On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 9:11 AM, Matthew Hardeman via
dev-security-policy <[email protected]> wrote:
> For these self-signed roots which have a certificate subject and key which
> match to a different certificate which is in a trusted path (like an
> intermediate to a trusted root), the concern is that the mere existence of
> the certificate speaks to a signature produced by a private key which DOES
> have the privileged status of extending the trust of the Web PKI.
>
> The question then is whether that signature was properly accounted for,
> audited, etc.
>
> Additionally, if said root is in active use, are the issuances descending
> from _that_ self-signed root being audited? If not, that's a problem,
> because those certificates could just be served up with the same-subject,
> same-key trusted intermediate and chain to publicly trusted roots, all
> without having been actually issued from the trusted intermediate.
I think there is some confusion here. Certificates do not sign
certificates. The existence of mulitiple self-signed certificates
with the same {subject, public key} combination does not imply there
are multiple issuers. Further, audits does not audit root
_certificates_, they audit CA operations. The audit will look at
practices for signing certificates but you cannot audit an object
itself.
Additionally, there is nothing that says a CA operator may not have
multiple issuers that have the same private key and use the same
issuer name. The only requirement is that they avoid serial number
collision and that the CRL contain the union of both revocations.
The mere existence of multiple self-signed certificates does not
change any of this.
Thanks,
Peter
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