[cabfpub] Pre-Ballot - Short-Life Certificates

Sigbjørn Vik sigbjorn at opera.com
Wed Nov 19 09:00:12 MST 2014


On 19-Nov-14 16:35, Ben Laurie wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed Nov 19 2014 at 2:39:36 PM Sigbjørn Vik <sigbjorn at opera.com
> <mailto:sigbjorn at opera.com>> wrote:
> 
>     If you know the issuance date, and a rule that such certs expire
>     three days later, that is sufficient.
> 
>     Clients recognize the hash from the log, look up when the certificate
>     was issued (when the hash was published), and set the certificate to
>     expire three days later.
> 
> 
> The question is: how do I know its 3 days later?

I am not certain I understand the question, attempting to answer all the
variants I can think of:

Q: How do you know that certain certificates have a 3 day expiry time?
A: We define them that way, and might even have some marker in them,
stating that this is a certificate of a certain type.

Q: How do you know that it is three days later than some timestamp?
A: You check the current date and compare to the timestamp.

Q: How do you know the date to calculate the expiry time from?
A: You check the date when the hash was published.

Q: How do you know the date when the hash was published?
A: The client (or a vendor operated server) regularly fetches hashes,
and stores when they were published.

Q: What if the client clock is off?
A: If the client thinks it is 1st of March, it downloads a hash, and
stores its publication date as the 1st of March. Two days later, that
hash is encountered in a certificate. The client thinks it is the 3rd of
March, and thinks the certificate is valid till the 4th of March, so the
certificate is allowed. What date it actually is is not relevant.

Q: How do you know the real date, or the difference between the local
date and the real date?
A: You don't. You do need that for regular certificates, but not for
this suggestion.

-- 
Sigbjørn Vik
Opera Software


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