Abstract

This document specifies the format and contents of data escrow deposits targeted primarily for domain name registries. The specification is designed to be independent of the underlying objects that are being escrowed, and therefore it could also be used for purposes other than domain name registries.¶

1. Introduction

Registry Data Escrow (RDE) is the process by which a registry periodically submits data deposits to a third party called an escrow agent. These deposits comprise the minimum data needed by a third party to resume operations if the registry cannot function and is unable or unwilling to facilitate an orderly transfer of service. For example, for a domain name registry or registrar, the data to be deposited would include all of the objects related to registered domain names, e.g., names, contacts, name servers.¶

The goal of data escrow is higher resiliency of registration services, for the benefit of Internet users. The beneficiaries of a registry are not just those registering information there but also the users of services relying on the registry data.¶

In the context of domain name registries, registration data escrow is a requirement for generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) (e.g., Specification 2 of the ICANN Base Registry Agreement; see [ICANN-GTLD-RA-20170731]), and some country code TLD (ccTLD) managers are also currently escrowing data. There is also a similar requirement for ICANN-accredited domain registrars.¶

This document specifies a format for data escrow deposits independent of the objects being escrowed. An independent specification is required for each type of registry/set of objects that is expected to be escrowed.¶

The format for data escrow deposits is specified using version 1.0 of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as described in [W3C.REC-xml-20081126], and XML Schema notation as described in [W3C.REC-xmlschema-1-20041028] and [W3C.REC-xmlschema-2-20041028].¶

Readers are advised to read Section 2 ("Terminology") carefully to understand the precise meanings of Differential and Incremental Deposits, as the definitions used in this document are different from the definitions typically used in the domain of data backups.¶

3. Problem Scope

In the past few years, the issue of registry continuity has been carefully considered in the gTLD and ccTLD spaces. Various organizations have carried out risk analyses and developed business continuity plans to deal with those risks, should they materialize.¶

One of the solutions considered and used, especially in the gTLD space, is Registry Data Escrow as a way to ensure the continuity of registry services in the extreme case of registry failure.¶

So far, almost every registry that uses Registry Data Escrow has its own specification. It is anticipated that more registries will be implementing escrow, especially with an increasing number of domain registries coming into service, adding complexity to this issue.¶

It would seem beneficial to have a standardized specification for Registry Data Escrow that can be used by any registry to submit its deposits.¶

While the domain name industry has been the main target for this specification, it has been designed to be as general as possible.¶

Specifications covering the objects used by registration organizations shall identify the format and contents of the deposits a registry has to make, such that a different registry would be able to rebuild the registration services of the former, without its help, in a timely manner and with minimum disruption to its users.¶

Since the details of the registration services provided vary from registry to registry, specifications covering the objects used by registration organizations shall provide mechanisms that allow extensibility to accommodate variations and extensions of the registration services.¶

Given the requirement for confidentiality and the importance of accuracy of the information that is handled in order to offer registration services, parties using this specification shall define confidentiality and integrity mechanisms for handling the registration data.¶

Specifications covering the objects used by registration organizations shall not include in the specification transient objects that can be recreated by the new registry, particularly those of delicate confidentiality, e.g., DNSSEC KSK/ZSK (Key Signing Key / Zone Signing Key) private keys.¶

Details that are a matter of policy should be identified as such for the benefit of the implementers.¶

Non-technical issues concerning data escrow, such as whether to escrow data and for what purposes the data may be used, are outside the scope of this document.¶

Parties using this specification shall use a signaling mechanism to control the transmission, reception, and validation of data escrow deposits. The definition of such a signaling mechanism is outside the scope of this document.¶

4. Conventions Used in This Document

The XML namespace prefix "rde" is used for the namespace "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:rde-1.0", but implementations MUST NOT depend on it; instead, they should employ a proper namespace-aware XML parser and serializer to interpret and output the XML documents.¶

The XML namespace prefixes "rdeObj1" and "rdeObj2", with the corresponding namespaces "urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj1-1.0" and "urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj2-1.0", are used as example data escrow objects.¶

5. Protocol Description

The format for data escrow deposits as produced by a registry is defined below. The deposits are represented in XML (Section 6). Only the format of the objects deposited is defined. This document does not prescribe the method used to transfer such deposits between the registry and the escrow agent or vice versa.¶

The protocol intends to be object agnostic, allowing the "overload" of abstract elements using the "substitutionGroup" attribute [W3C.REC-xmlschema-1-20041028] of the XML Schema element to define the actual elements of an object to be escrowed.¶

The specification for each object to be escrowed MUST declare the identifier to be used to reference the object to be deleted or added/modified.¶

7. Internationalization Considerations

Data escrow deposits are represented in XML, which provides native support for encoding information using the Unicode character set and its more compact representations, including UTF-8. Conformant XML processors recognize both UTF-8 and UTF-16. Though XML includes provisions to identify and use other character encodings through the use of an "encoding" attribute in an <?xml?> declaration, the use of UTF-8 is RECOMMENDED.¶

8. IANA Considerations

This document uses URNs to describe XML namespaces and XML schemas conforming to a registry mechanism described in [RFC3688]. Two URI assignments have been registered by the IANA.¶

Registration for the RDE namespace:¶

URI:

urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:rde-1.0¶

Registrant Contact:

IESG¶

XML:

None. Namespace URIs do not represent an XML specification.¶

Registration for the RDE XML schema:¶

URI:

urn:ietf:params:xml:schema:rde-1.0¶

Registrant Contact:

IESG¶

See Section 6 ("Formal Syntax") of this document.¶

9. Security Considerations

This specification does not define the security mechanisms to be used in the transmission of the data escrow deposits, since it only specifies the minimum necessary to enable the rebuilding of a registry from deposits without intervention from the original registry.¶

Depending on local policies, some elements -- or, most likely, the whole deposit -- will be considered confidential. As such, the parties SHOULD take all necessary precautions, such as encrypting the data at rest and in transit to avoid inadvertent disclosure of private data. Regardless of the precautions taken by the parties regarding data at rest and in transit, authentication credentials MUST NOT be escrowed.¶

Authentication of the parties passing data escrow deposit files is also of the utmost importance. The escrow agent MUST properly authenticate the identity of the registry before accepting data escrow deposits. Similarly, the registry MUST authenticate the identity of the escrow agent before submitting any data.¶

Additionally, the registry and the escrow agent MUST use integrity-checking mechanisms to ensure that the data transmitted is what the source intended. Validation of the contents by the escrow agent is RECOMMENDED to ensure not only that the file was transmitted correctly from the registry but also that the contents are "meaningful".¶

10. Privacy Considerations

This specification defines a format that may be used to escrow personal data. The process of data escrow is governed by a legal document agreed upon by the parties, and such a legal document must ensure that privacy-sensitive and/or personal data receives the required protection.¶

11. Example of a Full Deposit

Example of a Full Deposit with the two example objects rdeObj1 and rdeObj2:¶

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rde:deposit
  xmlns:rde="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:rde-1.0"
  xmlns:rdeObj1="urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj1-1.0"
  xmlns:rdeObj2="urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj2-1.0"
  type="FULL"
  id="20191018001">
  <rde:watermark>2019-10-17T23:59:59Z</rde:watermark>
  <rde:rdeMenu>
    <rde:version>1.0</rde:version>
    <rde:objURI>urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj1-1.0</rde:objURI>
    <rde:objURI>urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj2-1.0</rde:objURI>
  </rde:rdeMenu>
  <rde:contents>
    <rdeObj1:rdeObj1>
      <rdeObj1:name>EXAMPLE</rdeObj1:name>
    </rdeObj1:rdeObj1>
    <rdeObj2:rdeObj2>
      <rdeObj2:id>fsh8013-EXAMPLE</rdeObj2:id>
    </rdeObj2:rdeObj2>
  </rde:contents>
</rde:deposit>

12. Example of a Differential Deposit

Example of a Differential Deposit with the two example objects rdeObj1 and rdeObj2:¶

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rde:deposit
  xmlns:rde="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:rde-1.0"
  xmlns:rdeObj1="urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj1-1.0"
  xmlns:rdeObj2="urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj2-1.0"
  type="DIFF"
  id="20191019001" prevId="20191018001">
  <rde:watermark>2019-10-18T23:59:59Z</rde:watermark>
  <rde:rdeMenu>
    <rde:version>1.0</rde:version>
      <rde:objURI>urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj1-1.0</rde:objURI>
      <rde:objURI>urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj2-1.0</rde:objURI>
  </rde:rdeMenu>
  <rde:contents>
    <rdeObj1:rdeObj1>
      <rdeObj1:name>EXAMPLE2</rdeObj1:name>
    </rdeObj1:rdeObj1>
    <rdeObj2:rdeObj2>
      <rdeObj2:id>sh8014-EXAMPLE</rdeObj2:id>
    </rdeObj2:rdeObj2>
  </rde:contents>
</rde:deposit>

13. Example of an Incremental Deposit

Example of an Incremental Deposit with the two example objects rdeObj1 and rdeObj2:¶

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rde:deposit
  xmlns:rde="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:rde-1.0"
  xmlns:rdeObj1="urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj1-1.0"
  xmlns:rdeObj2="urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj2-1.0"
  type="INCR"
  id="20200317001" prevId="20200314001">
  <rde:watermark>2020-03-16T23:59:59Z</rde:watermark>
  <rde:rdeMenu>
    <rde:version>1.0</rde:version>
    <rde:objURI>urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj1-1.0</rde:objURI>
    <rde:objURI>urn:example:params:xml:ns:rdeObj2-1.0</rde:objURI>
  </rde:rdeMenu>
  <rde:deletes>
    <rdeObj1:delete>
      <rdeObj1:name>EXAMPLE1</rdeObj1:name>
    </rdeObj1:delete>
    <rdeObj2:delete>
      <rdeObj2:id>fsh8013-EXAMPLE</rdeObj2:id>
    </rdeObj2:delete>
  </rde:deletes>
  <rde:contents>
    <rdeObj1:rdeObj1>
      <rdeObj1:name>EXAMPLE2</rdeObj1:name>
    </rdeObj1:rdeObj1>
    <rdeObj2:rdeObj2>
      <rdeObj2:id>sh8014-EXAMPLE</rdeObj2:id>
    </rdeObj2:rdeObj2>
  </rde:contents>
</rde:deposit>

14. References

Acknowledgments

Special suggestions that were incorporated into this document were provided by James Gould, Edward Lewis, Jaap Akkerhuis, Lawrence Conroy, Marc Groeneweg, Michael Young, Chris Wright, Patrick Mevzek, Stephen Morris, Scott Hollenbeck, Stephane Bortzmeyer, Warren Kumari, Paul Hoffman, Vika Mpisane, Bernie Hoeneisen, Jim Galvin, Andrew Sullivan, Hiro Hotta, Christopher Browne, Daniel Kalchev, David Conrad, James Mitchell, Francisco Obispo, Bhadresh Modi, and Alexander Mayrhofer.¶

Shoji Noguchi and Francisco Arias participated as coauthors through version 07 of draft-arias-noguchi-registry-data-escrow (the precursor to this document) and provided invaluable support for this document.¶