[cabfpub] For Discussion: S/MIME Working Group Charter

Peter Bowen pzb at amzn.com
Fri May 18 07:30:57 MST 2018


Ryan,

I agree that “splitting” that existing EKU is not productive.  However I would not shoot things down so quickly.  In addition to a different PKI, it is also completely possible to simply define a new EKU (id-kp-iot-serverAuth or something) that has its own rules for validation.  Bonus points if the specification has a RAND-Z/FRAND license.  

What I think this is pointing out is that we need to consider whether there should be a WG/guideline that covers all types of certificates issued from a “publicly trusted” PKI so that the iot-serverAuth (and id-kp-emailProtection) working groups don’t have to reinvent the whole wheel.

Thanks,
Peter

> On May 18, 2018, at 6:57 AM, Ryan Sleevi via Public <public at cabforum.org> wrote:
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> To avoid unnecessary and potentially wasted effort: I don't think exploring such a split would be productive. There's already a way you can do that split. It's called use a different PKI.
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> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 8:31 AM, Tim Hollebeek <tim.hollebeek at digicert.com <mailto:tim.hollebeek at digicert.com>> wrote:
> Yup.  id-kp-serverAuth is always the server working group, not the S/MIME group.
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> I’d actually like to split id-kp-serverAuth into id-kp-serverAuth-browser and id-kp-serverAuth-noBrowsersInvolved.  It would make life much simpler.
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> -Tim
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> From: Public [mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org <mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org>] On Behalf Of Ryan Sleevi via Public
> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2018 10:18 PM
> To: Phillip <philliph at comodo.com <mailto:philliph at comodo.com>>
> Cc: CA/Browser Forum Public Discussion List <public at cabforum.org <mailto:public at cabforum.org>>
> Subject: Re: [cabfpub] For Discussion: S/MIME Working Group Charter
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> On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 9:53 PM, Phillip <philliph at comodo.com <mailto:philliph at comodo.com>> wrote:
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> We seem to have a terminology issue here. What is a server? This is obvious in HTTP but far from obvious in the context of email because there is an inbound and an outbound ‘server’ and it acts as a client and a server at different times.
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> I'm afraid that discussion misses an important word in the discussion - server *certificate*. That word helps us clarify that we're speaking about certificates and their capabilities, not about the different flows in different protocols. If I use an id-kp-serverAuth certificate with a SAN of "www.google.com <http://www.google.com/>", this does not somehow mean I exempt from the BRs or the existing scope of the server certificate working group.
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> So I think we can avoid such discussions about the terminology of servers, and instead focus on the certificates and the existing charted working group, which handles such certificates, regardless of the service context or the role within the protocol.
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> I agree that certificates used to authenticate Mail Transport Agents are properly part of what the Server WG is specifying. But they may be used by a host acting as a TLS ‘server’ or ‘client’.
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> Another little oddity is that we are assuming that the entity a CA validates and issues certificates to in the S/MIME world is properly the end user rather than the organization. That might not be the right approach. If what the CA is effectively validating is ‘example.com <http://example.com/>’, and not ‘alice@’, maybe it is better to perform validation on the organization.
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> I think that's something that could be discussed by the S/MIME WG - with a refined charter scoped to S/MIME BRs. That discussion does not seem to conflict with such a charter scoped simply to the BRs, as what you're discussing is validation methods, which would be rather premature to discuss in the absence of such a chartered group.
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