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+# MSC1711: X.509 certificate verification for federation connections
+
+TLS connections for server-to-server communication currently rely on an
+approach borrowed from the [Perspectives
+project](https://web.archive.org/web/20170702024706/https://perspectives-project.org/)
+to provide certificate verification, rather than the more normal model using
+certificates signed by trusted Certificate Authorities. This document sets out
+the reasons that this has not been a success, and suggests that we should
+instead revert to the CA model.
+
+## Background: the failure of the Perspectives approach
+
+The Perspectives approach replaces the conventional hierarchy of trust provided
+by the Certificate Authority model with a large number of "notary" servers
+distributed around the world. The intention is that the notary servers
+regularly monitor remote servers and observe the certificates they present;
+when making a connection to a new site, a client can correlate the certificate
+it presents with that seen by the notary servers. In theory this makes it very
+hard to mount a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack, because it would require
+intercepting traffic between the target server and a large number of the notary
+servers.
+
+It is notable that the Perspectives project itself appears to have largely been
+abandoned: its website has largely been repurposed, the [Firefox
+extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/perspectives/) does
+not work with modern versions of Firefox, the [mailing
+list](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/perspectives-dev) is inactive,
+and several of the (ten) published notary servers are no longer functional. The
+reasons for this are not entirely clear, though clearly it never gained
+widespread adoption.
+
+When Matrix was originally designed in 2014, the Perspectives project was
+heavily active, and avoiding dependencies on the relatively centralised
+Certificate Authorities was attractive, in accordance with Matrix's design as a
+decentralised protocol. However, this has not been a success in practice.
+
+Matrix was unable to make use of the existing notary servers (largely because
+we wanted to extend the protocol to include signing keys): the intention was
+that, as the Matrix ecosystem grew, public Matrix servers would act as notary
+servers. However, in practice we have ended up in a situation where almost <sup
+id="a1">[1](#f1)</sup> every Matrix homeserver either uses `matrix.org` as the
+sole notary, or does no certificate verification at all. Far from avoiding the
+centralisation of the Certificate Authorities, the entire protocol is therefore
+dependent on a single point of control at `matrix.org` - and because
+`matrix.org` only monitors from a single location, the protection against MitM
+attacks is weak.
+
+It is also clear that the Perspectives approach is poorly-understood. It is a
+common error for homeservers to be deployed behind reverse-proxies which make
+the Perspectives-based approach unreliable. The CA model, for all its flaws, is
+at least commonly used, which makes it easier for administrators to deploy
+(secure) homeservers, and allows server implementations to leverage existing
+libraries.
+
+## Proposal
+
+We propose that Matrix homeservers should be required to present valid TLS
+certificates, signed by a known Certificate Authority, on their federation
+port.
+
+In order to ease transition and give administrators time to switch to a signed
+certificate, we will continue to follow the current, perspectives-based
+approach for servers whose TLS certificates fail validation.
+
+However, this fallback will be strictly time-limited, and Matrix S2S spec r0
+will not accept self-signed certificates, nor will it include the
+`tls_fingerprints` property of the
+[`/_matrix/key/v2`](https://matrix.org/docs/spec/server_server/unstable.html#retrieving-server-keys)
+endpoints. Synapse 1.0 will not accept self-signed certificates by default.
+
+The `matrix.org` team will proactively attempt to reach out to homeserver
+administrators who do not update their certificates in the coming weeks.
+
+The process of determining which CAs are trusted to sign certificates would be
+implementation-specific, though it should almost certainly make use of existing
+operating-system support for maintaining such lists. It might also be useful if
+administrators could override this list, for the purpose of setting up a
+private federation using their own CA.
+
+It would also be useful for administrators to be able to disable the
+certificate checks for a whitelist of domains/netmasks. This would be useful
+for testing, or for networks that provide server verification themselves,
+such as like `.onion` domains on Tor or `fc00::/8` IPs on cjdns.
+
+### Interaction with SRV records
+
+With the use of `SRV` records, it is possible for the hostname of a homeserver
+to be quite different from the matrix domain it is hosting. For example, if
+there were an SRV record at `_matrix._tcp.matrix.org` which pointed to
+`server.example.com`, then any federation requests for `matrix.org` would be
+routed to `server.example.com`. The question arises as to which certificate
+`server.example.com` should present.
+
+In short: the server should present a certificate for the matrix domain
+(`matrix.org` in the above example). This ensures that traffic cannot be
+intercepted by a MitM who can control the DNS response for the `SRV` record
+(perhaps via cache-poisoning or falsifying DNS responses).
+
+This will be in line with the current
+[requirements](https://matrix.org/docs/spec/server_server/unstable.html#resolving-server-names)
+in the Federation API specification for the `Host`, and by implication, the TLS
+Server Name Indication <sup id="a2">[2](#f2)</sup>. It is also consistent with
+the recommendations of
+[RFC6125](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6125#section-6.2.1) and the
+conventions established by the XMPP protocol (per [RFC6120](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6120#section-13.7.2.1).
+
+### Extensions
+
+HTTP-Based Public Key Pinning (HPKP) and
+[Certificate transparency](https://www.certificate-transparency.org) are
+both HTTP extensions which attempt to work around some of the deficiencies in
+the CA model, by making it more obvious if a CA has issued a certificate
+incorrectly.
+
+HPKP has not been particularly successful, and is
+[deprecated](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/04/chrome-67-deps-rems#deprecate_http-based_public_key_pinning)
+in Google Chrome as of April 2018. Certificate transparency, however, is seeing
+widespread adoption from Certificate Authories and HTTP clients.
+
+This proposal sees both technologies as optional techniques which could be
+provided by homeserver implementations. We encourage but do not mandate the use
+of Certificate Transparency.
+
+### Related work
+
+The Perspectives approach is also currently used for exchanging the keys that
+are used by homeservers to sign Matrix events and federation requests (the
+"signing keys"). Problems similar to those covered here also apply to that
+mechanism. This is discussed at [#1685](thttps://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1685).
+
+## Alternatives
+
+There are well-known problems with the CA model, including a number of
+widely-published incidents in which CAs have issued certificates
+incorrectly. It is therefore important to consider alternatives to the CA
+model.
+
+### Improving support for the Perspectives model
+
+In principle, we could double-down on the Perspectives approach, and make an effort
+to get servers other than `matrix.org` used as notary servers. However, there
+remain significant problems with such an approach:
+
+* Perspectives remain complex to configure correctly. Ideally, administrators
+  need to make conscious choices about which notaries to trust, which is hard
+  to do, especially for newcomers to the ecosystem. (In practice, people use
+  the out-of-the-box configuration, which is why everyone just uses
+  `matrix.org` today).
+
+* A *correct* implementation of Perspectives really needs to take into account
+  more than the latest state seen by the notary servers: some level of history
+  should be taken into account too.
+
+Essentially, whilst we still believe the Perspectives approach has some merit,
+we believe it needs further research before it can be relied upon. We believe
+that the resources of the Matrix ecosystem are better spent elsewhere.
+
+### DANE
+
+DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) can be used as an alternative
+to the CA model. (It is arguably more appropriately used *together* with the CA
+model.)
+
+It is not obvious to the author of this proposal that DANE provides any
+material advantages over the CA model. In particular it replaces the
+centralised trust of the CAs with the centralised trust of the DNS registries.
+
+## Potential issues
+
+Beyond the problems already discussed with the CA model, requiring signed
+certificates comes with a number of downsides.
+
+### More difficult setup
+
+Configuring a working, federating homeserver is a process fraught with
+pitfalls. This proposal adds the requirement to obtain a signed certificate to
+that process. Even with modern intiatives such as Let's Encrypt, this is
+another procedure requiring manual intervention across several moving parts.
+
+On the other hand: obtaining an SSL certificate should be a familiar process to
+anybody capable of hosting a production homeserver (indeed, they should
+probably already have one for the client port). This change also opens the
+possibility of putting the federation port behind a reverse-proxy without the
+need for additional configuration. Hopefully making the certificate usage more
+conventional will offset the overhead of setting up a certificate.
+
+Furthermore, homeserver implementations could provide an implementation of the
+ACME protocol and integration with Let's Encrypt, to make it easier for
+administrators to get started. (This would of course be
+implementation-specific, and administrators who wanted to keep control of the
+certificate creation process would be free to do so).
+
+### Inferior support for IP literals
+
+Whilst it is possible to obtain an SSL cert which is valid for a literal IP
+address, this typically requires purchase of a premium certificate; in
+particular, Let's Encrypt will not issue certificates for IP literals. This may
+make it impractical to run a homeserver which uses an IP literal, rather than a
+DNS name, as its `server_name`.
+
+It has long been the view of the `matrix.org` administrators that IP literals
+are only really suitable for internal testing. Those who wish to use them for
+that purpose could either disable certificate checks inside their network, or
+use their own CA to issue certificates.
+
+### Inferior support for hidden services (`.onion` addresses)
+
+It is currently possible to correctly route traffic to a homeserver on a
+`.onion` domain, provided any remote servers which may need to reach that
+server are configured to route to such addresses via the Tor network. However,
+it can be difficult to get a certificate for a `.onion` domain (again, Let's
+Encrypt do not support them).
+
+The reasons for requiring a signed certificate (or indeed, for using TLS at
+all) are weakened when traffic is routed via the Tor network. Administrators
+using the Tor network could disable certificate checks for `.onion` addresses.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+We believe that requiring homeservers to present an X.509 certificate signed by
+a recognised Certificate Authority will improve security, reduce
+centralisation, and eliminate some common deployment pitfalls.
+
+<a id="f1"/>[1] It's *possible* to set up homeservers to use servers other than
+`matrix.org` as notaries, but only a minority are actually set up this
+way. [↩](#a1)
+
+<a id="f2"/>[2] I've not been able to find an authoritative source on this, but
+most reverse-proxies will reject requests where the SNI and Host headers do not
+match. [↩](#a2)