Previous: Verifying a certificate using trust on first use authentication, Up: Advanced certificate verification [Contents][Index]
The DANE protocol is a protocol that can be used to verify TLS certificates using the DNS (or better DNSSEC) protocols. The DNS security extensions (DNSSEC) provide an alternative public key infrastructure to the commercial CAs that are typically used to sign TLS certificates. The DANE protocol takes advantage of the DNSSEC infrastructure to verify TLS certificates. This can be in addition to the verification by CA infrastructure or may even replace it where DNSSEC is fully deployed. Note however, that DNSSEC deployment is fairly new and it would be better to use it as an additional verification method rather than the only one.
The DANE functionality is provided by the libgnutls-dane library that is shipped
with GnuTLS and the function prototypes are in gnutls/dane.h.
See Certificate verification for information on how to use the library.
Note however, that the DANE RFC mandates the verification methods one should use in addition to the validation via DNSSEC TLSA entries. GnuTLS doesn’t follow that RFC requirement, and the term DANE verification in this manual refers to the TLSA entry verification. In GnuTLS any other verification methods can be used (e.g., PKIX or TOFU) on top of DANE.