Re: About 's future...

2015-09-17 Thread Rob Stradling
The existence of this bug...

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1191414
"gather telemetry on usage of "

...would seem to suggest that Mozilla "haven't decided anything yet".

On 17/09/15 19:51, helpcrypto helpcrypto wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> 
> As previously raised on this list, there's a open wardiscussion about
> removing [1]
> 
> Some people, like Sir Tim Berners-Lee doesn't seem to agree with that,
> hence another thread is taking place at [2]
> 
> For Google, it seems the decision has been made, nothing is going to
> change, and   could dissappear on Chrome 47 [3].
> 
> As MDN has marked the element as deprecated (according to WHATWG, I guess)
> and there is -at least- one related bug open [4]:
> 
> 
> *I will love someone @mozilla giving an official position, a blog post or
> saying something (even "we haven't decided anything yet") about this issue,
> and -if it's going to happen- aproximate date of the removal.*
> 
> 
> Thanks a lot.
> 
> [1]
> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/pX5NbX0Xack
> [2] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2015Sep/thread.html
> [3] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=514767
> [4] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1024871
> 

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Re: What's My Chain Cert?

2015-03-24 Thread Rob Stradling
Great tool.  I wonder how well its chain selection strategy works in 
practice though.


The README [1] says:
If multiple certificate chains are found, the shortest one is used.

That's a good strategy for a browser to employ when deciding which chain 
to show in its certificate viewer, but it's unlikely to be the best 
strategy when configuring a server.
There's often a cross-certificate issued by an older root to a newer 
root.  For compatibility with browsers that don't trust the newer root, 
the server should send that cross-certificate too (even though it isn't 
part of the shortest chain).


Using the longest available chain isn't always the correct strategy 
either though.



[1] https://github.com/SSLMate/mkcertchain

On 24/03/15 11:40, Gervase Markham wrote:

Discovered today:

https://whatsmychaincert.com/

That seems like a great resource for when we get those emails that say
my cert isn't working in Firefox - why?

Thanks to Andrew of SSLMate for putting the site together.

Gerv



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Re: Updates to the Server Side TLS guide

2014-10-27 Thread Rob Stradling

On 25/10/14 19:26, Julien Vehent wrote:
snip

I wonder if this is really useful though. Server Side TLS is a pragmatic
guide, and pragmatism dictates that operators should use SHA-256 certs,
not SHA-384 or SHA-512. When asked to review a production site that runs
a SHA-512 cert, I would recommend the admins to downgrade to SHA-256 to
prevent unknown behavior with unknown clients.


Sadly, SHA-512 certs (both CA and end-entity) don't work very well with 
WebPKI TLS.  Browsers typically don't specify RSA/SHA-512 and 
ECDSA/SHA-512 in the TLS signature_algorithms extension.  Some servers 
interpret signature_algorithms as a full list of certificate signature 
algorithms supported by the client.  Rather than return a SHA-512 cert 
to those browsers, such servers send a fatal alert.


snip

 * ECDSA certs (and prioritisation of ECDSA above RSA) - there's no
   mention of those, and since we suggest PFS over non-PFS and
   ECDHE-ECDSA is over twice as fast as ECDHE-RSA[1], I think we
   definitely should allow (if not recommend) its use


Same comment as above: we first need to evaluate compatibility of clients.
Having ECDSA in the recommended ciphersuites has no site effect on
server compatibility. But recommending ECDSA certificates does have
strong side effects.

Do you know of certificate authorities that issue ECDSA certs?


Yes.  Comodo and Symantec definitely do, and I wouldn't be surprised if 
several other CAs do by now.


CloudFlare's Universal SSL uses ECDSA certs exclusively, so as of a few 
weeks ago there are now _a lot_ of ECDSA certs in the wild.


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Re: New wiki page on certificate revocation plans

2014-08-07 Thread Rob Stradling

http://dev.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/crlsets says:
The limit of the CRLSet size is 250KB

Have Mozilla decided what the maximum OneCRL size will be?

On 01/08/14 03:07, Richard Barnes wrote:

Hi all,

We in the Mozilla PKI team have been discussing ways to improve revocation checking in 
our PKI stack, consolidating a bunch of ideas from earlier work [1][2] and some 
maybe-new-ish ideas.  I've just pressed save on a new wiki page with our 
initial plan:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:RevocationPlan

It would be really helpful if people could review and provide feedback on this 
plan.

There's one major open issue highlighted in the wiki page.  We're planning to 
adopt a centralized revocation list model for CA certificates, which we're 
calling OneCRL.  (Conceptually similar to Chrome's CRLsets.)  In addition to 
covering CA certifcates, we're also considering covering some end-entity (EE) 
certificates with OneCRL too.  But there are some drawbacks to this approach, 
so it's not certain that we will include this in the final plan.  Feedback on 
this point would be especially valuable.

Thanks a lot,
--Richard

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:ImprovingRevocation
[2] https://www.imperialviolet.org/2012/02/05/crlsets.html


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Re: SHA-256 support

2013-11-19 Thread Rob Stradling

On 11/18/2013 07:00 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:

Hi everyone,

Following Microsoft's announcement re: SHA-1, some CAs are asking
browser and OS vendors about the ubiquity of SHA-256 support. It would
be a help to them if we could say:

- Which version of NSS first supported SHA-256


Gerv, SHA-256 isn't the only algorithm of interest here.

The latest Windows Root Certificate Program requirements [1] permit CAs 
to use SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512.  Unsurprisingly, these 3 functions 
from the SHA-2 family are what the Windows CryptoAPI actually supports 
(since XP SP3).


On 19/11/13 02:20, Robert Relyea wrote:

I think it's safe to say if your NSS ap is newer than a decade old, you
have SHA-2 support. The one caveat is that SHA-224 support was added
much later, but SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 have all been supported
for a while.


SHA-224 isn't supported by CryptoAPI, and CAs aren't permitted (by [1]) 
to use it anyway.  Ditto for the SHA-512/224, SHA-512/256 and SHA-512/t 
functions that were added to the SHA-2 specification [2] last year.



[1] 
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1760.windows-root-certificate-program-technical-requirements-version-2-0.aspx


[2] http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips180-4/fips-180-4.pdf

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Re: id-ce-nameConstraints (2.5.29.30) in the real world

2013-11-04 Thread Rob Stradling

Hmmm...why are all of the DNSNames duplicated?

The ones with a dot at the beginning don't need to be there, do they?

On 02/11/13 15:13, Kaspar Brand wrote:

On 02.11.2013 15:40, Erwann Abalea wrote:

You missed the exclusion of IPv6 addresses. So this CA can certify
for any IPv6 address range. I don't think it will be very dangerous
within the next year, considering current IPv6 deployment.


s/You/They/. I'm not affiliated with O=Baltimore in any way (nor with
O=admin, JFTR). For a live site serving this cert in the handshake, you
might want to visit https://www.sonderbewilligungen.admin.ch.

Kaspar



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Re: id-ce-nameConstraints (2.5.29.30) in the real world

2013-11-04 Thread Rob Stradling

On 02/11/13 14:40, Erwann Abalea wrote:

Le samedi 2 novembre 2013 08:39:53 UTC+1, Kaspar Brand a écrit :

11 hours ago, a new certificate was given birth to which I would
like to share with this list for edification purposes. I think that the
audience here should be able to fully appreciate what marvellous
real-world example we are now provided with for testing the PKIX-based
path validation implementations of the world for RFC 5280 compliance
(Applications conforming to this profile MUST be able to process name
constraints that are imposed on the directoryName name form and SHOULD
be able to process name constraints that are imposed on the rfc822Name,
uniformResourceIdentifier, dNSName, and iPAddress name forms).


Nice. Even cut/pasting it to parse it is a bargain.
Wouldn't it have been easier to have several CA certificates with smaller 
constraints?
With such a large permitted subtree, can it really be considered constrained? 
Technically, it is, yes.
You missed the exclusion of IPv6 addresses. So this CA can certify for any IPv6 
address range. I don't think it will be very dangerous within the next year, 
considering current IPv6 deployment.


Nonetheless, that IPv6 omission means that this CA certificate is 
unfortunately _not_ considered technically constrained according to the 
Mozilla CA Certificate Inclusion Policy.


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Re: id-ce-nameConstraints (2.5.29.30) in the real world

2013-11-04 Thread Rob Stradling
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-END CERTIFICATE-



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Re: Proposal to Change the Default TLS Ciphersuites Offered by Browsers

2013-09-13 Thread Rob Stradling

On 13/09/13 04:52, Julien Pierre wrote:
snip

Some servers also ignore the order of cipher suites in the Clienthelo
anyway in some cases, and choose whatever they prefer among the client
cipher suite list regardless of order, even though this doesn't follow
the TLS specs.


Julien, I disagree that this doesn't follow the TLS specs.

RFC5246 (Section 7.4.1.2) says (emphasis mine):
  The cipher suite list, passed from the client to the server in the
   ClientHello...
   If the list contains cipher
   suites the server does not recognize, support, *or wish to use*, the
   server MUST ignore those cipher suites, and process the remaining
   ones as usual.

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Re: Proposal to Change the Default TLS Ciphersuites Offered by Browsers

2013-09-09 Thread Rob Stradling
The NSA recommends ECC for encrypting secret and top secret information. 
 So if the NSA have backdoored the NIST curves somehow, presumably 
they're 100% confident that the details of the backdoor won't get leaked 
or discovered by external researchers!


On 09/09/13 17:15, Kurt Roeckx wrote:

On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 11:29:19AM -0400, Stefan Arentz wrote:


On Sep 9, 2013, at 11:16 AM, Gervase Markham g...@mozilla.org wrote:


On 09/08/13 03:30, Brian Smith wrote:

Please see https://briansmith.org/browser-ciphersuites-01.html


This proposal promotes ECC.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance

Schneier: Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over
elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA
influences when they can.

He elaborates in the comments:

I no longer trust the constants. I believe the NSA has manipulated them
through their relationships with industry.

Does that affect your proposal?


Wasn't he talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG#Controversy ?


No, he actually said he doesn't trust any ECC, but on the other
hand said that we should probably move to at least 500 bit ECC.


Kurt



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Re: Proposal to Change the Default TLS Ciphersuites Offered by Browsers

2013-09-09 Thread Rob Stradling
Probably worth keeping an eye on this new draft and the related 
discussion on the TLS list...


http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sheffer-tls-bcp-00

On 09/09/13 17:15, Kurt Roeckx wrote:

On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 11:29:19AM -0400, Stefan Arentz wrote:


On Sep 9, 2013, at 11:16 AM, Gervase Markham g...@mozilla.org wrote:


On 09/08/13 03:30, Brian Smith wrote:

Please see https://briansmith.org/browser-ciphersuites-01.html


This proposal promotes ECC.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance

Schneier: Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over
elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA
influences when they can.

He elaborates in the comments:

I no longer trust the constants. I believe the NSA has manipulated them
through their relationships with industry.

Does that affect your proposal?


Wasn't he talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG#Controversy ?


No, he actually said he doesn't trust any ECC, but on the other
hand said that we should probably move to at least 500 bit ECC.


Kurt



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Re: Proposal to Change the Default TLS Ciphersuites Offered by Browsers

2013-08-16 Thread Rob Stradling

On 15/08/13 18:15, Chris Richardson wrote:

I believe this plan would have poor side effects.  For example, if Apple
ships clients with a broken ECDSA implementation [0], a server cannot
detect detect if a connecting client is an Apple product and avoid the use
of ECDSA in that subset of connections.  Instead, ECDSA suddenly becomes
unsafe for anyone to use anywhere.


Chris,

Firefox already offers ECDHE-ECDSA ciphersuites, so I don't think 
Brian's plan would introduce any _new_ side effects relating to that OSX 
(10.8..10.8.3) bug.


Are you suggesting that Firefox should drop support for all ECDHE-ECDSA 
ciphersuites?
Or are you suggesting that NSS should implement the equivalent of that 
proposed OpenSSL patch, so that NSS-based TLS servers can avoid 
attempting to negotiate ECDHE-ECDSA with broken OSX clients?

Or what?


Should browsers drop support now for all TLS features that might 
possibly suffer broken implementations in the future?
(For example, AGL would like to get rid of AES-GCM because it's hard to 
implement securely.  See 
https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/01/13/rwc03.html)




[0]:
https://github.com/agl/openssl/commit/0d26cc5b32c23682244685975c1e9392244c0a4d


On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 10:30 PM, Brian Smith br...@briansmith.org wrote:


Please see https://briansmith.org/browser-ciphersuites-01.html

First, this is a proposal to change the set of sequence of ciphersuites
that Firefox offers. Secondly, this is an invitation for other browser
makers to adopt the same sequence of ciphersuites to maximize
interoperability, to minimize fingerprinting, and ultimately to make
server-side software developers and system administrators' jobs easier.

Suggestions for improvements are encouraged.

Cheers,
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Re: Proposal to Change the Default TLS Ciphersuites Offered by Browsers

2013-08-16 Thread Rob Stradling

On 16/08/13 23:05, Wan-Teh Chang wrote:
snip

8. Authentication: RSA before ECDSA
 a. RSA before ECDSA : performance
 b. DSA last: not in use


snip

... I would prefer ECDSA over RSA for authentication.


Wan-Teh, why do you think Firefox should specify a preference for ECDSA 
over RSA?


If a webserver wants to prefer ECDSA over RSA, then it can override the 
browser-supplied cipher-suite order.

e.g. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslhonorcipherorder

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Re: Introductions - want to contribute to NSS developer friendliness

2013-06-17 Thread Rob Stradling

On 17/06/13 18:58, Chris Newman wrote:
snip

I think these would be good usability issues to address. When I
contributed that code, I was a Sun Microsystems employee and Sun was an
NSS contributor. However, I can not maintain or update that code as my
present employer does not have a code contribution agreement with
Mozilla to my knowledge.


Is there actually such a thing as a code contribution agreement with 
Mozilla ?


https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=369879#c19
...suggests that there isn't (at least, not yet).

(A quick Google search finds a MoFo Committer's Agreement, but you don't 
need committer privileges in order to create a bug on Bugzilla, attach a 
patch, etc).


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Root Certificates in Firefox OS (was Re: NSS in Firefox OS)

2013-04-18 Thread Rob Stradling

On 20/10/12 18:33, Brian Smith wrote:
snip

B2G (Firefox OS) does use NSS.


Brian,

I presume that Firefox OS trusts NSS's Built-in Root Certificates [1], 
but what (if anything) does Firefox OS do for EV SSL?


Does Firefox OS import PSM's list of EV-enabled Root Certificates? [2]

Thanks.


[1] 
https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/security/nss/lib/ckfw/builtins/certdata.txt


[2] 
https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/security/manager/ssl/src/nsIdentityChecking.cpp


snip

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Re: Is there an ETA yet for when Firefox will use libpkix by default?

2012-06-13 Thread Rob Stradling
I've just filed Bug 764393 to track this request.  I've attached an 
updated version of Nelson's disgusting hack patch.  I've also attached 
a patch for the alternative idea I mentioned.


I'd be very grateful if the NSS Team would seriously consider accepting 
one of these two patches ASAP!


On 11/06/12 15:25, Rob Stradling wrote:

On 09/06/12 06:03, Wan-Teh Chang wrote:

Rob,

Please fix the bug in the old certificate verification library. Thanks.

Are you going to use the approach outlined by Nelson in bug 479508 and
bug 482153?

 
  Wan-Teh

Hi Wan-Teh.

I'm afraid I have nowhere near enough knowledge of NSS internals to turn
Nelson's disgusting hack [1] into something that the NSS team would,
under normal circumstances, contemplate committing [2].

I've just tested Nelson's 2 patches ([1] and [3]) against
mozilla-inbound, and they appear to fix the problem. IMHO, a disgusting
hack fix is much better than a non-disgusting, significantly delayed fix.

So, how would Mozilla and the NSS Team feel about committing Nelson's 2
patches?


[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=366236
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=482153#c1
[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=366225


P.S. An alternative idea, for which I am willing to write a patch (if
you think this would be preferable to Nelson's disgusting hack):
- Define a certHashesToAvoidUsing[] array in
nssCertificateArray_FindBestCertificate(). Populate this array with the
hashes of all of the UTN-AddTrust and AddTrust-UTN cross-certificates.
Make the code consult this list: if a match is found, do not consider
this cert to be the best match.


P.P.S. 2 other ideas which didn't appear to work...

1. I tried adding the affected UTN--AddTrust cross-certificates as
distrusted built-ins, but this didn't help. Presumably distrust is
only evaluated after the best certificate chain has been chosen,
rather than during the process of chain selection.

2. I tried removing one of the affected UTN root-certificates and then
adding the relevant AddTrust-UTN cross-certificate as a built-in. This
didn't work either, presumably because the UTN root-certificate was for
some reason still listed as a Software Security Device.



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Re: Is there an ETA yet for when Firefox will use libpkix by default?

2012-06-11 Thread Rob Stradling

On 09/06/12 06:03, Wan-Teh Chang wrote:

Rob,

Please fix the bug in the old certificate verification library.  Thanks.

Are you going to use the approach outlined by Nelson in bug 479508 and
bug 482153?


 Wan-Teh

Hi Wan-Teh.

I'm afraid I have nowhere near enough knowledge of NSS internals to turn 
Nelson's disgusting hack [1] into something that the NSS team would, 
under normal circumstances, contemplate committing [2].


I've just tested Nelson's 2 patches ([1] and [3]) against 
mozilla-inbound, and they appear to fix the problem.  IMHO, a 
disgusting hack fix is much better than a non-disgusting, 
significantly delayed fix.


So, how would Mozilla and the NSS Team feel about committing Nelson's 2 
patches?



[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=366236
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=482153#c1
[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=366225


P.S. An alternative idea, for which I am willing to write a patch (if 
you think this would be preferable to Nelson's disgusting hack):
  - Define a certHashesToAvoidUsing[] array in 
nssCertificateArray_FindBestCertificate().  Populate this array with the 
hashes of all of the UTN-AddTrust and AddTrust-UTN cross-certificates. 
 Make the code consult this list: if a match is found, do not consider 
this cert to be the best match.



P.P.S. 2 other ideas which didn't appear to work...

1. I tried adding the affected UTN--AddTrust cross-certificates as 
distrusted built-ins, but this didn't help.  Presumably distrust is 
only evaluated after the best certificate chain has been chosen, 
rather than during the process of chain selection.


2. I tried removing one of the affected UTN root-certificates and then 
adding the relevant AddTrust-UTN cross-certificate as a built-in.  This 
didn't work either, presumably because the UTN root-certificate was for 
some reason still listed as a Software Security Device.


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Is there an ETA yet for when Firefox will use libpkix by default?

2012-06-08 Thread Rob Stradling

Brian,

It has been well over 3 years since the cross-certification looping bug 
described in Bug #479508 and Bug #634074 was first filed.  It was 
decided that the proper fix was to wait for Firefox to migrate to 
libpkix by default.  We and our customers have been waiting patiently 
for this fix.


The effects of this bug have apparently been getting worse over time, 
and we don't believe that we can tolerate it for very much longer.


Might there be a Firefox 13.x point-release that will enable libpkix by 
default?

Will Firefox 14 enable libpkix by default?
Or can you say that enabling libpkix by default will definitely not 
happen until Firefox 15 or later?


If you're reasonably sure it won't happen by Firefox 14, my CTO has 
asked me to urgently i) attempt to write an ugly kludge of a patch to 
fix the bug in the old certificate verification library and then ii) 
petition Mozilla and the NSS team to accept my patch and ship it in 
Firefox 14 or sooner.


Thanks.

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Re: Google about to fix the CRL download mechanism in Chrome

2012-02-09 Thread Rob Stradling

FYI, Adam Langley told me The hope is that everything is 100KB.

I asked him if I could share that figure here and he just replied No 
problem. It's not a strict limit that we set and we'll have to see

how well we do.

We've calculated that there are currently ~53,000 revoked Server 
Authentication certs that were issued by Comodo's CA systems, each with 
a serial number of 16 bytes (+ a leading zero byte if required to ensure 
it's not treated as a negative number).  That adds up to well over 
800KB.  And obviously we're not the only CA!


On 08/02/12 22:18, Nelson B Bolyard wrote:

On 2012/02/08 12:57 PDT, Kai Engert wrote:


My criticism:

[snip]

Won't the set of CRLs be too big for download?

[snip]

This is my question as well.
Will they really include the CRLs from all of mozilla's trusted CAs?
Won't the union of all those CRLs be huge, even if they strip off certain
reason codes?


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Re: Google about to fix the CRL download mechanism in Chrome

2012-02-09 Thread Rob Stradling

On 09/02/12 13:10, Gervase Markham wrote:

On 09/02/12 12:54, Rob Stradling wrote:

We've calculated that there are currently ~53,000 revoked Server
Authentication certs that were issued by Comodo's CA systems, each with
a serial number of 16 bytes (+ a leading zero byte if required to ensure
it's not treated as a negative number). That adds up to well over 800KB.
And obviously we're not the only CA!


Which is why he's obviously not going to transmit the information as a
list of serial numbers :-)


Actually, he is.


He's probably planning something vaguely like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter


I know Adam was looking at Bloom filters and related techniques last 
year [1], but I understand that he abandoned those approaches.  I'm not 
sure why.


The current CRLSet format is described in the Chromium source code [2]
(search for CRLSet format).

Also, he's published a tool for downloading and parsing CRLSets [3].


[1] http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/04/29/filters.html

[2] 
http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/crl_set.cc?revision=97640view=markup


[3] https://github.com/agl/crlset-tools



Gerv


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Re: For discussion: MECAI: Mutually Endorsing CA Infrastructure

2012-02-08 Thread Rob Stradling

On 08/02/12 12:43, Ondrej Mikle wrote:

On 02/07/2012 09:58 PM, Kai Engert wrote:

snip

That's a reason why I propose vouchers to be IP specific.

In my understanding, each IP will have only a single certificate,
regardless from where in the world you connect to it.


It's not true in general. There are services hidden with a load-balancer
behind a single IP. An example - 3m.com:


Also, a TLS Server might choose a different cert depending on the cipher 
suite list provided by the TLS client.


e.g.

$ openssl s_client -connect tls.secg.org:40023 -cipher RSA 2 /dev/null 
| grep Certificate chain -A 3

Certificate chain
 0 s:/OU=SAMPLE ONLY/O=Certicom 
Corp./L=Toronto/SN=Ontario/CN=tls.secg.org RSA 1024 Server Certificate/C=CA
   i:/OU=SAMPLE ONLY/O=Certicom 
Corp./L=Toronto/SN=Ontario/CN=tls.secg.org RSA 1024 Certificate 
Authority/C=CA

---

vs

$ openssl s_client -connect tls.secg.org:40023 -cipher ECDSA 2 
/dev/null | grep Certificate chain -A 5

Certificate chain
 0 s:/OU=SAMPLE ONLY/O=Certicom 
Corp./L=Toronto/ST=Ontario/CN=tls.secg.org ECC secp256r1 Server 
Certificate/C=CA
   i:/OU=SAMPLE ONLY/O=Certicom 
Corp./L=Toronto/SN=Ontario/CN=tls.secg.org ECC secp256r1 Certificate 
Authority/C=CA
 1 s:/OU=SAMPLE ONLY/O=Certicom 
Corp./L=Toronto/SN=Ontario/CN=tls.secg.org ECC secp256r1 Certificate 
Authority/C=CA
   i:/OU=SAMPLE ONLY/O=Certicom 
Corp./L=Toronto/SN=Ontario/CN=tls.secg.org ECC secp256r1 Certificate 
Authority/C=CA

---

AFAIK, such configurations are not widespread today, but this would 
change if/when ECC certs start to be used more widely.


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OCSP-in-DNS (was Re: For discussion: MECAI: Mutually Endorsing CA Infrastructure)

2011-12-07 Thread Rob Stradling
On Wednesday 07 Dec 2011 04:19:09 Kai Engert wrote:
snip
 I haven't researched, but has anyone already thought of distributing
 OCSP records using DNS in general?
 
 If we had OCSP-in-DNS, we might not even require OCSP stapling. This
 could run as a service completely independent of the SSL servers - only
 clients would need to be updated to fetch OCSP from DNS - does this make
 sense?

Hi Kai.

We discussed OCSP-in-DNS over at m.d.s.policy earlier this year...
https://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.security.policy/browse_thread/thread/a5f14bbd3159c44f/446abd478dc847ec
(it's a long thread, but it does contain a lot of useful thoughts)

Recalling that discussion, Gerv recently said...
https://mail1.eff.org/pipermail/observatory/2011-September/000405.html
...the arguments for something DNS-based are IMO very strong (much better 
privacy story, very hard to DOS, cached and distributed).

Peter Gutmann lists numerous deficiencies with the OCSP protocol - e.g. see 
here...
https://mail1.eff.org/pipermail/observatory/2011-September/000330.html
I think that any future DNS-based certificate status checking protocols should 
at least consider addressing some of these issues.

snip

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Re: TLS server keys in DNS: client policy proposal

2011-02-11 Thread Rob Stradling
On Friday 11 Feb 2011 05:08:10 Steve Schultze wrote:
snip
 - OCSP and CRLs are unnecessary with DANE

Steve, may we presume that you only intended this statement to apply to the 
use of self-signed certs with DANE?

When an EV (or OV) certificate issued by a third-party CA is used with DANE, I 
would argue that OCSP and CRLs are still essential, because these certificates 
make claims (about organizational identity) that can't be assured by 
DNS(SEC)/DANE.

When a DV certificate issued by a third-party CA is used with DANE, I would 
argue that OCSP and CRLs may be less than essential but they are still useful 
(e.g. the CA may subsequently detect that the key or hash algorithm used in 
the certificate is weak).

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Re: Domain-validated name-constrained CA certificates?

2010-04-06 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 06 April 2010 10:54:49 Jean-Marc Desperrier wrote:
 Matt McCutchen wrote:
  An extended key usage of TLS Web Server Authentication on the
  intermediate CA would constrain all sub-certificates, no?
 
 You are here talking about a proprietary Microsoft extension of the X509
 security model.

Mozilla has its own proprietary certificate extension (Netscape Cert Type) 
that (IINM) can be used to achieve the same outcome (by setting the SSL CA 
bit).
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/tech-notes/tn3.html has some 
old notes from Nelson.

AFAIK, this extension is still supported by NSS, but having said that I 
wouldn't be surprised if Nelson replies to this message with words to the 
effect of that extension is deprecated, so please don't use it any more!

Rob Stradling
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Re: Basic ECC in NSS 3.12.4 with NSPR 4.8

2009-11-04 Thread Rob Stradling
Frank, I'm pretty sure you meant to say Certicom (who are now owned by RIM) 
rather than Entrust.  (Perhaps you were thinking of Entrust's CRL Distribution 
Points patent, a license for which was granted to Mozilla relatively 
recently?)

Certicom have said that their desire is to facilitate the wide-scale adoption 
and proliferation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology and that 
they will, upon request, provide a nonexclusive, royalty free patent license, 
to manufacturers to permit end users (including both client and server sides), 
to use the patents...

https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1154/
http://www.certicom.com/images/pdfs/certicom%20-ipr-contribution-to-
ietfsept08.pdf

Does anybody know if Mozilla/NSS has actually requested and obtained a 
nonexclusive, royalty free patent license from Certicom/RIM?

On Tuesday 03 November 2009 18:49:57 Frank Hecker wrote:
 David Stutzman wrote:
  Rob Stradling wrote:
  A question for the NSS devs:
  Is there any reason why NSS couldn't be changed to assume
  NSS_ENABLE_ECC=1 by default?
 
  Yes...
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Peter/Disabled_applications
 
  Disabled features:
  Elliptic Curve crypto algorithm
 
  Reasons:
  software patents and US Laws (?)
 
 I think these reasons are out of date and not applicable.
 
 Re patents, Entrust freely licensed enough of their ECC-relevant patents
 to permit it to be implemented in NSS (though IIRC Entrust retains
 rights to certain ECC-related patent, which is why the NSS
 implementation doesn't include as many ECC features as it otherwise might).
 
 Re US laws, to my knowledge there are no US laws or regulations that
 would specifically affect ECC as opposed to other encryption mechanisms.
 US encryption export control regulations don't distinguish between ECC
 and (e.g.) RSA, AES, etc., and have permitted export of open source
 encryption code since 2000 or so.
 
 Frank
 

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Re: Basic ECC in NSS 3.12.4 with NSPR 4.8

2009-11-03 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 03 November 2009 13:42:14 David Stutzman wrote:
snip
 Some linux distributions distribute NSS built without ECC support, like
 Fedora.  Red Hat, on the other hand, distributes NSS sort of how Java
 1.6 is.  It suppports ECC but itself has no ECC implementation and you
 must add in a third party PKCS#11 module to gain working ECC.  So Fedora
 ignores it, and RHEL makes it relatively easy to integrate it.
snip
 I also just tested EC keygen using certutil and EC SSL on both Gentoo
 ($Header: NSS 3.12.4.5 Basic ECC  Sep 28 2009 07:58:40 $) server and
 OpenSuse 11.1.  Both worked fine out of the box.

Hi David.

Gentoo's NSS package supports ECC because I asked them to enable it:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/247221

I don't think it was ever a deliberate decision on their part to not enable it 
previously.  They raised no objections to my request.

Perhaps Fedora and other distros would also be happy to enable ECC by default 
in NSS if somebody would simply ask them to do so.

A question for the NSS devs:
Is there any reason why NSS couldn't be changed to assume NSS_ENABLE_ECC=1 
by default?

 So to tie all this gibberish to the thread, the OP *shouldn't* need a
 third party ECC library to do what he is attempting to do (as evidenced
 by the Windows, Gentoo and OpenSUSE builds of NSS).
 
 I know I've had previous dealings with many of you before on this topic
 and don't take this as complaining...just trying to put the info out
 there and understand the what's and why's.  I appreciate all the hard
 work you do.
 
 Dave
 
 PS Nelson, I've been trying to email you directly and haven't been
 getting any responses.
 

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Re: Basic ECC in NSS 3.12.4 with NSPR 4.8

2009-11-03 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 03 November 2009 14:29:43 Rob Stradling wrote:
 On Tuesday 03 November 2009 13:42:14 David Stutzman wrote:
 snip
 Hi David.
 
 Gentoo's NSS package supports ECC because I asked them to enable it:
 http://bugs.gentoo.org/247221

 I don't think it was ever a deliberate decision on their part to not enable
  it previously.  They raised no objections to my request.

FYI, the story was apparently very similar with Ubuntu and Debian:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nss/+bug/232392
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=490826

All it needed was somebody to ask them to set NSS_ENABLE_ECC=1 by default in 
their NSS packages.

snip

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Re: Roots that are identical except for signature algorithm and serial number

2009-05-27 Thread Rob Stradling
Frank, Nelson, just in case it's useful...
I recall that GlobalSign recently refreshed their GlobalSign Root CA:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=406794

When the new GlobalSign Root CA certificate (which expires in 2028) was added 
to NSS, the old certificate (which expires in 2014) was *removed*:
https://bug449883.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=333011

I presume that GlobalSign have not encountered any problems following the 
removal of their old certificate from NSS.

On Friday 22 May 2009 15:24:47 Frank Hecker wrote:
 Nelson Bolyard wrote:
  On 2009-05-20 13:58, Kathleen Wilson wrote:
  When processing a cert chain, does Mozilla use a specified algorithm/
  order for determining which root to use when there are two roots
  included that are identical except for signature algorithm and serial
  number?
 
  The algorithm for choosing from among multiple certs with the same
  subject name and key ID generally involves picking the newest one.
  When multiple certs have the same exact notBefore and notAfter dates,
  the order is determined by the certs' relative positions in the cert
  cache, which is effectively unpredictable.  So, for purposes of this
  discussion, the short answer to your question is: no.

 So, just to clarify: I *think* you're proposing that we do the following
 in cases where CAs issue new root certificates with stronger signature
 algorithms (e.g., upgrading MD2 or MD5 roots to use SHA-1):

 1. We should keep the old root certificates in the root list, at least
 for now. Rationale: It does no harm to keep the old roots, since we do
 not check signatures on roots, and it may prevent possible errors when
 Firefox, Thunderbird, etc., receive a full cert chain that includes the
 old root.

 2. We should encourage CAs to issue the new replacement roots with
 notBefore and notAfter dates that are later than the corresponding dates
 for the old roots. Rationale: This ensures that NSS will
 deterministically select the newer root in cases where there is a choice
 to be made. (Does this include the case when Firefox, etc., receive a
 full cert chain that includes the old root?)

 Is the above a correct reading of your comments?

 Frank

 --
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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-23 Thread Rob Stradling
Thanks for your thoughts Nelson.

There's one big problem with this idea of a certificate extension for 
additional signatures, which I hadn't thought of before (Thanks to Paul H for 
spotting it!)...
For the additional signature(s) to become especially useful, the primary 
signature on the certificate would need to be substantially broken (e.g. by a 
pre-image attack on the hash algorithm).  But if this happened, it is likely 
that the CA would revoke the certificate.  Once the certificate is revoked, 
it's...errr...revoked.  The additional signature(s) extension would simply be 
ignored.

On Monday 19 January 2009 22:07:46 Nelson B Bolyard wrote:
 Rob Stradling wrote, On 2009-01-14 03:24 PST:
  To the NSS developers: If there existed a standardized certificate
  extension in which a CA could put additional signatures using different
  algorithms, do you think you'd consider adding support for it to NSS?

 Yes, I think the NSS team would consider it, if it really was a standard,
 at least an IETF RFC.

  If yes, might you do this before it was widely supported by CAs, or do
  you think you'd wait for the majority of CAs to start using it first?

 I think that largely depends on who does the work.

 If someone contributed a patch to NSS that implemented it, and was quite
 complete (including changes to test tools and test scripts), and didn't
 require much work at all to go in, I think it might go in basically as
 soon as it was standard.  The contribution of the Japanese Camellia cipher
 was an example of a very well done contribution that went right in.

 But if the NSS must develop it, or if a contributed patch is incomplete
 or requires a lot of work that the contributor is unwilling or unable to
 do, then prioritizing and scheduling that work involves factors such as
 the priorities of the sponsors of NSS development.

 Looking at the new developments in standards of the last few years, we
 see a list of standardized features that are thought to be important by
 various members of the crypto community, but which are not yet available
 in NSS.  To name just a few, there are TLS 1.2, AES GCM, OCSP stapling,
 server support for SNI.  Together they constitute a pretty large back log
 of development waiting to be done.  Another new proposal would contend with
 those for resources.

 Not all of the features that have been added to NSS in the last few years
 have been widely adopted by the applications that use NSS.  Consequently,
 the sponsors are now evaluating possible future developments based on their
 projections for the demand of application developers for those features.
 I think that says that if they see a groundswell of demand from the
 application developers for a new feature such as multiple signatures in a
 certificate, they might go for it, but otherwise, it is likely to languish,
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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-14 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 13 January 2009 15:47:22 Paul Hoffman wrote:
 At 3:31 PM + 1/13/09, Rob Stradling wrote:
 Why almost every piece of PKIX validating software ?
 
 I think it would be worth it if, at a minimum...
   - the majority of CAs added the extension to the certificates they
  issue, and...
   - Mozilla implemented support for the extension in NSS.
 
 This would allow Mozilla to disable a weak algorithm quickly, without
  having to wait for the majority of certificates in the wild to stop using
  that algorithm for their main certificate signature.

 Fair enough.

 I think the biggest barrier to adoption would be convincing enough of the
  CAs to implement it.

 Really? :-)

 But perhaps the Mozilla CA Certificate Policy could be
 updated to require CAs to implement it?

 That seems kind of drastic for an extension that would only help on a
 security issue that has never been met

True.

 That is, the extension will only be useful for hash functions for which
 practical pre-image attacks are discovered, or signature functions that
 quickly become drastically weaker than expected.

It's like an insurance policy.  CAs and PKIX validating software would pay a 
premium (i.e. development effort required to support the proposed certificate 
extension), but would hope that they never need to make a claim.

 I still think it is sufficient for the policy to list the acceptable signing
 algorithms of the day.  If the extension is standardized and is used  
 by any CAs, and if NSS implements it and allows Firefox to be able to shut
 off one of multiple algorithms in the extension, that would help the CAs
 who used the extension.

if NSS implements it.

To the NSS developers:
If there existed a standardized certificate extension in which a CA could put 
additional signatures using different algorithms, do you think you'd consider 
adding support for it to NSS?  If yes, might you do this before it was widely 
supported by CAs, or do you think you'd wait for the majority of CAs to start 
using it first?

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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-13 Thread Rob Stradling
On Friday 09 January 2009 02:04:59 Julien R Pierre - Sun Microsystems wrote:
 On Friday 09 January 2009 04:32:41 Ben Bucksch wrote:
snip
 
  Can we create another extension? The signature itself is a shell around
  the certified bits. Add the second signature around that first signature.
 
  There must be a way to add signatures. It's a base feature in PGP! If
  it's entirely impossible to have two signatures, and no way to add it to
  the spec, that's a design error. It's hard to believe that it's so
  limited.

 If one wanted to have another signature, it wouldn't be as an extension,
 since, as Nelson pointed out, extensions are part of what gets signed.
 The current single signature is not an extension.

 Well, I guess somebody did it anyway :
 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2008/0270788.html

 sigh.

Ben, Julien,

That IBM patent application does not yet appear to have been reviewed and 
either granted or rejected.

I made a similar suggestion to ietf.pkix in October 2006.  See...
http://www.imc.org/ietf-pkix/mail-archive/msg01964.html
...and the rest of that thread, including...
http://www.imc.org/ietf-pkix/mail-archive/msg01984.html

IANAL, but I think this should be sufficient prior art against the main claims 
in the IBM patent application.

Ben, I agree that having multiple signatures in a certificate could be useful.  
If, for example, the certificates in the wild today contained both MD5/RSA 
and SHA-1/RSA signatures, Mozilla would be able to disable MD5 support 
*today* without breaking the internet, as long as the majority of relying 
party software could process the additional signatures.
If the industry chose to introduce such a thing now, it could help us all in 
the future when we need to move from SHA-1 to SHA-2, or from SHA-1/SHA-2 to 
SHA-3, etc.

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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-13 Thread Rob Stradling
Thanks Ben.  Perhaps it's time to have another go at canvassing support for 
the idea.  In 2006, the PKIX WG didn't seem interested in tackling the 
problem I was trying to solve.

Paul, do you think it's worth re-raising this idea with the PKIX WG ?

On Tuesday 13 January 2009 09:39:06 Ben Bucksch wrote:
 On 13.01.2009 09:48, Rob Stradling wrote:
  I made a similar suggestion to ietf.pkix in October 2006.  See...
  http://www.imc.org/ietf-pkix/mail-archive/msg01964.html
  ...and the rest of that thread, including...
  http://www.imc.org/ietf-pkix/mail-archive/msg01984.html
 
  ...
 
  Ben, I agree that having multiple signatures in a certificate could be
  useful. If, for example, the certificates in the wild today contained
  both MD5/RSA and SHA-1/RSA signatures, Mozilla would be able to disable
  MD5 support *today* without breaking the internet, as long as the
  majority of relying party software could process the additional
  signatures.
  If the industry chose to introduce such a thing now, it could help us all
  in the future when we need to move from SHA-1 to SHA-2, or from
  SHA-1/SHA-2 to SHA-3, etc.

 Rob,

 I think that's an excellent suggestion. Not only because it allows more
 advanced trust management, but also, as you point out, because it eases
 the transition away from SHA-1 significantly, which I think will be very
 important and may shorten the transition by years.

 I think your proposal is nice, as it would allow to use the existing
 extension mechanism, which means that it doesn't break current browsers.

 Also, given that software will have to be changed anyways to support
 SHA-2 or whatever, and we'll eventually use only that, I think there's -
 in addition to the backwards-compatible way you propose - a chance to
 introduce a new format which supports several signatures in a
 straightforward way, and also other improvements which were hindered by
 backwards-compatibility.

 Greetings, and thanks a lot!

 Ben
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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-13 Thread Rob Stradling
Why almost every piece of PKIX validating software ?

I think it would be worth it if, at a minimum...
  - the majority of CAs added the extension to the certificates they issue, 
and...
  - Mozilla implemented support for the extension in NSS.

This would allow Mozilla to disable a weak algorithm quickly, without having 
to wait for the majority of certificates in the wild to stop using that 
algorithm for their main certificate signature.

I think the biggest barrier to adoption would be convincing enough of the CAs 
to implement it.  But perhaps the Mozilla CA Certificate Policy could be 
updated to require CAs to implement it?

On Tuesday 13 January 2009 14:50:32 Paul Hoffman wrote:
 At 9:55 AM + 1/13/09, Rob Stradling wrote:
 Thanks Ben.  Perhaps it's time to have another go at canvassing support
  for the idea.  In 2006, the PKIX WG didn't seem interested in tackling
  the problem I was trying to solve.
 
 Paul, do you think it's worth re-raising this idea with the PKIX WG ?

 Dunno. The WG seems willing to take on anything that will keep it alive
 longer. On the other hand, even if your spec is accepted by the WG, I
 highly doubt you will get enough implementation to make it worth your time.
 That is, unless almost every piece of PKIX validating software added the
 extension, it wouldn't really add much value.

 --Paul Hoffman
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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-12 Thread Rob Stradling
and required by EV ?

Eddy, the EV Guidelines impose certain requirements on Intermediate CAs *when* 
they are used, but AFAIK they don't mandate that Intermediate CAs MUST be 
used.

Visit https://www.securetrust.com in FF3 for an example of an EV-enabled Root 
Certificate (CN = SecureTrust CA) that issues EV SSL Certificates without 
involving any Intermediate CA(s) in the certificate chain.

On Monday 12 January 2009 10:28:42 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 On 01/12/2009 11:56 AM, Jean-Marc Desperrier:
  Eddy Nigg wrote:
  [...] No exception can be added for revoked certificates, but for
  expired ones it's possible - hence it suggests that revocation is more
  severe than expired (if one can think in those terms). Or how would you
  explain that?
 
  As I have already found myself in the situation of really needing to
  override an expired certificate, I beg to differ and find an explanation.
 
  In the case of revoked certificates, you have positive proof that the CA
  wants that cert to be revoked.

 Indeed! That was the point I was trying to make (and why i believe that
 expired but revoked certificates should never be removed from the CRL).
 Considering that intermediate CAs are more and more common and the
 encouraged practice anyway (and required by EV), those CRLs shouldn't
 grow that badly until the issuing CA certificate expires. As Julien also
 mentioned, some CAs keep the revoked certs for a period of N years in
 the CRL - with intermediates assumed limited life-time, we aren't really
 far from that.

  In the case of expired certificates, you just don't know. So it leave
  the possibility that you have out of band information that the key is
  not compromised and that you should be able to access the site.

 Yes, I view an expired certificate differently than a revoked one. There
 are indeed situations which require to access a site with an expired cert.

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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-12 Thread Rob Stradling
On Monday 12 January 2009 11:00:59 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 On 01/12/2009 12:45 PM, Rob Stradling:
  and required by EV ?
 
  Eddy, the EV Guidelines impose certain requirements on Intermediate CAs
  *when* they are used, but AFAIK they don't mandate that Intermediate CAs
  MUST be used.
 
  Visit https://www.securetrust.com in FF3 for an example of an EV-enabled
  Root Certificate (CN = SecureTrust CA) that issues EV SSL Certificates
  without involving any Intermediate CA(s) in the certificate chain.

 Did just thatand this site's certificate is signed by SecureTrust
 CA which chains to Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority.

The Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority is used for legacy 
ubiquity only.  Entrust and SecureTrust (aka Trustwave) have different EV 
Certificate Policy OIDs.  https://www.securetrust.com only gets the EV UI in 
FF3 (and other EV-capable browsers) because the SecureTrust CA self-signed 
Root Certificate is enabled for EV.

That's why Larry says Verified by: SecureTrust Corporation, rather 
than Verified by: Entrust, Inc. for https://www.securetrust.com.

 But besides that, it's perhaps not clearly defined in the EV Guidelines,
 but section 7 suggests that there are no roots issuing directly.

I disagree.  Section 7 says that EV Subordinate CA Certificates may exist, 
and it imposes some restrictions relating to Certificate Policy OIDs.  But it 
does not say that Root CA Certificates should not be used for issuing 
end-entity EV Certificates.  In fact, it says...
The Application Software Vendor identifies Root CAs that are approved to 
issue EV Certificates...
...which surely cannot mean Root CAs are not approved to issue EV 
Certificates !

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Re: Suggestion: Announce date for MD5 signature deactivation

2009-01-12 Thread Rob Stradling
Eddy, I apologize if I'm misinterpreting your response to Paul's last comment, 
but I think you are suggesting that Mozilla could hold a CA to doing 
something that is 'currently in the 'problematic practices' wiki page, 
purely because that wiki page is a document that is (you allege) presented 
to every CA for a while already.

If that is what you are saying, I disagree with you.  The wiki page clearly 
says (capitalization mine)...
  - POTENTIALLY problematic CA practices.
  - we do NOT NECESSARILY consider them security risks.
  - Some of these practices MAY be addressed in future versions of the 
policy.

If Mozilla want to hold a CA to doing something, then IMHO the first step 
towards achieving this has to be to update the Mozilla CA Certificate Policy 
to explicitly cover that something.

The wiki page discusses *possible* *future* policy only.

On Saturday 10 January 2009 20:10:35 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 On 01/10/2009 08:59 PM, Paul Hoffman:
  That's absurd. You can't hold a CA to doing something that we don't
  document.

 Just a by-note on this one...It doesn't have to be in the CA Policy, but
 may be also in some by-laws or as we have it currently in the
 problematic practices. This document is presented to every CA for a
 while already, so the CAs know about it, even if it's not part of the
 policy itself.

 Perhaps a better mechanism regulating these aspects might be useful too.

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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-12 Thread Rob Stradling
On Monday 12 January 2009 12:10:17 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 On 01/12/2009 01:20 PM, Rob Stradling:
  The Entrust.net Secure Server Certification Authority is used for
  legacy ubiquity only.  Entrust and SecureTrust (aka Trustwave) have
  different EV Certificate Policy OIDs.  https://www.securetrust.com only
  gets the EV UI in FF3 (and other EV-capable browsers) because the
  SecureTrust CA self-signed Root Certificate is enabled for EV.

 I can't find the SecureTrust CA request for enabling EV. It's not on the
 pending list, not on the included list, nor could I find bug for it...
 anybody know where the paper trail is for this CA?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=409837

  That's why Larry says Verified by: SecureTrust Corporation, rather
  than Verified by: Entrust, Inc. for https://www.securetrust.com.

 I'm almost certain that the Verified by usually lists the last CA
 certificate in the chain. At least for regular SSL certs.

Ah yes, you may well be right.  I was probably thinking of IE7's equivalent 
behaviour.

In any case, if you compare the EV Policy OIDs mentioned in Bug #409837 
(SecureTrust) and Bug #416544 (Entrust) with the EV Policy OID in the site 
certificate for www.securetrust.com, you'll see that it's the SecureTrust 
CA which gives that site the EV UI.

  I disagree.  Section 7 says that EV Subordinate CA Certificates may
  exist, and it imposes some restrictions relating to Certificate Policy
  OIDs.  But it does not say that Root CA Certificates should not be used
  for issuing end-entity EV Certificates.  In fact, it says...
  The Application Software Vendor identifies Root CAs that are approved to
  issue EV Certificates...
  ...which surely cannot mean Root CAs are not approved to issue EV
  Certificates !

 Than this is another issue to suggest change. Perhaps I wanted it to
 read that EV roots which are approved to issue EV certs, but issuing
 from intermediate - as most CAs actually have done so. That includes
 Verisign (most notable) which transitioned to issuing from
 intermediate's a while ago. Mozilla doesn't enable intermediate CAs, it
 enables roots, even if only one intermediate issues EV and the root
 never does directly.

Just because VeriSign use Intermediates for EV, I don't think that means that 
Mozilla should require CAs such as SecureTrust to do the same.

-- 
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Comodo - Creating Trust Online
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Re: Suggestion: Announce date for MD5 signature deactivation

2009-01-12 Thread Rob Stradling
Eddy, I agree that the Potentially Problematic Practices wiki page is a useful 
resource during the information gathering period that happens *before* a 
Root Certificate is ever accepted by Mozilla.

But (reading back a few messages in this thread), the context of this 
discussion is Paul's proposal of a retroactive change to its (Mozilla's) 
acceptance policy in the pile in order to curtail the use of MD5 by CAs who 
have *already* been accepted by Mozilla.

Are you saying that Mozilla could change the Potentially Problematic Practices 
wiki page, and then use non-compliance to anything on that page as grounds 
for pulling a previously approved Root Certificate from the trust pile?

On Monday 12 January 2009 11:26:03 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 On 01/12/2009 01:08 PM, Rob Stradling:
  Eddy, I apologize if I'm misinterpreting your response to Paul's last
  comment, but I think you are suggesting that Mozilla could hold a CA to
  doing something that is 'currently in the 'problematic practices' wiki
  page, purely because that wiki page is a document that is (you allege)
  presented to every CA for a while already.
 
  If that is what you are saying, I disagree with you.  The wiki page
  clearly says (capitalization mine)...
 - POTENTIALLY problematic CA practices.
 - we do NOT NECESSARILY consider them security risks.
 - Some of these practices MAY be addressed in future versions of the
  policy.
 
  If Mozilla want to hold a CA to doing something, then IMHO the first
  step towards achieving this has to be to update the Mozilla CA
  Certificate Policy to explicitly cover that something.

 I absolutely agree with you and in my opinion this is what should be
 done - at least for some of those practices. However as I understand,
 not everything is every time clear so cut to make it a policy, hence
 there are problematic practices which are reviewed on a case-to-case
 basis for every CA individually. Confronting the CA with this page early
 on during the information gathering period makes the CA aware of
 potential problems during the process. This is what happened for a while
 now. I think that not every bit and byte must be listed in the policy,
 but by-laws may exists to assist the intend  of the policy.

 Instead I think the policy should mention that such by-laws may exists -
 as matter of fact section 4 deals with it more or less.

-- 
Rob Stradling
Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

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Re: Cert expiry with Key Continuity Management

2009-01-12 Thread Rob Stradling
On Monday 12 January 2009 13:07:17 Eddy Nigg wrote:
snip
 I would go as far and require it, simple as that.

You are entitled to your opinion.

 That should be really an issue for the CAB forum however.

So why don't you join the CA/Browser Forum and share your opinion?

 BTW, my point wasn't *because* of Verisign, but *even* Verisign does it ;-)

OK.

-- 
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Re: Suggestion: Announce date for MD5 signature deactivation

2009-01-12 Thread Rob Stradling
On Monday 12 January 2009 13:30:35 Kyle Hamilton wrote:
 I believe that this is not only exactly what he is saying, but also
 exactly what must be done.

 Once a potentially problematic practice is shown to have moved from
 potential to actual, it is a problematic practice.  Once that
 happens, it must be addressed.

I fully agree.

Right now, as I see it, we have...
1). potential - The Potentially Problematic Practices wiki page.
2). actual - The Mozilla CA Certificate Policy.

So when a problem is shown to have moved from 'potential' to 'actual', 
surely the way to address it would be to update the Mozilla CA Certificate 
Policy and require CAs to conform to the new version (or risk having their 
Root(s) pulled) ?

 CAs fall into a class of security called operational security.  This
 means, among other things, that their operations -- inputs, black-box
 certification procedure, and outputs -- are subject to continual
 attack.  Once a viable attack has been exhibited, mitigations against
 attack must be revisited with that attack in mind -- and if they are
 insufficient, new mitigations must be applied retroactively.  (If an
 attack currently takes 8+ months to pull off, that just means that in
 less than 2 years it's going to take on the order of 4 months, in less
 than 2 years after that it's going to take on the order of 2 months,
 and in less than 2 years after that it's going to take on the order of
 1 month -- assuming that there's no change in the understanding of the
 underlying mathematics.  This is in keeping with the corollary to
 Moore's Law, that processing power doubles every 18 months, which
 lately seems to be maintained even in the face of heat problems
 inherent with doubling the number of transistors on a die.)

 Yes, this does mean that new requirements could require operational
 changes in some/all roots, or risk de-acceptance.  If a CA's
 operations are not secure (due to input, processing, or output), how
 can anyone put any trust in them?

 -Kyle H

 On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:07 AM, Rob Stradling rob.stradl...@comodo.com 
wrote:
  Eddy, I agree that the Potentially Problematic Practices wiki page is a
  useful resource during the information gathering period that happens
  *before* a Root Certificate is ever accepted by Mozilla.
 
  But (reading back a few messages in this thread), the context of this
  discussion is Paul's proposal of a retroactive change to its (Mozilla's)
  acceptance policy in the pile in order to curtail the use of MD5 by CAs
  who have *already* been accepted by Mozilla.
 
  Are you saying that Mozilla could change the Potentially Problematic
  Practices wiki page, and then use non-compliance to anything on that
  page as grounds for pulling a previously approved Root Certificate from
  the trust pile?
 
  On Monday 12 January 2009 11:26:03 Eddy Nigg wrote:
  On 01/12/2009 01:08 PM, Rob Stradling:
   Eddy, I apologize if I'm misinterpreting your response to Paul's last
   comment, but I think you are suggesting that Mozilla could hold a CA
   to doing something that is 'currently in the 'problematic practices'
   wiki page, purely because that wiki page is a document that is (you
   allege) presented to every CA for a while already.
  
   If that is what you are saying, I disagree with you.  The wiki page
   clearly says (capitalization mine)...
  - POTENTIALLY problematic CA practices.
  - we do NOT NECESSARILY consider them security risks.
  - Some of these practices MAY be addressed in future versions of
   the policy.
  
   If Mozilla want to hold a CA to doing something, then IMHO the first
   step towards achieving this has to be to update the Mozilla CA
   Certificate Policy to explicitly cover that something.
 
  I absolutely agree with you and in my opinion this is what should be
  done - at least for some of those practices. However as I understand,
  not everything is every time clear so cut to make it a policy, hence
  there are problematic practices which are reviewed on a case-to-case
  basis for every CA individually. Confronting the CA with this page early
  on during the information gathering period makes the CA aware of
  potential problems during the process. This is what happened for a while
  now. I think that not every bit and byte must be listed in the policy,
  but by-laws may exists to assist the intend  of the policy.
 
  Instead I think the policy should mention that such by-laws may exists -
  as matter of fact section 4 deals with it more or less.
 
  --
  Rob Stradling
  Senior Research  Development Scientist
  Comodo - Creating Trust Online
  Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
  Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
  www.comodo.com
 
  Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
  Registered Office:
   3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
   Trafford Road, Salford, Manchester M5 3EQ
 
  This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
  intended solely for the use of the individual

Re: OCSP bypass in recent demo/exploit

2009-01-06 Thread Rob Stradling
Looking at the http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/ attack 
specifically...

The Equifax Secure Global eBusiness CA-1 self-signed Root Certificate trust 
anchor does *not* contain the Authority Info Access extension or CRL 
Distribution Points extension.
The Rogue CA Certificate does *not* contain the Authority Info Access 
extension or CRL Distribution Points extension.  (The legitimate certificate 
that has the same signature as the Rogue CA Certificate does contain the CRL 
Distribution Points extension, but that's irrelevant).

So, with zero potentially suitable CRL/OCSP URLs available, this surely means 
that that Rogue CA Certificate is essentially *unrevokable* by normal means, 
and that any certificates issued by the Rogue CA Certificate are essentially 
*unrevokable* by anyone other than the attacker.

The CA (RapidSSL) could have thwarted the attack by using a stronger hash 
algorithm, or by generating random certificate serial numbers instead of 
guessable sequential ones.

I think it's sensible to expect this attack on MD5 to be repeated by other 
attackers, and to expect a similar attack on SHA-1 in the future.  Therefore, 
we should consider putting in place some safeguards now.

Some ideas:
  Perhaps the Mozilla CA Certificate Policy could mandate that all CAs must 
(after a certain date) generate long, randomized certificate serial numbers?
  Perhaps the NSS code could reject (after a certain date) certificates with 
short serial numbers, on the assumption that they are sequential and 
therefore potentially guessable?
  (Perhaps future updates to RFC5280 and the CABForum EV Guidelines could 
recommend or require long, randomized certificate serial numbers as well?)

On Tuesday 06 January 2009 01:31:55 Paul Hoffman wrote:
 At 4:01 PM -0800 1/5/09, Nelson B Bolyard wrote:
 Paul Hoffman wrote, On 2009-01-05 08:54:
  At 3:09 PM +0100 1/5/09, Ian G wrote:
  [...] Hence, once we rogue-players have created a certificate like
  this, the CA cannot revoke it using its own control mechanisms.  [...]
 
  I am not convinced the article is correct. If it is correct, it is a
  serious but easily-fixed bug in IE. That is, if a trust anchor contains
  a AIA that points to an OCSP responder, and the rogue sub-CA has an AIA
  that points to a different OCSP responder, the validation process should
  should check the OCSP of the trust anchor.
 
 I'm surprised that you wrote that, for several reasons.  Let me explain
 some of them.  For brevity, I will use the following terms:
 
 child   - the cert whose revocation we want to check
 parent  - the cert for the CA that issued the child cert
 sibling - another cert issued by the same parent CA
 grandparent - the cert for the issuer of the parent cert.
 
 Everything I write below about OCSP is also true for CRLs, IINM.
 
 1) It's not generally true that you can use the OCSP URL in the parent
 cert to check the OCSP status of a child cert.  This is because it is
 not generally the case that the issuer of the child is also the issuer
 of the parent (that is, that parent == grandparent, parent is a root).
 
 2) It's also not generally true that you can use the OCSP URL in a
 sibling to check the OCSP status of a child.  This is because the parent
 may have multiple OCSP responders and may use different responders for
 different certs that it issues.  Indeed, the parent could put a unique
 OCSP URL into every cert it issues.
 
 3) A corollary of (2): Even when parent == grandparent, and hence parent
 is also a sibling, it's not generally true that you can use the OCSP URL
 from the parent to check the OCSP status of a child.

 All of that is true (and is true for CRLs, I believe), but it is not what I
 was speaking to. The recent MD5 attack creates a rogue sub-CA, that is a
 new child of one of your trust anchors. The Microsoft article made it sound
 (to me, at least) that if the rogue sub-CA (the child) has a AIA, then IE
 will not look in the parent's AIA to determine the status of the child. If
 that's true, it is broken. Each level of the family can have its own AIA
 that applies to all of its children, not just to end entities.

 4) Trust anchors are not necessarily roots.

 Of course. I'm not seeing where that is relevant here, but I could be
 missing something.

 5) Most roots don't have AIA cert extensions.  Only 8 out of the 125 roots
 in nssckbi have them.

 Now *that* is sad. I was hoping for closer to 50%. It does not make my
 argument wrong, just pretty moot.

 --Paul Hoffman
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Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
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Re: Words from Comodo?

2008-12-31 Thread Rob Stradling
On Monday 29 December 2008 13:50:58 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 There is now an interest article at the register:
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/29/ca_mozzilla_cert_snaf/
snip
 Interesting that Comodo founded the CAB forum and Comodo created a
 standard for domain control validation. I wonder where exactly? This
 might be reason to join the CAB forum?

Eddy, assuming Startcom meets the CABForum's membership requirements (see 
http://www.cabforum.org/forum.html), I would definitely encourage you to 
apply to join.  This would allow you to contribute to the minimum standards 
for domain validation initiative mentioned by that Reg article.

-- 
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Comodo - Creating Trust Online
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Re: MD5 irretrievably broken

2008-12-31 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 30 December 2008 22:07:08 Kyle Hamilton wrote:
 I would suggest requiring all new roots approved to state that they do
 not and will not use MD5 in any newly-minted certificate (except
 possibly in a configuration like the TLS pseudo-random function).

FWIW, Comodo have never signed (and we will never sign) any certificates with 
MD2, MD4 or MD5.  Also, since we launched our CA business, we've always 
generated random certificate serial numbers.

 This is not yet policy, though it should be.  (FWIW, this was known
 two years ago.)

 -Kyle H

 On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 8:39 AM, Chris Hills c...@chaz6.com wrote:
  A presentation was given at this year's Chaos Communication Congress in
  which it was described how researchers were apparently able to produce
  authentic signed SSL certificates thanks to a handful of CAs who rely on
  MD5. If true, is it time to disable MD5 by default?
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Re: Words from Comodo?

2008-12-31 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 30 December 2008 22:22:11 Gervase Markham wrote:
 Ian G wrote:
  As far as I heard, the CABForum was also formed or inspired from a
  similar group of vendors (browsers) that got together at the invite of
  the Konqueror guy to talk about phishing one day ...

 I'm fairly sure it wasn't at the invitation of the Konqueror guy (George
 Staikos), but a CA-led initiative right at the very beginning. But my
 memory could be failing me, or there could have been meetings I didn't
 know about.

Gerv, your memory is correct.

Comodo instigated and hosted an Industry Round Table on May 17th 2005, 
inviting various CAs and Browser reps to attend.  This meeting led directly 
to the formation of the CABForum.

Comodo's intention was to stop the race to the bottom and to restore the 
value of the browser padlock by creating an industry standard for IV/OV and 
by persuading the browsers to differentiate between DV and IV/OV.

(I just tried to post this same message with a PDF attachment containing the 
invitation to the Industry Round Table, but it appears that that message 
was blocked).

  Question for now:  is the CABForum still a closed group?

 Depends what you mean by 'closed'. There are membership criteria, and
 anyone who fits the criteria can be a member. See the bottom of this page:
 http://www.cabforum.org/forum.html

 Gerv

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Re: SECOM Trust EV root inclusion request

2008-12-07 Thread Rob Stradling
On Saturday 06 December 2008 06:33:13 Frank Hecker wrote:
snip
 * SECOM Trust doesn't currently support OCSP. OCSP is not (yet)
 mandatory for EV, so this is not an issue from a policy perspective.
 IIRC this will not pose a technical problem either, as long as EV certs
 issued by SECOM Trust don't have an AIA extension with OCSP URL.

That assumes that https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=413997 will not 
be implemented before such time as SECOM Trust do start to support OCSP.

 * SECOM Trust had one caveat on their EV audit, having to do with their
 not performing certain background checks on staff. As noted in Kathleen
 Wilson's summary document (attached to the bug), this is apparently a
 side-effect of Japanese laws and regulations, and not a substantive
 problem.

 I suggest reading Kathleen's summary document to get an overview of this
 request; thanks again to Kathleen for preparing these!

 For this request and subsequent requests I'm going to adopt a suggestion
 made by Eddy a little while back: Rather than having a two-week
 discussion period divided into two phases, I'm going to have a single
 one-week discussion period. After that week, if there are no outstanding
 issues relating to the request then I am going to go ahead and
 officially approve it.

 However if there are outstanding issues that in my opinion are relevant,
 then I'm going to postpone further consideration of the request. This
 will allow time to try to get the issues resolved, after which we can
 start a new public discussion period.

 Frank



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Re: Creating a Global User-level CA/Trust Infrastructure forSecureMessaging

2008-12-05 Thread Rob Stradling
On Wednesday 03 December 2008 12:22:19 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 On 12/02/2008 08:16 PM, Ian G:
  Right, CAs won't have the private keys, unless they do. I imagine a
  corporate CA can do what it likes, and doesn't need the consent of the
  user.

 Sure, but they aren't in my list of CA roots.

  And if my CA says we
  got your private keys, then you have the choice of another CA.

 It's considered a very bad practice I think.

Eddy, could you expand on this point?

I don't think WebTrust prohibits CAs from generating/retaining private keys 
for users.

 Are there any CAs in Mozilla NSS which have the users private keys?

Have a look at:
http://www.globalsign.com/support/csr/autocsr.html

  Also, there is a silliness aspect to this. If the CAs are trusted not to
  issue false certs for users, why can't they be trusted to look after
  their private keys?

 Perhaps because some countries have certain laws...

  If you don't like that, places to change it would be Chokhani et al (RFC
  3647) or the Mozilla policy, I guess.

 The Mozilla CA policy is my domain...indeed are there CAs which perform
 key escrow without the consent of the user (or without the user having
 explicitly asked beforehand)?

-- 
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Re: SSL servers sending out multiple cert chains?

2008-10-14 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 14 October 2008 08:03:04 Nelson B Bolyard wrote:
 Some time ago, in the last year, while the details of EV were getting
 worked out, I read a message from a representative of a CA whose root(s)
 are in Firefox.  He wrote that to resolve certain issues with some browsers
 using new roots and other browsers using old roots, his CA was advising
 customers to configure their servers to send out all the certs needed to
 build a chain to either of those roots.

Hi Nelson.  I think you're probably referring to me and Comodo's EV 
AUTO-Enhancer(tm)...

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=406755#c33

 If I recall correctly, he used the word shotgun to describe this
 technique.

I didn't use that word.

 Sadly for me, I do not remember who wrote that comment, or what CA he
 represented, or to which mailing list he sent that message, and I cannot
 find that message.  So now I'm writing to this group in hopes that that
 person reads this list. 

 If you are the CA representative who wrote about that, please write to
 me and tell me if there is any public information about your technique.

See the bugzilla.mozilla.org link above.

 I write this because the IETF TLS working group is now considering whether
 to refine the next TLS RFC to speak to certain related issues.  It has been
 proposed to change the text in the next TLS RFC to explicitly disallow the
 sending of anything but a single cert chain, from leaf to root.

Nelson, thanks for mentioning this!  I really do hope that this proposed 
change is not approved!

I've been meaning to get around to suggesting to the IETF TLS WG that the next 
TLS RFC should *explicitly allow* the sending of certs in multiple chains!

 I'd like to offer pointers to any public information about that shotgun
 technique as evidence that the alternative (sending certs that are NOT
 necessarily a single chain) is being used to good advantage on the Internet
 today.

The bugzilla.mozilla.org link above mentions a number of good advantages 
w.r.t. activating the EV UI in Internet Explorer 7.

I'd be more than happy to answer any further questions.

 Regards,
 /Nelson
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Re: Microtec CA inclusion request

2008-10-13 Thread Rob Stradling
the OCSP URI in the CA root IS a problem

Nelson, does NSS ever attempt to check the revocation status of a built-in 
Root Certificate if that Root Certificate contains CRLDP(s) and/or OCSP 
URI(s) ?

On Sunday 12 October 2008 16:40:11 Eddy Nigg wrote:
 Eddy Nigg:
  Except if Nelson thinks otherwise, removing the AIA OCSP service URI
  solves this issue. More specific the Mozilla CA Policy calls for:
 
  cRLDistributionPoints or OCSP authorityInfoAccess extensions for which
  no operational CRL or OCSP service exists.
 
  Therefor the OCSP reference MUST NOT appear in the EE certificates of
  Microsec. I suggest to follow up on this to confirm compliance.

 I think we have a problem here! I wanted to make sure that the CA root
 and intermediate CA certificates don't include OCSP AIA extensions and I
 noticed the following when importing and examining the CA root...

 - The CA root includes the OCSP service URI in the AIA extension:
OCSP: URI: https://rca.e-szigno.hu/ocsp
 - Upon going to https://srv.e-szigno.hu/ I received an
 sec_error_unknown_issuer error. Apparently the certificate isn't
 installed correctly and doesn't present the certificate chain.

 The later is just an annoyance which can be easily fixed, however the
 OCSP URI in the CA root IS a problem. Additionally the intermediate CA
 certificate might also feature the AIA extension (which I couldn't test).

 As mentioned earlier, the Mozilla CA Policy states:

 ...might cause technical problems with the operation of our software,
 for example, with CAs that issue certificates that have...

 ...cRLDistributionPoints or OCSP authorityInfoAccess extensions for
 which no operational CRL or OCSP service exists.

 Micorsec doesn't provide an operational OCSP responder when used in
 conjunction with AIA service URI. Over to Frank.



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Re: Microtec CA inclusion request

2008-10-13 Thread Rob Stradling
On Monday 13 October 2008 15:36:02 István Zsolt BERTA wrote:
snip
  - The CA root includes the OCSP service URI in the AIA extension:

 We accept that it is awkward that our root certificate includes the
 OCSP AIA extension, it was a bad idea for us to include it.
 Unfortunately our root certificate is not something we can change on
 the short run.

István,

Just a thought...
If Nelson's investigation does find that the OCSP AIA extension in your Root 
Certificate is a problem for NSS, is there really anything to stop you from 
issuing a new Root Certificate?  This new Root Certificate could be identical 
to your current Root Certificate except for i) different serial number, and 
ii) OCSP AIA removed.
As the old and new Root Certificates would have the same Subject Name and Key, 
they would effectively be interchangeable.

 We don't quite understand why anyone would check the revocation status
 of a trust anchor via CRL or OCSP.

 Regards,

 István
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Re: Microsec CA inclusion request

2008-10-06 Thread Rob Stradling
On Thursday 02 October 2008 22:43:02 Frank Hecker wrote:
snip
 * Microsec has a separate root used for OCSP, and apparently does not
 offer OCSP as a general public service; please see the comments in the
 bug. I'd like those of you who are OCSP experts to look at this issue
 and tell us if you see any potential problems there.

Comment #3 in that bug indicates that they're not expecting Mozilla to 
support OCSP under a separate root.

When Microsec be include their OCSP Responder URL in an end-entity 
certificates that they issue, FF3 will by default attempt to check the 
certificate's status via OCSP.  This OCSP check will of course fail, because:
  i) the OCSP signer certificate does not chain up to a trusted Root, and...
  ii) RFC2560 section 4.2.2.2 (and therefore FF3, I presume) insists that a 
certificate's issuer MUST either sign the OCSP responses itself or it MUST 
explicitly designate this authority to another entity, and this condition is 
not met.

On Saturday 04 October 2008 12:54:10 Eddy Nigg wrote:
  The default settings of FF3 is to use OCSP and as you mentioned, this isn't
  going to work (as you mentioned already).

Yes and no.  IINM, FF3 by default has the When an OCSP connection fails, 
treat the certificate as invalid tickbox set to *disabled*, meaning that 
most users won't see browser warnings.  Therefore, IMHO, if Microsec don't 
think it's a problem, then it's not a problem.
(The other effect of a failed OCSP lookup in FF3 is that an EV cert will lose 
its EV status, but I don't believe that Microsec are an EV certificate issuer 
at present).

On a related note...
It might interest you to know that the Microsoft CryptoAPI does support OCSP 
under a separate root in Windows XP and Vista.  I recently asked our contact 
at Microsoft to explain to me why this RFC2560-non-compliant feature exists.  
He said:
The feature to allow OCSP responses to be signed by a certificate under a 
different root was added for customers with branch networks that cannot 
connect to the CA's revocation repository, either because the customer do not 
want to allow those machines to connect to the Internet directly, the 
connection has limited bandwidth, or the branch network is physically 
disconnected for extended periods (such as those on a ship).

 This first public comment period will be for one week, and then I'll
 make a preliminary determination regarding this request.

 Frank

 [1] Fun fact: Within Hungary names are normally given in Eastern order
 (i.e., like China or Japan) with surname first. In this case I've
 transposed to Western order (I think).

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Re: Comodo ECC CA inclusion/EV request

2008-07-30 Thread Rob Stradling
On Saturday 19 July 2008 19:30:51 Paul Hoffman wrote:
 At 11:04 AM +0100 7/19/08, Rob Stradling wrote:
 I think that the ECDSA signature algorithms will only be supported in
  OpenSSL 0.9.9 (not yet released) and above.
 
 Try a recent openssl-SNAP-2008mmdd.tar.gz from
  ftp://ftp.openssl.org/snapshot instead.

 Will do.

 Non-mandatory question: what software/hardware did Comodo use to
 generate the key pair?

Our ECC key pair was generated on a Utimaco SafeGuard CryptoServer (FIPS 140-2 
Level 3/4).
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/1401val2007.htm#811

 What did you use to validate it?

I would hope that, before the FIPS 140-2 certification was granted, Utimaco 
and/or NIST ensured that the Utimaco HSMs were only capable of generating 
valid ECC key pairs.

After generating our ECC key pair, issuing the COMODO ECC Certification 
Authority root certificate, and issuing a test EV SSL Server Certificate, we 
checked...
  - that openssl x509 in the latest OpenSSL-0.9.9 snapshot was able to parse 
the root certificate without complaining about anything.
  - that the certificate viewer in Windows Vista was able to view the root 
certificate without complaining about anything.  (We of course had to 
manually add the root certificate to the Windows Trusted Root Store).
  - that IE7/Vista, Firefox 2/3 on several OSes, and openssl s_client were 
able to connect to the 
https://comodoecccertificationauthority-ev.comodoca.com test site without 
complaining about anything.  (We of course had to manually add the root 
certificate to the Windows and Mozilla Trusted Root Stores).

 As Mozilla (hopefully) starts seeing more ECDSA certs, having some
 common tools would be very useful for all of us.

Nelson has said:
Yes, NSS does this for every ECC signature it verifies.  NSS recognizes a 
finite set of curves, and verifies that the base point is on the curve as a 
part of signature verification.

Perhaps NSS's checkcert command-line utility would or should do the 
necessary checks?

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Re: Comodo ECC CA inclusion/EV request

2008-07-19 Thread Rob Stradling
On Saturday 19 July 2008 00:26:57 Paul Hoffman wrote:
 At 6:18 PM -0400 7/18/08, Frank Hecker wrote:
 Paul Hoffman wrote:
   At 9:27 AM -0400 7/18/08, Frank Hecker wrote:
   Paul Hoffman wrote:
 Has anyone validated the ECC paramters they used?
 
   Not that I'm aware.
 
   I think that's unfortunate. It is easy for all of us to test the
   parameters for RSA certs, but few of us have software for testing ECC
   certs.
 
 Are there NSS, OpenSSL, or other open source utilities available for
 this purpose?

 I don't know, but I take it you don't either. Hopefully others on
 this list might.

 FWIW, the latest version of OpenSSL (0.98h) won't:

I think that the ECDSA signature algorithms will only be supported in OpenSSL 
0.9.9 (not yet released) and above.

Try a recent openssl-SNAP-2008mmdd.tar.gz from ftp://ftp.openssl.org/snapshot 
instead.

 # openssl x509 -in COMODOECCCertificationAuthority.crt -out
 COMODOECCCertificationAuthority.pem -inform der -outform pem
 # openssl verify COMODOECCCertificationAuthority.pem
 COMODOECCCertificationAuthority.pem: /C=GB/ST=Greater
 Manchester/L=Salford/O=COMODO CA Limited/CN=COMODO ECC Certification
 Authority
 error 18 at 0 depth lookup:self signed certificate
 /C=GB/ST=Greater Manchester/L=Salford/O=COMODO CA Limited/CN=COMODO
 ECC Certification Authority
 error 7 at 0 depth lookup:certificate signature failure
 57046:error:0D0C50A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_item_verify:unknown

 message digest algorithm:a_verify.c:141:
 Could you point me to more information on this topic?

 NIST FIPS 186-3 is the standard, and it has the parameters for the
 curve that Comodo says they are using.

There's a test site with a Comodo-issued ECC cert at
 
  https://comodoecccertificationauthority-ev.comodoca.com/
 
   ...which no browser will let me into. :-)
 
 For Firefox at least that's because we haven't added the root CA cert
 yet, though there might be additional reasons relating to the OCSP
 responder (see the bug for more info). I was able to add a security
 exception for this site and then could access it successfully (using
 Firefox 3.0.1 on OS X), however it's not clear to what extent Firefox
 was able to validate the cert signature. (Firefox still gives me a
 certificate did not verify for unknown reasons message.)

 That is a bad sign, yes?

 It seems unwise for us to approve a trust anchor we can't even
 verify. I am quite sure we will eventually be able to verify it (or a
 corrected version if Comodo made a mistake), but having an error in
 the first ECDSA certificate we put in our trusted root pile will be
 bad publicity both for Mozilla and for ECDSA.
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Re: Decline in firefox usage due to lacking CA certificates

2008-07-17 Thread Rob Stradling
On Wednesday 16 July 2008 15:08:15 Frank Hecker wrote:
 ...
 We are doing what we can. However by design we do not simply
 rubber-stamp CA requests. We have an official policy which was
 developed through a process of community consultation, and we follow a
 similar process of community discussion when considering CAs. We do have
 more people now working on CA-related tasks (unlike previously when I
 was the only person, and could do it only part-time). However the
 process will never be quick IMO.

Frank, is there any reason why you can't have multiple candidate CAs having 
their public discussion periods simultaneously?

Having watched this list for a number of months, I think I'm right in saying 
that you're only allowing one at a time...in which case, how is having more 
people now working on CA-related tasks actually improving your overall 
throughput?

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Re: Decline in firefox usage due to lacking CA certificates

2008-07-17 Thread Rob Stradling
On Thursday 17 July 2008 13:33:04 Frank Hecker wrote:
 Rob Stradling wrote:
  Frank, is there any reason why you can't have multiple candidate CAs
  having their public discussion periods simultaneously?

 No reason at all;

Thanks Frank.  That's good to hear.

 in fact, technically we have two in public discussion 
 right now (GlobalSign and T-Systems). The major bottleneck is collecting
 the CA information and getting the last 10% of questions answered.
 Kathleen Wilson has some CAs that are in that stage now,

Frank, in Bug #421946 Comment #15 you said:
I'll proceed with the first public comment period once I figure out where 
this request sits in the queue relative to other similar requests.

If the public comment/discussion periods are not the major bottleneck, then 
can you explain why there has been no movement on this bug for over a month?

Thanks.

 and I've asked Gerv Markham to start the process on two more. There are also
 a couple of CAs that got bogged down at the public discussion stage earlier,
 and I'm going to see if we can move them forward.

 Frank

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Re: Decline in firefox usage due to lacking CA certificates

2008-07-17 Thread Rob Stradling
On Thursday 17 July 2008 16:50:50 Frank Hecker wrote:
 Rob Stradling wrote:
  Frank, in Bug #421946 Comment #15 you said:
  I'll proceed with the first public comment period once I figure out
  where this request sits in the queue relative to other similar requests.
 
  If the public comment/discussion periods are not the major bottleneck,
  then can you explain why there has been no movement on this bug for over
  a month?

 Because I dropped the ball on that one, for which I apologize.
 I'll look at it and start public discussion as soon as I can.

Apology accepted.  Thanks for picking the ball up again.  :-)

 Frank

 P.S. Incidentally, I have no problem whatsoever with CAs pinging me
 directly (via email or phone or whatever) to remind me that their
 requests need attention. Please feel free to do that if ever you should
 need to.

Sure.  Thanks.

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Re: Modulus length (was Re: Draft CA information checklist)

2008-06-06 Thread Rob Stradling
On Friday 06 June 2008 10:07:20 Gervase Markham wrote:
 Nelson B Bolyard wrote:
  Rob, in the past, any time that we have suggested that a CA issue a new
  root CA cert for any reason, even if only to change something minor,
  we've received much feedback saying that doing so represents a huge
  challenge and investment for the CAs, necessitating modifications to
  CPSes, triggering new audits, etc. etc.  One gets the impression from
  those replies that this is something the CAs would rather avoid at
  (nearly) all cost.

 Another option would be to make a (small? :-) modification to NSS to
 allow us to store an expiry date which overrode the one in the certificate.

Good idea.  That would be much less hassle (compared to my proposal) for both 
the CAs and Mozilla.

Or, instead of modifying the data that NSS holds for each certificate...

Yet another alternative option would be to make a modification to NSS's 
certificate path processing code, so that whenever NSS is attempting to build 
a certificate chain up to a trusted Root it would check:
  - the current date/time.
  - the key sizes of each certificate it is considering trusting.
  - a hard-coded array of: { algorithm, key_size, soft_insecure_after_date, 
hard_insecure_after_date }.

Whenever a key is found whose soft_insecure_after_date is in the past, 
NSS/Firefox/etc would warn the user, but allow them to choose to navigate to 
the HTTPS site if they really want to.
Whenever a key is found whose hard_insecure_after_date is in the past,
NSS/Firefox/etc would warn the user and refuse to allow them to navigate to 
the HTTPS site.

I think it would make sense for the soft_insecure_after_dates to match 
NIST's recommendations, but the hard_insecure_after_dates would be up to 
Mozilla to define.

Also, the hard-coded array could be extended to define algorithm expiry 
information for not only RSA key-sizes, but also...
  - Hash algorithms used in signatures (e.g. NIST specify a 2010 deadline for 
SHA-1; and I think MD2/4/5 and SHA-0 should already be deemed to have passed 
their soft_insecure_after_date).
  - ECC key-sizes and curves.
  - Symmetric algorithms used in SSL cipher suites.
NSS could check all of these during certificate path processing and SSL/TLS 
handshakes.

With this approach, Mozilla could even continue to accept new 1024-bit Root 
Certificate submissions for the next few years (not that I'm advocating that, 
of course!)

 Gerv
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Re: Modulus length (was Re: Draft CA information checklist)

2008-06-05 Thread Rob Stradling
On Wednesday 04 June 2008 21:59:54 Paul Hoffman wrote:
  ...
- There may be some (solvable, I think) interoperability problems for
  CAs that choose to include the authorityCertSerialNumber field in the
  Authority Key Identifier extension of certificates issued by their
  1024-bit Root Certificates.

 Not sure what you mean here.

Please see the follow-up comments from myself and Nelson.  I hope they explain 
this issue enough.

 Am I trying to make things too complicated?
 Or does anybody think that this idea is worth considering?

 Definitely worth considering.
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Re: Modulus length (was Re: Draft CA information checklist)

2008-06-05 Thread Rob Stradling
On Thursday 05 June 2008 12:05:42 Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) wrote:
 Rob Stradling:
  Rob, in the past, any time that we have suggested that a CA issue a new
  root CA cert for any reason, even if only to change something minor,
  we've received much feedback saying that doing so represents a huge
  challenge and investment for the CAs, necessitating modifications to
  CPSes, triggering new audits, etc. etc.  One gets the impression from
  those replies that this is something the CAs would rather avoid at
  (nearly) all cost.
 
  I'm not convinced a new audit would be required, and I don't think CPS
  changes are quite as expensive as the CAs you cite have suggested.

 Yes, I agree with you. I suppose that this is part of the key management
 a CA performs, which in itself is audited. Issuing new keys according to
 the defined procedures and CP/CPS doesn't require re-auditing per se,
 perhaps only if there were substantial other changes to the
 infrastructure which aren't related to the mere issuing of additional keys.

  Also...just a thought...I wonder if any part of the Mozilla CA
  Certificate Policy could be updated to make 1024-bit Root Certificate
  replacement less hassle?

 I don't agree however with this. CAs usually have to go through the full
 cycle for having roots included and we shouldn't make other exceptions.
 The EV inclusions were exceptionally rushed enough I'd say...Also it's
 an excellent opportunity to review CAs which sometimes never were really
 looked at.

I have no objection to Mozilla reviewing CAs which sometimes never were 
really looked at in days gone by.  :-)

 Additionally, most of the times the old and the new root will be both
 present in NSS for some time in order to allow a smooth transition,
 until the old root is being removed.

Not so.  With my proposal, the old and new roots would *not* both be present 
in any NSS versions.  The old one would be removed when the new one gets 
added.

Eddy, I think you've missed the main point of my proposal.  I am suggesting 
that each existing valid-for-too-long 1024-bit RSA Root Certificate should be 
replaced with a valid-for-not-too-far-beyond-2010 1024-bit RSA Root 
Certificates *WITH THE SAME KEY*.

  On a kind-of-related note...
  Bug 406794.  GlobalSign want to do something very similar

 No, this isn't the same really, it's not a new key per se.

Precisely.  So, as I said, it is the same thing.

  Could that behaviour of NSS be changed?
  If future NSS versions were to treat authorityCertSerialNumber as
  merely a hint, then I don't think that any certs would need to be
  reissued for my proposal to work.

 Mhhh, maybe I'm missing something here, but how should replacing a root
 with a different key and key size not have an effect on this? Certs will
 have to be issued from the new root at some point and I'm not sure how a
 certificate signed from a 1024 bit key doesn't require re-issuance from
 a new 2048 key if the old key becomes obsolete and the EE cert is still
 valid.


 Regards
 Signer:   Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd. http://www.startcom.org
 Jabber:   [EMAIL PROTECTED] xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Blog: Join the Revolution! http://blog.startcom.org
 Phone:+1.213.341.0390



-- 
Rob Stradling
Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

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  3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
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Re: Modulus length (was Re: Draft CA information checklist)

2008-06-05 Thread Rob Stradling
On Thursday 05 June 2008 12:59:13 Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) wrote:
 Rob Stradling:
  Additionally, most of the times the old and the new root will be both
  present in NSS for some time in order to allow a smooth transition,
  until the old root is being removed.
 
  Eddy, I think you've missed the main point of my proposal.  I am
  suggesting that each existing valid-for-too-long 1024-bit RSA Root
  Certificate should be replaced with a valid-for-not-too-far-beyond-2010
  1024-bit RSA Root Certificates *WITH THE SAME KEY*.

 Sorry Rob, yes I missed that one. But why doing that? Why not replace
 with something better and remove the offending root? Perhaps I'm not
 objective enough because we actually replaced a small key with a bigger
 one. What's the logic for having a pile of roots which expire in 2010?

I didn't say expire in 2010.

 Sorry for being slow...can you explain to me the logic of your proposal
 (again)?

I think the key issue is that we don't want users of Mozilla software to be 
relying on 1024-bit RSA Root Keys too far beyond 2010.

If we were to remove any 1024-bit RSA Root Certificates from Mozilla today, it 
would be damaging to the CAs (who rely on the good browser ubiquity provided 
by these Roots).
But, if we instead wait until, say, 2013 to remove those Root Certificates 
from NSS, some users would still be relying on those 1024-bit Root Keys until 
nearer 2020 ('cos some users are *very* slow to upgrade their browsers).

I believe that my proposal solves both problems.  The CAs' browser ubiquity 
would not be damaged until such time that Mozilla decides the 1024-bit Keys 
should be no longer be relied on.  And in the future, Mozilla users (even 
with...at that point in time...fairly out-of-date software) would be 
prevented from relying on 1024-bit RSA Root Keys as soon as the date decided 
by Mozilla arrives.

 Regards
 Signer:   Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd. http://www.startcom.org
 Jabber:   [EMAIL PROTECTED] xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Blog: Join the Revolution! http://blog.startcom.org
 Phone:+1.213.341.0390



-- 
Rob Stradling
Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
Registered Office:
  3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
  Trafford Road, Salford, Manchester M5 3EQ

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Re: Modulus length (was Re: Draft CA information checklist)

2008-06-04 Thread Rob Stradling
On Tuesday 03 June 2008 07:28:33 Michael Ströder wrote:
 Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) wrote:
  Paul, I think that the general idea (of Frank and others) is, to make a
  requirement on new roots and act on the 1024 bit keys at some point in
  the future.

 I also support the idea of throwing out 1024 bit keyed roots at a not so
 distant point in the future.

For those 1024-bit RSA Root Certificates that are *already included* in 
Mozilla software, I think that a distinction should be drawn between:
  A. Those that expire before NIST's 2010 deadline.
  B. Those that expire soon after 2010.
  C. Those that expire well beyond 2010.

For now, let soon after = before 2013 and well beyond = after 2013.

I think that type A and B Root Certificates can be left to expire naturally 
before being removed from future versions of Mozilla software.

I have a suggestion regarding what Mozilla could do *right now* with type C 
Root Certificates...
  1. Remove each type C Root Certificate from Mozilla ASAP, but also...
  2. Give each affected CA the opportunity to submit a replacement 1024-bit 
RSA Root Certificate for inclusion in new versions of Mozilla software.  Each 
of these replacement Root Certificates would exactly match the to-be-removed 
Root Certificate (in terms of Subject name, Public Key and Subject Key 
Identifier), but would have a different Serial Number and a more acceptable 
Not After date.

Advantages:
  + Mozilla would be able to prevent the reliance on 1024-bit RSA Root CA Keys 
according to a time schedule set by Mozilla.
  + This prevention time schedule would take effect ASAP.  There would be no 
need to wait until 2013 to remove type C Root Certificates from Mozilla, 
which means that...
  + Versions of Mozilla software published between ASAP and 2013 would not 
trust any 1024-bit RSA Root Keys beyond 2013.  (I think that, come 2013, we 
can expect some users to be using old versions of Mozilla software).

Disadvantages:
  - Each affected CA would have to spend some time reissuing their Root 
Cetificate.
  - Mozilla representatives would have to spend some time checking the 
replacement certificates and writing patches to remove/include the 
original/replacement certificates.
  - There may be some (solvable, I think) interoperability problems for CAs 
that choose to include the authorityCertSerialNumber field in the Authority 
Key Identifier extension of certificates issued by their 1024-bit Root 
Certificates.

Am I trying to make things too complicated?
Or does anybody think that this idea is worth considering?

 I also hope that this will sort out some of 
 the issues with root CA certs concerning so-called cross-signing and
 liberal use of sub CAs.

  are issued from that root since we've successfully transitioned to the
  newer 4096 bit root.

 FYI: A VPN product of a major vendor simply does not work with 4096 bit
 root.

 Ciao, Michael.
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Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
Registered Office:
  3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
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Re: Modulus length (was Re: Draft CA information checklist)

2008-06-04 Thread Rob Stradling
On Wednesday 04 June 2008 12:25:32 Kyle Hamilton wrote:
 There has been evidence of Microsoft, at the least, following this
 group and acting on good ideas that started here.  While it'd be nice
 if that organization would comment here, I think that if they like
 this plan (or anything like this plan) they'll implement it and it'll
 end up being a fait accompli.

FYI, Microsoft already require a minimum 2048-bit RSA key size for new Root 
Certificate submissions.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/news/rootcert.mspx?mfr=true 
says...

Updated: January 22, 2008
...
4. Root certificates must comply with the Technical Requirements section 
below. In particular, we require a minimum crypto key size of RSA 2048-bit 
modulus for any root and all issuing CAs. Microsoft will no longer accept 
root certificates with RSA 1024-bit modulus of any expiration. We prefer that 
new roots are valid for at least 8 years from date of submission but expire 
before the year 2030, especially if they have a 2048-bit RSA modulus.

 January 1 2009 particularly because it provides slightly less than 2
 quarters of notice.  Honestly, I would be quite happy if it went into
 effect immediately; however, I do know that some Cisco VPN equipment
 doesn't like 4096-bit root keys.  I don't know if it likes 2048-bit
 keys.

 I would treat 'new' as 'new request'.

 And I don't know if anyone's tried to submit a 1024-bit root recently.

 -Kyle H

 On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 2:14 AM, Gervase Markham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  Paul Hoffman wrote:
  Proposal:
  a) Starting January 1 2009, all new CA roots must be 2048 bit RSA or 256
  bit EC.
 
  Why January 1 2009 particularly?
 
  By new, do you mean newly-generated, or new to us?
 
  Has any CA actually attempted to get a recently-generated 1024-bit root
  included?
 
  b) Starting January 1 2014, all CA roots must be 2048 bit RSA or 256 bit
  EC.
 
  It would make most sense to coordinate such a policy with other browser
  vendors, if possible.
 
  Gerv
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Rob Stradling
Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
Registered Office:
  3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
  Trafford Road, Salford, Manchester M5 3EQ

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Re: Comodo request for EV root inclusion (COMODO Certification Authority)

2008-03-19 Thread Rob Stradling
Eddy, it was certainly never my intention to lead you to conclude that the 
COMODO Certification Authority root certificate will only issue EV 
certificates and should be enabled for EV only.

What I actually said was:
I can assure you that Comodo never issue DV and EV certs from the same 
*Intermediate* CA.
I did not mention Root CAs in this statement.
On reflection, it occurs to me that Intermediate and Root are perhaps not 
the best words to use, since the now widespread use of cross-certification 
blurs the distinction somewhat.  Perhaps the following statement is clearer:
I can assure you that Comodo never issue End-Entity DV and EV certs from the 
same Issuing CA.

In the same message, I also said ...we really need to have generic (rather 
than purpose-specific) trust anchors.

So, please change the details on the Pending page back to how they were.  As 
per Bug #401587 Comment #0, we still really do want the COMODO Certification 
Authority to be enabled for All 3 purposes: DV, IV/OV and EV.

Now, Frank has said At present there are two subordinate CAs under 
the COMODO Certification Authority root: COMODO EV SSL CA and COMODO EV 
SGC CA. These two subordinates are the issuing CAs for end entity certs.
This statement is correct, as long as you don't interpret ...there are 
two... as ...there are only two and will only ever be two

As it happens, we also have a further subordinate CA under COMODO 
Certification Authority, which we already use for issuing one of our brands 
of DV certificate.  We also have plans to issue an IV/OV subordinate at some 
point.  As before, I'll defer to Robin Alden to answer any CPS-related 
questions you may have about this.  I apologize on behalf of Comodo if we 
have inadvertently omitted to draw your attention to some of this information 
sooner.

I spoke to Robin Alden earlier today.  He hopes to be able to reply to at 
least some of your questions today.

On Tuesday 18 March 2008, Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) wrote:
 Frank Hecker:
  Comodo has applied to (among other things) add a new EV root CA
  certificate for the *COMODO Certification Authority* to the Mozilla root
  store, as documented in the following bug:
 
 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=401587
 
  Note that this request specifically refers to the COMODO Certification
  Authority root CA certificate referenced in comment #16 to bug 401587:
 
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=401587#c16

 The details at the Pending page have been updated by Frank concerning
 this CA root. There are no objections to adding this root, but please
 note that this root will only issue EV certificates * and should be
 enabled for EV only, provided if and when we have that capability in
 NSS. Perhaps we want to open a catch-all bug for such roots which are
 added under this condition.

 * Confirmed by Rob Stradling from Comodo.

-- 
Rob Stradling
Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
Registered Office:
  3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
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Re: Comodo request for EV-enabling 3 existing roots

2008-03-18 Thread Rob Stradling
Hi Eddy.  I'm not the right person to answer your questions about our CPS.  I 
have asked my colleague Robin Alden to join this newsgroup and answer each of 
your points.

On Sunday 16 March 2008, Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) wrote:
 This is a revised version of my initial questions concerning the Comodo
 inclusion and upgrade requests. I've updated the sections which received
 a response from Frank and are solved from my point of view and added
 some more content where deemed necessary.

 1.) The audit report for non-EV operations refers to the CA operation at
 Manchester. The audit report for EV refers to the CA operations at New
 Jersey. One of the roots is from a company operating in Sweden, one
 operating in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA and and one of Salford, GB. Can
 the relations between these locations and the general operation of
 Comodo and the audit reports be explained?

 Additionally I would like to know to whom belongs the company LITESSL
 CA, INC. and its relationship to Comodo CA Ltd. as referenced in the
 audit report from KPMG
 (https://cert.webtrust.org/SealFile?seal=636file=pdf). What are its
 relations to AddTrust AB, Sweden? In the audit reports no distinctions
 are made between the various companies and the audit reports are
 addressed only to Comodo CA Ltd.

 2.) The Comodo Certification Practice Statement, Version 3.0 and other
 CPS amendments state that wild card certificates are domain name
 validated only (depending on product or trade mark). How does Comodo
 prevent or control misuse of wild card certificates, specially in
 relation to phishing attempts and other fraud, taking into consideration
 that these certificates are domain validated only? Does Comodo believe
 that such wild card certificates are issued according to verification
 requirements for this special type of certificates?

 3.) The Comodo Certification Practice Statement, Version 3.0 and other
 CPS amendments state certificate validity of up to ten years and beyond.
 I couldn't find any provision in case the domain name expires. It isn't
 clear what happens if an identity or organization changes name, changes
 address, stops its operation, dies etc. How does Comodo guaranty the
 validity of these certificates throughout their lifetime?

 4.) Frank, this one is for you:

 Since most (if not all) CA root certificates of Comodo were inherited
 from the Netscape era and never were properly evaluated by an inclusion
 process and in light of the questions above, isn't a thorough review of
 this CA in place in order to guaranty conformance to the Mozilla CA
 policy? Because an upgrade to EV would tie this CA further into NSS I
 believe that such a review should be performed prior to any other step.
 I haven't invested a lot of time into this request initially (as I
 haven't for other upgrade requests for EV during the comments period),
 but raised enough questions which might justify such a review.



-- 
Rob Stradling
Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
Registered Office:
  3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
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Re: Comodo request for EV-enabling 3 existing roots

2008-03-14 Thread Rob Stradling
 SSL sites as valid SSL sites (as
 opposed to getting unknown root errors). Marking both the new EV roots
 and legacy roots with the EV OIDs was then a hack to get EV-aware
 browsers like (Firefox 3) to recognize EV certs no matter which cert
 chain the underlying PKI library decided to follow.

 Now that you have the context, let me get back to the Comodo
 application. Comodo's roots can be divided into three classes:

 1. The new Comodo EV root (COMODO Certification Authority).

 2. The three legacy Comodo roots that are specifically documented (i.e.,
 in Comodo's EV CPS) as participating in Comodo's cross-signing scheme
 and thus could be encountered as trust anchors when processing cert
 chains from EV sites (AddTrust External CA Root, UTN - DATACorp SGC, and
 UTN-USERFirst-Hardware).

 3. All other legacy Comodo roots, which might end up being involved in
 EV-related cross-signing schemes, but don't appear to be documented as
 doing so right now, based on the CPSs I've reviewed.

 Based on this division, I've done evaluations and preliminary approvals
 for the new EV root (class 1) and the three legacy roots in class 2, but
 I've postponed action on the remaining roots (class 3) until it's
 clearer whether I need to approve them for EV purposes, or can wait on
 this.

  Supposed an intermediate CA or CA root is dedicated
  for EV only, we might have much better control. Just imagine Comodo
  issues a DV cert with the EV bits onthoughts, suggestions?

 I think we've discussed a similar issue in relation to subordinate CAs.
 There's a trade-off here between maximum control and complexity. If we
 wanted maximum control then we would maintain data on every CA that
 issued (or could issue) end entity certificates -- basically every root
 CA and every subordinate CA under those roots, without exception. Then
 we could exercise very fine-grained control: We could say, this
 subordinate CA (which might be 3 or 4 levels down in the hierarchy from
 a given root) can do this (issue EV certs, issue email certs, whatever),
 while this other subordinate CA (somewhere else in the hierarchy under
 that root) can't.

 However exercising this amount of control would involve lots and lots of
 work on our part, and would require maintaining very large sets of
 CA-related data that we would either have to ship with Firefox or build
 a scheme to have Firefox automatically fetch. Quite frankly I think it's
 a non-starter.

 The scheme we have now trades off maximum control for implementability.
 We have relatively coarse-grained controls, and then we rely on CAs to
 implement more fine-grained controls (e.g., using certificatePolicies,
 EKU, etc.). This means that CAs in theory could abuse the scheme (e.g.,
 by issuing EV certs from subordinates not intended to be used for this
 purpose). That's where we rely on auditors to verify that CAs are
 operating according to their stated plans. If that turns out not to be
 true in certain cases then we can look at those on a case-by-case basis
 and figure out if we need to or want to take certain actions.

 I can't write any more on this right now, but I hope the above addresses
 at least some of the questions you had.

 Frank

-- 
Rob Stradling
Senior Research  Development Scientist
Comodo - Creating Trust Online
Office Tel: +44.(0)1274.730505
Fax Europe: +44.(0)1274.730909
www.comodo.com

Comodo CA Limited, Registered in England No. 04058690
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  3rd Floor, 26 Office Village, Exchange Quay,
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