This may be the wrong place to ask this since it is not OpenSSl specific, but 
would cross signing of a x.509 cert to verify it's contents be a good measure 
to increase the trustworthiness of a cert. Take the following example...

We have a CA which hands out certs with authorization type attributes (the 
purpose extension comes to mind). Whoever has root access to that CA could 
create a sub CA, or an arbitrary cert. 

What if the CA where to send the presigned cert to another trusted box who 
could then verify the contents and sign the cert in a noncritical extension. 
The main CA could then sign the cert in the standard way. Then applications 
that were paranoid about authorization could check the permission by using 
the public key of the checker CA.

Would this work? If so, wouldn't this make it more difficult for any one 
person to do unauthorized things with certs by enforcing a check and balance 
type system?

Thanks, 
Andrew
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