On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 3:11 PM, Kathleen Wilson <[email protected]> wrote:
> == Possible Solution ==
> One possible way to help mitigate the pain of migration from an old root is
> to directly include the cross-signed intermediate certificate that chains up
> to the new root in NSS for 1 or 2 years.
I suggest that, instead of including the cross-signing certificates in
the NSS certificate database, the mozilla::pkix code should be changed
to look up those certificates when attempting to find them through NSS
fails. That way, Firefox and other products that use NSS will have a
lot more flexibility in how they handle the compatibility logic. Also,
leaving out the cross-signing certificates is a more secure default
configuration for NSS. We should be encouraging more secure default
configurations in widely-used crypto libraries instead of adding
compatibility hacks to them that are needed by just a few products.
> are considered until path validation succeeds. Therefore, directly including
> the cross-signed intermediate certificate for a while could provide a
> smoother transition. Presumably over that time, the SSL certs will expire
> and the web server operators will upgrade to the new cert chains.
I am not so sure. If the websites are using a cert chain like:
EE <- intermediate-1024 <- root-1024
then you are right. But, if the websites are using a cert chain like these:
EE <- intermediate-2048 <- root-1024
EE <- intermediate-2048 <- intermediate-1024 <- root-1024
Then it is likely that many of the websites may not update enough of
the cert chain to make the use of 1024-bit certificates to go away.
Cheers,
Brian
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