On Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 12:29 PM Tim Hollebeek <tim.hollebeek=
[email protected]> wrote:

> I mean, this is a definitional thing, so there is no right answer, but
> C509 is so close that I think trying to be a purist and claiming they are
> not X.509 just because they are not ASN.1 encoded will cause more problems
> than it solves.
>

But they are ASN.1 encoded, just using CBOR Encoding Rules instead of DER.

The only thing I am objecting to here is the attempt to use this as a
compression scheme for DER signed certs. Just erase that from the
specification and I am happy.

Seeing C509 just as an alternative encoding for traditional ASN.1 certs,
> and that both of them basically encode the same X.509 profile(s) and follow
> similar rules makes more sense to me. So I would put them under the general
> PKIX umbrella.
>

No problem with that.


> It will also be easier to convince people to adopt them if people realize
> it’s just a different (and better!) encoding for the thing they already
> know and pretend to love.
>

I would probably not propose this encoding to CABForum any time soon. But I
can see it being a lot easier to argue for using PKIX-C certs in the SSH,
code signing and OpenPGP community than the DER kind.




> -Tim
>
>
>
> *From:* Göran Selander <[email protected]>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 8, 2025 9:56 AM
> *To:* Tschofenig, Hannes <[email protected]>; Sipos, Brian J. <
> [email protected]>; [email protected]
> *Subject:* [COSE] Re: The term "PKIX" and C509
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> C509 defines an invertible CBOR re-encoding of DER encoded X.509
> certificates, which supports large commonly used parts of RFC 5280
> including RFC 7925, IEEE 802.1AR, CAB Baseline, RPKI, and eUICC profiled
> X.509 certificates.
>
>
>
> This doesn’t make C509 into X.509. But since the mapping can be reversed
> to obtain the original DER encoded X.509 certificate it can be used as a
> compact representation of X.509 certificates within the PKIX infrastructure.
>
>
>
> Hope that helps!
>
>
>
> Göran
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Tschofenig, Hannes <[email protected]>
> *Date: *Wednesday, 8 October 2025 at 15:22
> *To: *Sipos, Brian J. <[email protected]>, [email protected] <
> [email protected]>
> *Subject: *[COSE] Re: The term "PKIX" and C509
>
> Hi Brian!
>
>
>
> The term PKIX stands for Public-Key Infrastructure using X.509. Using it
> to refer to other technologies that do not use the same encoding as X.509
> certificates is likely to cause confusion. Note that PKIX also refers to
> the entire infrastructure – not just the format of the cert.
>
>
>
> Just my two cents.
>
>
>
> Ciao
>
> Hannes
>
>
>
> *Von:* Sipos, Brian J. <[email protected]>
> *Gesendet:* Mittwoch, 8. Oktober 2025 15:00
> *An:* [email protected]
> *Betreff:* [COSE] The term "PKIX" and C509
>
>
>
> WG,
>
> >From the perspective of a user or a profile specification allowing the
> use of X509 and C509 in, for example, COSE messages has there been any
> discussion about terminology in the sense of the following:
>
> Is it expected that the term “PKIX” will exclusively refer to X.509 as
> defined in RFC 5280? Or will PKIX be an umbrella term to include C509 as an
> equivalent encoding of the same information model? Possibly “public key
> certificate” is a better general purpose term, though a little more narrow
> in scope (a single credential) than what PKIX would imply (the whole PKI).
>
>
>
> Any thoughts about this?
>
> Brian S.
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