[Servercert-wg] Ballot SC-75 - Pre-sign linting

Dimitris Zacharopoulos (HARICA) dzacharo at harica.gr
Mon May 27 10:04:34 UTC 2024



On 27/5/2024 11:28 π.μ., Roman Fischer wrote:
>
> Dear Dimitris (and all),
>
> I don’t think that „SHOULD effective date of 15 September, 2024” is 
> necessary. It’s been long-standing best practice to do some form of 
> linting. So making it mandatory in March 2025 shouldn’t be a problem. 😊
>

Some CAs do not currently support pre-signed linting so there is some 
engineering/coding effort to enable this type of linting. Unless people 
have strong feelings about this, I will leave the proposed dates unchanged.

> However, I’m wondering how “…checked for conformance with the profiles 
> and requirements defined in these Requirements” will be interpreted by 
> auditors. Do the linters have to check all the requirements of the BRs 
> (which IMHO is not possible), or just the “… technical conformity…” 
> (which could mean that the cert is conforming to RFCs)?
>

I didn't read the requirement to imply that ALL the requirements of the 
BRs must be covered by linting software. If this is the impression 
auditors might get, we need to improve the language. Are there any 
suggestions?


Thanks,
Dimitris.
>
> Regards
> Roman
>
> *From:*Servercert-wg <servercert-wg-bounces at cabforum.org> *On Behalf 
> Of *Dimitris Zacharopoulos (HARICA) via Servercert-wg
> *Sent:* Sonntag, 26. Mai 2024 09:41
> *To:* Ryan Dickson <ryandickson at google.com>; CA/B Forum Server 
> Certificate WG Public Discussion List <servercert-wg at cabforum.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Servercert-wg] Ballot SC-75 - Pre-sign linting
>
> Hi Ryan,
>
> Thank you for the feedback. After some internal discussions with Corey 
> and Ben, please see comments inline.
>
> On 20/5/2024 10:35 μ.μ., Ryan Dickson wrote:
>
>     Hi Dimitris, Corey, and Ben,
>
>     Thank you for bringing this ballot forward for the group’s
>     consideration.
>
>     A few questions:
>
>       * Given the perceived value of linting, should we consider a
>         stronger position on its adoption (i.e., MUST versus SHOULD)?
>         While I recognize that the Baseline Requirements represent
>         minimum expectations, consistent and reliable adoption of
>         linting seems to provide the ecosystem with the best chance of
>         addressing the problem statement described in the ballot summary.
>
>           o To accomplish this goal, the ballot could be modified to
>             require use of linting (either tbs certificate linting,
>             pre-certificate linting, or final certificate linting),
>             with tbs certificate linting being considered RECOMMENDED
>             and final certificate linting as being considered NOT
>             RECOMMENDED.
>           o This goal could be further realized by either a (1)
>             phased-implementation (i.e., SHOULD now, MUST later) - or
>             (2) a forward-looking effective date that considers a
>             reasonable timeline for adoption for those CA Owners
>             looking to adhere to the BRs that do not perform linting
>             today.
>
>
> I see two issues here:
>
>  1. Require linting with either a phased-approach or directly with a
>     single effective date: I'm fine with either approach with a slight
>     preference to the phased-in. CAs should have been following public
>     incidents and m.d.s.p. discussions for years, so existing CAs
>     should already be doing pre-sign linting. OTOH new CAs need the
>     additional guidance. A CA will either have to create its own
>     technical tools to check their profiles accuracy or use the
>     recommended open-source tools we reference.
>  2. I'm fine with the stated preference for pre-signing over
>     post-signing linting but the post-signing linting should not be
>     "NOT RECOMMENDED" because it doesn't do any harm on its own. The
>     fact is that we must clearly state that the pre-sign linting is
>     mandatory and the post-sign linting is optional.
>
> With that said, Ben and Corey have agreed with a SHOULD effective date 
> of 15 September, 2024 and a SHALL effective date of 15 March, 2025. If 
> people have objections to setting these effective dates, please let me 
> know.
>
>
>       * Is it worth more clearly establishing expectations for the
>         evaluation and, when applicable, deployment of updates made by
>         or to linting tools. For example, can we establish a
>         reasonable expectation that within 30(?) days after an update
>         has been made to a linting tool relied upon by a CA, it has
>         either (1) been adopted in the production issuance environment
>         - or (2) considered not applicable given the scope of recent
>         updates (for example, if a CA only issues DV certificates, and
>         the most recent update only pertains to EV certificates, there
>         is no expectation that the updated version is deployed).
>
>
> This may open a series of questions around updates in other, more 
> security-critical components of the CA pipeline. I think we should 
> address this issue more holistically as it affects updates to hardware 
> firmware, OS patches, CA vendor software updates, third-party software 
> dependencies, switches/router firmware, and other dependencies in 
> Certificate Management Systems.
>
> It is also challenging to define what an "update" is, at which level 
> (major, minor version), etc. I would prefer leaving that out of this 
> particular ballot and let someone else address it in a separate ballot 
> without risking the speed and success of the linting ballot. I hope 
> this makes sense.
>
> More feedback is welcome before proceeding with the changes.
>
>
> Best regards,
> Dimitris.
>
>
>     Thanks for your consideration.
>
>     - Ryan
>
>     On Mon, May 20, 2024 at 2:04 PM Inigo Barreira via Servercert-wg
>     <servercert-wg at cabforum.org> wrote:
>
>         Hi Dimitris,
>
>         I don´t know if the “(help to improve)” is adding any
>         additional hidden requirement. IMO, I´d remove that.
>
>         Regards
>
>         *De:*Servercert-wg <servercert-wg-bounces at cabforum.org> *En
>         nombre de *Dimitris Zacharopoulos (HARICA) via Servercert-wg
>         *Enviado el:* lunes, 20 de mayo de 2024 19:57
>         *Para:* CA/B Forum Server Certificate WG Public Discussion
>         List <servercert-wg at cabforum.org>
>         *Asunto:* [Servercert-wg] Ballot SC-75 - Pre-sign linting
>
>         CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the
>         organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless
>         you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
>
>
>           SC-75 Pre-sign linting
>
>
>             Summary
>
>         There have been numerous compliance incidents publicly
>         disclosed by CAs in which they failed to comply with the
>         technical requirements described in standards associated with
>         the issuance and management of publicly-trusted TLS
>         Certificates. However, the industry has developed open-source
>         tools, linters, that are free to use and can help CAs avoid
>         certificate misissuance. Using such linters before issuing a
>         precertificate from a Publicly-Trusted CA (pre-issuance
>         linting) can prevent the mis-issuance in a wide variety of cases.
>
>         The following motion has been proposed by Dimitris
>         Zacharopoulos of HARICA and endorsed by Corey Bonnell of
>         Digicert and Ben Wilson of Mozilla.
>
>         You can view the GitHub pull request representing this ballot
>         here <https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/pull/518>.
>
>
>             Motion Begins
>
>         MODIFY the "Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and
>         Management of Publicly-Trusted TLS Server Certificates" based
>         on Version 2.0.4 as specified in the following redline:
>
>           * https://github.com/cabforum/servercert/compare/049237e096650fe01f67780b7c24bd5211ee3038...ada5d6e0db76b32be28d64edd7b0677bbef9c2f5
>
>
>
>             Motion Ends
>
>         This ballot proposes a Final Maintenance Guideline. The
>         procedure for approval of this ballot is as follows:
>
>
>                 Discussion (at least 7 days)
>
>           * Start time: 2024-05-20 18:00:00 UTC
>           * End time: on or after 2024-05-27 18:00:00 UTC
>
>
>                 Vote for approval (7 days)
>
>           * Start time: TBD
>           * End time: TBD
>
>         _______________________________________________
>         Servercert-wg mailing list
>         Servercert-wg at cabforum.org
>         https://lists.cabforum.org/mailman/listinfo/servercert-wg
>
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