✓||
292|amazon.it|✓|✓||
293|aol.com|✓|✓||
294|apartments.com|✓|✓||
295|apple.com|✓|✓||
296|ar.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
297|att.com|✓|✓||
298|bankofamerica.com|✓|✓||
299|bbc.com|✓|✓||
300|bbc.co.uk|✓|✓||
301|bestbuy.com|✕|✓|redirect-> `www.` then h1: timeout, h2: 403 forbidden... geolocated?|
302|booking.com|✓|✓||
303|britannica.com|✓|✓||
304|bulbagarden.net|✓|✓||
305|businessinsider.com|✓|✓||
306|ca.gov|✓|✓||
307|caixa.gov.br|✕|✕|TLS trust works fine.  Continuously redirects to self... sends set-cookie that we don't return yet|
308|capitalone.com|✓|✓||
309|cbssports.com|✓|✓||
310|cdc.gov|✓|✓||
311|chase.com|✓|✓||
312|chrome.google.com|✓|✓||
313|cnbc.com|✓|✓||
314|cnet.com|✓|✓||
315|cnn.com|✓|✓||
316|cookpad.com|✓|✓||
317|costco.com|✕|✓|TLS trust works fine.  But with or without `www.` server does not reply within 15s on h1, sends 403 OK on h2... Curl acts the same as we do, firefox works... geolocated?||
318|craigslist.org|✓|✓||
319|dailymotion.com|✓|✓||
320|de.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
321|dictionary.com|✓|✓||
322|ebay.com|✓|✓||
323|ebay.co.uk|✓|✓||
324|en.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
325|epicgames.com|✓|✓||
326|espn.com|✓|✓||
327|es.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
328|etsy.com|✓|✓||
329|expedia.com|✓|✓||
330|facebook.com|✓|✓||
331|fandom.com|✓|✓||
332|fedex.com|✓|✓||
333|finance.yahoo.com|✓|✓||
334|www.foodnetwork.com|✓|✓|`www.` served correctly, base domain is misconfigured with expired cert, confirmed with ssllabs + curl|
335|forbes.com|✓|✓||
336|foxnews.com|✓|✓||
337|fr.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
338|gamepedia.com|✓|✓||
339|genius.com|✓|✓||
340|glassdoor.com|✓|✓||
341|globo.com|✓|✓||
342|google.com|✓|✓||
343|healthline.com|✓|✓||
344|homedepot.com|✓|✓||
345|hulu.com|✓|✓||
346|hurriyet.com.tr|✓|✓||
347|id.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
348|ign.com|✓|✓||
349|ikea.com|✓|✓|`www.` served correctly, base domain is misconfigured with nonresponsive server, confirmed with ssllabs|
350|ilovepdf.com|✓|✓||
351|imdb.com|✓|✓||
352|indeed.com|✓|✓||
353|indiatimes.com|✓|✓||
354|instagram.com|✓|✓||
355|investopedia.com|✓|✓||
356|irs.gov|✓|✓||
357|it.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
358|ivi.ru|✓|✓||
359|ja.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
360|kakaku.com|✓|✓||
361|khanacademy.org|✓|✓||
362|kinopoisk.ru|✓|✓||
363|leboncoin.fr|✓|✓||
364|linkedin.com|✓|✓||
365|live.com|✓|✓||
366|lowes.com|✓|✓||
367|macys.com|✕|✓|TLS trust works fine.  Continuously redirects to self... `www.` same, curl acts same but OK if given -b -c, so akami cookie storage issue|
368|mail.ru|✓|✓||
369|mail.yahoo.com|✓|✓||
370|mapquest.com|✓|✓||
371|mayoclinic.org|✓|✓||
372|medicalnewstoday.com|✓|✓||
373|mercadolivre.com.br|✓|✓||
374|merriam-webster.com|✓|✓||
375|microsoft.com|✓|✓||
376|msn.com|✓|✓||
377|namu.wiki|✓|✓||
378|nbcnews.com|✓|✓||
379|netflix.com|✓|✓||
380|nih.gov|✓|✓||
381|nl.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
382|ny.gov|✓|✓||
383|nytimes.com|✓|✓||
384|ok.ru|✓|✓||
385|onet.pl|✓||
386|orange.fr|✓|✓||
387|paypal.com|✓|✓||
388|pinterest.com|✓|✓||
389|pixiv.net|✓|✓||
390|play.google.com|✓|✓||
391|pl.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
392|www.programme-tv.net|✓|✓|OK with `www.`, without `www.` TLS trust works fine but server does not reply, same with curl|
393|pt.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
394|quizlet.com|✓|✓||
395|quora.com|✓|✓|||
396|rakuten.co.jp|✓|✓||
397|realtor.com|✓|✓||
398|reddit.com|✓|✓||
399|reverso.net|✓|✓||
400|roblox.com|✓|✓||
401|rottentomatoes.com|✓|✓||
402|ru.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
403|sahibinden.com|✓|✓||
404|smallpdf.com|✓|✓||
405|speedtest.net|✓|✓||
406|spotify.com|✓|✓||
407|steampowered.com|✓|✓||
408|target.com|✓|✓||
409|theguardian.com|✓|✓||
410|tripadvisor.com|✓|✓||
411|tr.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
412|twitch.tv|✓|✓||
413|twitter.com|✓|✓||
414|uol.com.br|✓|✓||
415|ups.com|✓|✓||
416|urbandictionary.com|✓|✓||
417|usatoday.com|✓|✓||
418|usnews.com|✕|✓|TLS trust works fine. Needs `www.` else server doesn't respond in 15s, sends 403 on h2, Curl acts the same, geolocated?|
419|usps.com|✓|✓||
420|verizon.com|✓|✓||
421|vk.com|✓|✓||
422|walmart.com|✓|✓||
423|washingtonpost.com|✓|✓||
424|weather.com|✓|✓||
425|webmd.com|✓|✓||
426|whatsapp.com|✓|✓||
427|wowhead.com|✓|✓||
428|wp.pl|✓|✓||
429|www.gov.uk|✓|✓||
430|xfinity.com|✓|✓||
431|yahoo.co.jp|✓|✓||
432|yahoo.com|✓|✓||
433|yandex.ru|✓|✓||
434|yellowpages.com|✓|✓||
435|yelp.com|✓|✓||
436|youtube.com|✓|✓||
437|zh.wikipedia.org|✓|✓||
438|zillow.com|✓|✓||
439
440[1]
441```
442wget -O- https://ahrefs.com/blog/most-visited-websites/ | grep most-visited-websites-us | \
443        sed -E 's/class="column-2">/|/g' | tr '|' '\n' | \
444        sed 's/<.*//g' | grep -v Domain | grep -v Josh | sort | uniq
445```
446
447