08-connectivity keeps two authorities apart on purpose: a public one for
names the outside world reaches, and the mesh's own for names only the
mesh knows. Nothing implemented the second, so anything between machines
was plaintext or trust-on-first-use — which the design refuses everywhere
else.
A node now generates a fourth key at enrolment and reports the public
half. A fourth, because a key used for two purposes is one rotation away
from breaking the other: the identity key signs messages to the mesh and
would do for TLS, and reusing it would mean rotating a node's identity
every time its certificate is replaced.
**Nothing secret travels and nothing is sealed.** A certificate authority
says "this name belongs to the holder of this key", so the mesh signs a
public half it cannot use, and the certificate it issues is public. A
module asks for one and is given the certificate and, if it wants,
the mesh's own — the private key is a path to a file the machine already
has, the same arrangement the private network's key uses.
Asserted by verifying rather than inspecting, because a certificate that
parses and does not chain fails at the moment something connects:
- what the mesh issues verifies against the mesh, for the name asked for
- the name is in the subject alternative names, since a certificate
carrying it only in the common name is refused by every modern client
- it certifies the key the node generated and no other
- another mesh's certificate does not verify, which is the whole point of
two authorities being separate
- the authority cannot sign another authority — one that could is one
that can be delegated without anybody deciding to
- two control planes starting together agree on one authority, or a mesh
has certificates half its machines refuse
Certificates last ten years, which is a choice: a short life needs
something to renew it, and a renewal that fails silently is a mesh that
stops trusting itself on a date nobody wrote down. What makes one
replaceable is that the mesh reissues on demand, not that it expires.
jschoubben
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