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IETF RFC 7072
Last modified on Friday, November 22nd, 2013
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) N. Borenstein
Request for Comments: 7072 Mimecast
Category: Standards Track M. Kucherawy
ISSN: 2070-1721 November 2013
A Reputation Query Protocol
 Abstract
This document defines a mechanism to conduct queries for reputation
information over the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) using
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) as the payload meta-format.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7072.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Borenstein & Kucherawy Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Terminology and Definitions .....................................2
2.1. Key Words ..................................................2
2.2. Other Definitions ..........................................3
3. Description .....................................................3
3.1. Overview ...................................................3
3.2. URI Template ...............................................3
3.3. Syntax .....................................................4
3.4. Response ...................................................6
3.5. Protocol Support ...........................................6
4. IANA Considerations .............................................7
5. Security Considerations .........................................7
6. References ......................................................8
6.1. Normative References .......................................8
6.2. Informative References .....................................8
Appendix A. Acknowledgements .......................................9
1. Introduction
This document defines a method to query a reputation data service for
information about an entity, using the HyperText Transfer Protocol
(HTTP) as the transport mechanism and JSON as the payload meta-
format.
The mechanism is a two-stage query:
1. A client retrieves a template from a server that describes the
construction of a Universal Resource Identifier (URI) that will
be the actual query;
2. The client then uses the constructed URI to request the
reputation data from the server.
2. Terminology and Definitions
This section defines terms used in the rest of the document.
2.1. Key Words
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [KEYWORDS].
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RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
2.2. Other Definitions
Other terms of importance in this document are defined in [RFC 7070]
and [RFC 7071].
3. Description
3.1. Overview
The components to the question being asked are the following:
o The subject of the query;
o The name of the host, or the IP address, at which the reputation
service is available;
o The name of the reputation application, i.e., the context within
which the subject is being evaluated;
o Optionally, names of the specific reputation assertions or
attributes that are being requested.
There is no discovery protocol for finding reputation services.
These are typically subscription services, negotiated between
operators through some out-of-band method.
Assertions are discussed in [RFC 7071].
The name of the application, if given, is expected to be one
registered with IANA in the "Reputation Applications" registry, which
is defined in [RFC 7071]. A server receiving a query about an
application it does not recognize or explicitly support (e.g., by
virtue of private agreements or experimental extensions) MUST return
a 404 error code.
A reputation query made via [HTTP] encodes the question being asked
in an HTTP GET method. The specific syntax of the query itself is
specified by retrieving a URI template from the reputation service,
completing the template, and then issuing the query.
3.2. URI Template
The template file is retrieved by requesting the [WELL-KNOWN-URI]
"repute-template" from the host providing reputation service, using
HTTP. (The registration for this well-known URI is in Section 4.)
The server returns the template file in a reply that MUST use the
Borenstein & Kucherawy Standards Track PAGE 3
RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
text/plain media type (see [MIME]) and SHOULD include an Expires
field (see Section 14.21 of [HTTP]) indicating a duration for which
the template is to be considered valid by clients and not re-queried.
If an Expires field is present, the client SHOULD NOT send another
query to the same server prior to the timestamp in the field. If no
Expires field is present, the client SHOULD wait at least one day
before sending another query to the same server (i.e., the client
assumes a default expiration of one day).
The template file might contain more than one template. Such a file
MUST have each template separated by a carriage return (ASCII 0x0D)
and newline (ASCII 0x0A) character, as is typical for most text-based
Internet protocols.
Each template in the file is expanded using the variables that are
the parameters to the query. These parameters are either the subject
about which reputation information is sought (or details associated
with it) or other parameters that are established out-of-band with
the reputation service; they are not established by any automated
discovery described here. The client then attempts to query each
expanded template that uses a URI scheme it is capable of querying,
in the order presented in the file, until the client finds one to
which it can establish a usable connection and issue the query.
For example, given the following template:
http://{service}/{application}/{subject}/{assertion}
A query about the use of the domain "example.org" in the "email-id"
application context to a service run at "example.com", where that
application declares a required "subject" parameter, requesting the
"SPAM" reputation assertion, would be formed as follows:
http://example.com/email-id/example.org/spam
3.3. Syntax
The syntax for the [URI] of the query is constructed using a template
as per [URI-TEMPLATE]. (See Section 3.2.) Clients MUST provide the
following values in the expansion of the template:
application: The name of the application reputation in whose context
the request is being made. These names are registered with IANA,
and conform to the ABNF "token" found in [MIME].
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RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
service: The hostname or IP address to which the query is being
sent. This MUST be the same as the host to which the template
query was issued.
subject: The subject of the query, extracted from some content to be
evaluated. The subject portion of the template conforms to the
ABNF "value" found in [MIME].
The following variable can also be provided. It is not mandatory in
this model, but a specific application (defined in its own extension
document) might declare it mandatory in a specific context:
assertion: The name of the specific assertion of interest to the
client. Assertion names conform to the ABNF "token" found in
[MIME]. If absent, the client is indicating that it requests all
available assertion information.
If a template contains a variable that is not required and the client
does not have a value to insert, it substitutes the empty string into
the template in place of that variable. Service providers crafting
templates MUST do so such that a client doing an empty variable
expansion will still produce a syntactically and semantically valid
and unambiguous URI. For example, given this template:
http://{service}/{application}/{subject}/{assertion}/{a}/{b}
If "{a}" and "{b}" are optional and "{a}" expands to the empty
string, then the resulting URI will have adjacent backslash ("/",
ASCII 0x2F) characters and one path component after the assertion.
If the server interpreting the URI's path component removes or
ignores adjacent backslash characters (such as is done with the UNIX
filesystem), the server will be unable to distinguish an empty "{a}"
from an empty "{b}", and it could serve the wrong response. Where
possible, the template needs to be constructed such that expansion of
optional variables yields an unambiguous result. For example, an
unambiguous version of the above would be:
http://{service}/{application}/{subject}/{assertion}/a={a}/b={b}
...or, even better, using URI template set expansions:
http://{service}/{application}/{subject}/{assertion}{?a,b}
Every application space has a set of assertions applicable to its own
context. [RFC 7071] defines a single assertion assumed to exist in
any application that does not define its own assertion set.
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RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
Reputation applications can extend the set of optional or required
query parameters as part of their IANA registration actions. The set
enumerated above establishes the base set common to all of them.
Further, additional required or optional extension query parameters
might be defined by specific reputation service providers, though
these are private arrangements between client and server and will not
be registered with IANA.
Authentication between reputation client and server is outside the
scope of this specification. It could be provided through a variety
of available transport-based or object-based mechanisms, including a
later extension of this specification.
3.4. Response
The response is expected to be contained in a media type designed to
deliver reputons. A media type designed for this purpose,
"application/reputon+json", is defined in [RFC 7071].
If the server generates responses that contain an Expires field (see
Section 14.21 of [HTTP]), that timestamp MUST align with the
"expires" field within the response, if any. Failing to do so can
result in a state where the response has expired, but the HTTP reply
has not, and the client would in that case be unable to get a fresh
answer from the reputation server.
3.5. Protocol Support
A client has to implement HTTP in order to retrieve the query
template as described in Section 3.2. Accordingly, a server can
assume the client will be able to handle a URI template that produces
a URI for the query using the "http" URI scheme. The template could
yield a query string that uses some other URI scheme, in which case
the client could try that URI as well if it supports issuing queries
with that URI scheme.
A server SHOULD include support for providing service over HTTP, and
publish templates indicating support for this, as a baseline for
interoperability with arbitrary clients.
Borenstein & Kucherawy Standards Track PAGE 6
RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
4. IANA Considerations
This document registers the "repute-template" well-known URI in the
"Well-Known URI" registry as defined by [WELL-KNOWN-URI], as follows:
URI suffix: repute-template
Change controller: IETF
Specification document(s): [RFC 7072]
Related information: none
5. Security Considerations
This document defines particular uses of existing protocols for a
specific application. In particular, the basic protocol used for
this service to retrieve a URI template from a well-known location is
basic HTTP, which is not secure without certain extensions. Security
issues relevant to use of URI templates are discussed in
[URI-TEMPLATE], and those relevant to well-known URI definitions and
retrieval are discussed in [WELL-KNOWN-URI].
The reputation service itself will use HTTP or other transport
methods to issue queries and receive replies. Those protocols have
registered URI schemes and, as such, presumably have documented
security considerations. The protocol described here operates atop
those URI schemes, and does not itself present new security
considerations.
Reputation mechanisms represent an obvious security concern, in terms
of the validity and use of the reputation information. These issues
are beyond the scope of this specification. General information
pertaining to using or providing reputation services can be found in
[CONSIDERATIONS].
The security considerations applicable to HTTP (see Section 15 of
[HTTP] apply, since this query mechanism for reputation uses that
protocol. If it is desirable to conceal the content of the query and
its response, use of encryption techniques such as HTTP over TLS
[HTTPS] can be used.
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RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
6. References
6.1. Normative References
[HTTP] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
[KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[MIME] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.
[RFC 7070] Borenstein, N., Kucherawy, M., and A. Sullivan, "An
Architecture for Reputation Reporting", RFC 7070, November
2013.
[RFC 7071] Borenstein, N. and M. Kucherawy, "A Media Type for
Reputation Interchange", RFC 7071, November 2013.
[URI-TEMPLATE]
Gregorio, J., Fielding, R., Hadley, M., Nottingham, M.,
and D. Orchard, "URI Template", RFC 6570, March 2012.
[URI] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC
3986, January 2005.
[WELL-KNOWN-URI]
Nottingham, M. and E. Hammer-Lahav, "Defining Well-Known
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)", RFC 5785, April
2010.
6.2. Informative References
[CONSIDERATIONS]
Kucherawy, M., "Operational Considerations Regarding
Reputation Services", Work in Progress, May 2013.
[HTTPS] Rescorla, E., "HTTP Over TLS", RFC 2818, May 2000.
Borenstein & Kucherawy Standards Track PAGE 8
RFC 7072 A Reputation Query Protocol November 2013
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the following for their contributions
to this work: Simon Hunt, Mark Nottingham, David F. Skoll, and Mykyta
Yevstifeyev.
Authors' Addresses
Nathaniel Borenstein
Mimecast
203 Crescent St., Suite 303
Waltham, MA 02453
USA
Phone: +1 781 996 5340
EMail: nsb@guppylake.com
Murray S. Kucherawy
270 Upland Drive
San Francisco, CA 94127
USA
EMail: superuser@gmail.com
Borenstein & Kucherawy Standards Track PAGE 9
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 17416 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Friday, November 22nd, 2013
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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