On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 9:42 AM Ryan Hurst <[email protected]> wrote:

> The timestamp consistency argument makes me uncomfortable. Applied
> broadly, it would justify removing every discrete data point the BRs
> require CAs to log, since auditors can always work backwards from a
> timestamp and a changelog.
>
Sure, but I'm not talking about applying this broadly, and I'm not talking
about reducing the CA's requirement to log *what* they do. I'm talking
specifically about recording a specific piece of information which is at
best redundant and at worst contradictory. That objection is to a strawman,
not to the argument I'm making.

We have a direct statement from a root program representative above saying
that the point of this requirement is outcome-oriented: "for each
validation event, the CA must be able to determine which validation method
and which BR version governed that validation.". That's possible entirely
with timestamps, just as it is possible to map issuance events to BR
versions solely using timestamps.

> On the DNSSEC example, a version stamp gives an auditor a bounded and
> deterministic starting point. They know exactly which two document versions
> to compare and can verify the CA's behavior against that specific set of
> changes.
>
Why are they comparing documents at all? That's more work! They only need
to be looking at one document: the one that was in force at the time of the
validation.

> Without it, they first have to determine which version was in effect at
> the moment of validation, which is exactly the problem this thread started
> with: effective dates without times, timezone ambiguity, publication lag.
>
They have to make that determination *anyway*, which yes is hard and we
should fix that, but providing a BR version in the log line does not make
their job any easier.

Aaron

>

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