The IESG has approved the following document: - 'Structure of the GSS Negotiation Loop' (draft-ietf-kitten-gss-loop-05.txt) as Informational RFC This document is the product of the Common Authentication Technology Next Generation Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Stephen Farrell and Kathleen Moriarty. A URL of this Internet Draft is: http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-kitten-gss-loop/ Technical Summary This document provides guidance for implementing the GSS negotiation loop. It describes expectations of application protocols that use GSSAPI, such as error reporting and separation of application data from security negotiation data; the expected inputs and outputs for GSS_Accept_sec_context() and GSS_Init_sec_context(), including how various status codes should be handled; and what applications are expected to do once the loop completes. This document also describes what applications should do with unexpected state conditions. Working Group Summary This document went through two separate Working Group Last Calls with extensive discussion from a number of participants. One concern discussed is if this document should normatively update RFC 2743 or if it should "merely" provide application developers guidnace for how to work with GSSAPI as it exists today. The consensus ultimately was for this document to provide guidance for the current state of the art. Another major concern was the behavior when a context token is received after the security context is established. The consensus was for implementers to always call GSS_Process_context_token(), then call GSS_Inquire_context() to determine the usability of the security context, and call GSS_Delete_sec_context() to clean up. This document acknowledges that the current state of GSSAPI implementations renders the security context unusable when such context tokens are processed. In the course of discussing and updating this document, erratum 4151 was filed against RFC 2743 regarding the output of GSS_Process_context_token(). The erratum has not yet been formally discussed or verified in the Working Group. Document Quality This is informational and seems good to the AD. I-D nits asked about the code fragment but the authors/chairs discussed that and prefer to note add begin/end as the code is one fragment in it's own sub-section with a comment to the same effect. Personnel Matthew Miller (kitten WG co-chair) is the document shepherd and Stephen Farrell is the responsible Area Director.
