On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Tat Sing Kong wrote:
>
> That's me told then, so to authenticate a certificate you need the whole
> "chain" of certs going from the cert to authenticate all the way to a
> trusted CA.
It's unlikely just authentication is of any practical use;
authorization is and risk of failure to consider.
In case of sending encrypted mail to a stranger: would one care
authentication at all? One could just use public key from certificate
presented and the message could be just lost in case of bad key.
Yes, one should exclude main-in-the-middle and create message content
to be useful by a stranger. One could also care whether exactly this
stranger was here already. It's unlikely any CA could be useful here.
> The application I am writing is presented with certs to authenicate from an
> external source, and the configuration has to hold a "pool" of trusted certs
> so you can check the certificates presented. It appears that this "pool"
> has to basically have every possible signer in it. I was kind of hoping
> that I could get away with only a couple of trusted CA's; and traverse the
> certificate hierarchy to these roots. Hold on, I can't do that because
> without the intermediate signer certs how can I figure out who signed them?
>
> Got it now.
>
> Tat.
>
> > > > Would this be a hassle if you have a root CA with a lot of
> > intermediate
> > > > signers? That means that you have to store/locate all
> > possible intermediate
> > > > signers to evaluate a couple of end user certificates.
> > >
> > > This is why PKCS12 (iirc) provides a mechanism to provide intermediate
> > > certs with the final cert. The CA should have a suitable chain for its
> > > own certs, and it can return the extra certs with everything that it
> > > signs.
> >
> > This likely applies to PKCS7 Signed structure.
> >
> > > This doesn't help you when presented a naked cert by a stranger - you
> > > still have to locate those intermediate certs - but at that point you
> > > have more problems than just finding the intermediate certs. What does
> > > it mean to have a full cert chain if the root is a self-signed cert by
> > > "Bob's Bait Shop and Certificate Authority?"
> >
> > Any parseable certificate presented by a strager is good enough to
> > use that public key to send email encrypted to *his* private key.
> > At least if there's no chance for man-in-the-middle.
> >
> > Probably you are talking about verification that stranger is authorized
> > by some big guy to pay..it's completely different issue. Yes, one need
> > (root) certificate of that big guy and intermed certs to verify the chain.
> >
> > > You could decide to ignore any cert that's not from a major CA (which
> > > would make the stockholders of Verisign very happy), but that misses
> > > the point. An individual cert by Verisign really says very little about
> > > the person, a cert signed by a small college for its students for
> > > internal use may be rock solid.
> >
> > One could care about CA certificates related to his business, either
> > well-known or private ones used to verify access to local resources.
> >
> > > On a related note, is there documentation on how to set up a "well-
> > > behaved" certs and PKCS12 bags? I couldn't find anything the last
> > > time I checked, but maybe something has come out since then.
> >
> > Any problem with PKCS12 specifications published by RSA Labs?
> > What is "well-behaved" ?
> >
> > -vf
>
>
>
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