[cabfpub] F2F Topic details: What should be represented in the "O" field?

[王文正]

Chunghwa Telecom will not attend this F2F meeting, so here I would like to express our comments on this topic.

I think that the value of the “O” field SHALL be the official registered name of the domain owner for OV and EV certificate since the owner is the only entity that is accountable and responsible for the certificate issued to its domain. Therefore, only the domain owner has the right to apply SSL certificates for its domains. If we allow OV and EV certificates to be issued without the notification of the domain owner, there might be some risk of man-in-the-middle attacks.

One exception is the CDN SSL certificate, which is supposed to be a single certificate shared by many CDN customers which has their own domain names to be include the SAN field of the certificate. Since the CDN SSL certificate contains multiple domains owned by different organizations/entities, the value of the “O” field should be the official registered name of the CDN operator.

In practice, the Applicant might not be the domain owner itself. However, in such kind of situation we always require that the Applicant to proof that the Domain Owner really delegate the Applicant to apply for SSL certificate on behalf of the owner. For example, a non-IT company might outsource the operation of its web site to an IT company and delegate the IT company to apply for SSL certificates on its behalf. In such situation, we always ask for the IT company to show the delegation of the non-IT company (the domain owner).

For CDN SSL certificate, it is similar to the situation that the Domain Owners delegate the CDN operator to apply for SSL certificate for them. Therefore, we will always ask the CDN operator to show delegation of its CDN customers (the domain owners).

For DV SSL certificate, there should be no “O” field. The reason is all the subject identity information present in the certificate must be validated by CA but the domain validation process does not actually validate whether it’s the domain owner who apply for the SSL certificate.

Wen-Cheng Wang

From: public-bounces at cabforum.org [mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org] On Behalf Of Dean Coclin
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 8:25 AM
To: Peter Bowen; Doug Beattie
Cc: CABFPub
Subject: Re: [cabfpub] F2F Topic details: What should be represented in the "O" field?

And here is a summary of the discussions up to now on this topic. For our discussion Thursday. Peter will also be presenting remotely.

Dean

From: Peter Bowen [mailto:pzb at amzn.com]
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2016 2:49 PM
To: Doug Beattie <doug.beattie at globalsign.com<mailto:doug.beattie at globalsign.com>>
Cc: Dean Coclin <Dean_Coclin at symantec.com<mailto:Dean_Coclin at symantec.com>>; CABFPub <public at cabforum.org<mailto:public at cabforum.org>>
Subject: Re: [cabfpub] F2F Topic details: What should be represented in the "O" field?

Doug,

I think those are both relevant questions.  The relationship between applicant and FQDN and subject and FQDN are related by separate topics.  See the attached summary of some of the dependencies.


Please be advised that this email message (including any attachments) contains confidential information and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy this message and all attachments from your system and do not further collect, process, or use them. Chunghwa Telecom and all its subsidiaries and associated companies shall not be liable for the improper or incomplete transmission of the information contained in this email nor for any delay in its receipt or damage to your system. If you are the intended recipient, please protect the confidential and/or personal information contained in this email with due care. Any unauthorized use, disclosure or distribution of this message in whole or in part is strictly prohibited.  Also, please self-inspect attachments and hyperlinks contained in this email to ensure the information security and to protect personal information.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cabforum.org/pipermail/public/attachments/20160218/431282df/attachment-0003.html>