[cabfpub] Pre-Ballot - Short-Life Certificates

Thu Nov 6 14:42:59 UTC 2014

Hi,

1.- I´m giving another point of view of what was indicated as a benefit. You mention the diginotar case that took a month, but some others appearing in 2011 or in the recent years took less than 3 days, or 5 days as much. So, of course, ideal world is not this one, and that´s why this is not a benefit

3.- Of course, I´m not saying the contrary. It´s up to the CA but it´s not a benefit. About voting? What vote? I haven´t seen a ballot for this. I said at the bottom of the email that I´m not against these short-lived certs, but I will if this is with the current BRs which are not allowed. So don´t know why a vote is needed. If Digicert and Mozilla want to implement it as a pilot or test or whatever, do it. But don´t try to impose.

5. Sure, you´re right. But, again, what´s the benefit of doing it? It´s clear that if I don´t want to issue these type of certs I won´t need to do anything. But I´d like to see the same effort in the other side.

9.- well, I was asking more on the wording, so if there´s "no revocation info" then, how you can say that will provide "shorter revocation window"? I think it´s just a wording issue.

And again, I´m not against but don´t understand the voting as I recall there´s no ballot, maybe, I´m missing one number. But in any case it is, the current BRs indicates that the certs must have the AIA, if so, and all has to comply with the BRs, then there´s no voting possible unless you change the BRs. If this is for testing purposes, no problem, I will abstain. But, for the question, is this any less secure? Sure not, but is this any more stronger? Sure not.

Iñigo Barreira
Responsable del Área técnica
i-barreira at izenpe.net
945067705

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-----Mensaje original-----
De: Gervase Markham [mailto:gerv at mozilla.org] 
Enviado el: jueves, 06 de noviembre de 2014 14:14
Para: Barreira Iglesias, Iñigo; jeremy.rowley at digicert.com; public at cabforum.org
Asunto: Re: [cabfpub] Pre-Ballot - Short-Life Certificates

On 06/11/14 12:39, i-barreira at izenpe.net wrote:
> 1.- if something happens on day one  and they let the certificate 
> expire in day 3, many users of that site are in risk, for a limited 
> time but in risk depending on what happened and the site accesses.

You are comparing this proposal with "revocation in a perfect world".
You need to compare it with revocation in the real world under realistic attack scenarios.

Let's take Iran. It MITMed its entire population for a month using stolen certs. It was perfectly capable of blackholing OCSP requests, even if Diginotar had bothered to revoke the certs. Or, if there was must-staple, they can cache a valid OCSP response and staple it for the lifetime of the response - which may well be longer than the 2 days the short-lived cert will work for.

> 3.- about the call-backs I´m with Rick, maybe you reduce the number of 
> OCSP calls, but you increase the number of CA request for a 
> certificate, which is best?

That's up to each CA and site to negotiate. If you think it doesn't work for you as a CA, then don't implement it. But voting against it merely because you don't want to implement it would be anti-competitive.

> 5.- As usual, everything that has to be done is under CA efforts. If 
> something is requested to the browsers to change (for example the 
> discussion on distinguish the OV and DV) is useless because they don´t 
> want to do it and they control the votings because with one which says 
> no, that´s enough for the ballot failure. I don´t think is fair.

This change requires no action by any CA which doesn't want to take action.

> 9.- If short-live certs have no revocation entry how they can provide 
> shorter revocation window? BTW, the BRs mandate the use of a mechanism 
> for informing subscribers of the status of the certificate.

The fact that such a mechanism must exist doesn't necessarily mean it works. See above.

> In summary, I don´t know if this is for trying to convince to the rest 
> of the CAs that the benefits of these certificates.

No. You don't need to be convinced of their benefits. Voting only to enable a product because you think it's a good product and you want to produce it would be anti-competitive. The question is: is is any less _secure_? We argue not.

Gerv