[Servercert-wg] Discussion Period Begins: Ballot SC-076 "Clarify and Improve OCSP Requirements"

[Aaron Gable]

*Purpose of Ballot*

This ballot attempts to address three concerns:
- The confusion around "reserved" serials, which do not actually exist
because all Precertificate serials are assumed to also exist in
corresponding Certificates and are therefore actually "assigned";
- Confusion around whether, and how quickly, OCSP responders must begin
providing authoritative responses for Certificates and Precertificates; and
- Confusion around whether and how the OCSP requirements apply to
Certificates which do not contain an AIA OCSP URL, but for which the CA's
OCSP responder is still willing to provide responses.

These concerns have been previously discussed in this Mozilla policy bug
<https://github.com/mozilla/pkipolicy/issues/280>, this ServerCert WG bug
<https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/issues/422>, and this Bugzilla
incident <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1905419>.

It addresses these concerns by:
- Stating that OCSP responses must be available within 15 minutes of
signing a certificate containing an AIA OCSP URL;
- Removing the concept of a "reserved" serial entirely;
- Moving all OCSP requirements into Section 4.9.9, leaving Section 4.9.10
(which RFC 3647 says is meant to place requirements on relying parties, not
on CAs) empty; and
- Organizing the requirements in Section 4.9.9 into three clusters:
  - Definitions of "validity interval", "assigned", and "unassigned";
  - Requirements on OCSP Responders, which apply only to responses from AIA
OCSP URLs found in issued certs; and
  - Requirements on OCSP Responses, which apply to all responses regardless
of whether the certificate in question has an AIA OCSP URL.

GitHub PR representing this ballot:
https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/pull/535
Rendered view of the resulting text:
https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/blob/f61814473a1340774aec4022a6cbfe1fa2616458/docs/BR.md#499-on-line-revocationstatus-checking-availability

*Motion*

The following motion has been proposed by Aaron Gable (Let's Encrypt /
ISRG), and is endorsed by Ben Wilson (Mozilla) and Antonis Eleftheriadis
(HARICA).

*Motion Begins*

Modify the "Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of
Publicly-Trusted TLS Server Certificates", based on Version 2.0.6, as
specified in the following redline:

https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/compare/929d9b4a1ed1f13f92f6af672ad6f6a2153b8230...f61814473a1340774aec4022a6cbfe1fa2616458

*Motion Ends*

This ballot proposes a Final Maintenance Guideline. The procedure for
approval of this ballot is as follows:


*Discussion Period (at least 7 days)*

Start: August 22, 2024 16:30 UTC
End: on or after August 29, 2024 16:30 UTC

*Voting Period (7 days)*

Start: TBD
End: TBD
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