> I'm not sure if this issue deserves some dedicated time for discussion at the 
> upcoming F2F but Inigo could add it as an agenda item. At the very least we 
> should capture the group's preference and proceed accordingly.



Dimitris, if you want this to be discussed at the F2F SCWG, just drop me an 
email with the content (just for the introduction) and an estimated discussion 
time and I´ll add it to the agenda. Not a problem.

 

De: Servercert-wg <[email protected]> En nombre de Dimitris 
Zacharopoulos (HARICA) via Servercert-wg
Enviado el: miércoles, 15 de mayo de 2024 7:16
Para: Aaron Gable <[email protected]>
CC: CA/B Forum Server Certificate WG Public Discussion List 
<[email protected]>
Asunto: Re: [Servercert-wg] Discussion about single-purpose client 
authentication leaf certificates issued from a server TLS Issuing CA

 

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content 
is safe.

 

 

On 14/5/2024 7:52 μ.μ., Aaron Gable wrote:

That makes sense. I guess I'm saying that the intent of "Intermediates which 
are part of the WebPKI must not issue certificates which are not part of the 
WebPKI" makes sense to me.


While I agree that this sounds reasonable to clarify and ensure it is 
applicable unambiguously, to the best of my recollection, the intent of this 
group when drafting the profiles ballot was not what you describe. I'd be happy 
to be shown otherwise. I do recall Tim Hollebeek strongly objecting to adding 
requirements for non-TLS Certificates.

The current BRs do not require strict server TLS hierarchies, that was never 
the intent. If that was the case, it would not be allowed to create TC non-TLS 
Intermediates from a Root that is in-scope of the TLS BRs.




 

Imagine that a publicly trusted Subordinate CA issues a "certificate" which is 
so badly malformed that it does not match any of the profiles allowed by the 
BRs, and it's even difficult to tell which profile it may have been intended to 
match before things went wrong. This feels to me like it should be treated as a 
misissuance: it should not have been possible for a CA to sign such an 
artifact, and the fact that it is possible merits an investigation and incident 
report.

 

But the difference between such a malformed certificate and a certificate which 
asserts clientAuth but not serverAuth is only one of degree, not one of kind. 
They are both certificates which are issued by a publicly-trusted Subordinate 
CA, but which do not conform to a BRs profile. If issuing a clientAuth-only 
cert should be okay, but issuing a badly malformed cert should not be, where 
and how does one draw the line between them?



The badly formed cert issue should definitely be addressed, just like it has 
been addressed for the TC non-TLS subCA profile. At a minimum it must conform 
to RFC 5280. But just as we had multi-purpose hierarchies, and we support 
non-TLS subCAs, maybe we should add similar language to cover the case of 
non-TLS leaf certificates.

However, if the group wants to proceed with "clarifying"* that CA Certificates 
technically capable of issuing server TLS Certificates SHALL NOT issue 
end-entity Certificates that do not include the serverAuth EKU, I'm all for it. 
I still don't see the harm in doing so from a RP security perspective but I 
won't object to clear and unambiguous rules that all CAs and auditors interpret 
the same way.

I'm not sure if this issue deserves some dedicated time for discussion at the 
upcoming F2F but Inigo could add it as an agenda item. At the very least we 
should capture the group's preference and proceed accordingly.

Dimitris.


* "Clarifying" has been used before as a way of adding new requirements.




 

Aaron

 

On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 8:49 AM Dimitris Zacharopoulos (HARICA) 
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

 

On 14/5/2024 5:58 μ.μ., Aaron Gable wrote:

On Tue, May 14, 2024, 02:33 Dimitris Zacharopoulos (HARICA) via Servercert-wg 
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

Is it ok for such an Issuing CA to create a single-purpose client 
authentication TLS Certificate, one that is structured according to RFC 5280 
(thus can be successfully parsed by Relying Party RFC 5280-conformant 
software), contains an extKeyUsage extension which contains the 
id-kp-clientAuth and DOES NOT include the id-kp-serverAuth KeyPurposeId? 

 

Speaking in a personal capacity, it is my opinion that no, such issuance is not 
acceptable.

 

I agree that the resulting end-entity client-auth-only certificate is out of 
scope of the BRs, and is not in and of itself misissued. However, the issuing 
intermediate itself is still in scope of the BRs, and its behavior can be 
contained by them. By virtue of issuing the clientAuth cert, the issuing 
intermediate has violated the BRs requirement that "all certificates that it 
issues MUST comply with one of the following certificate profiles".

 

One could even argue that, having issued a certificate which does not comply 
with a BR profile, the issuing intermediate must be revoked within 7 days, per 
BRs Section 4.9.1.2 (5): "The Issuing CA SHALL revoke a Subordinate CA 
Certificate [if...] the Issuing CA is made aware that the... Subordinate CA has 
not complied with this document".

 

Aaron


Thanks Aaron, I tried to first establish the intent of the group before digging 
in the actual BRs. If we agree that the intent was to place rules only for 
Server TLS leaf Certificates but not for Client TLS Certificates, then we need 
to acknowledge that, and work within the document to fix any conflicts.

Dimitris.

 

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