String Specification for Certificates
draft-seantek-certspec-06
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draft-seantek-certspec-06
Network Working Group S. Leonard
Internet-Draft Penango, Inc.
Intended status: Standards Track June 8, 2016
Expires: December 10, 2016
String Specification for Certificates
draft-seantek-certspec-06
Abstract
Digital certificates are used in many systems and protocols to
identify and authenticate parties. This document describes a string
format that identifies certificates, along with optional attributes.
This string format has been engineered to work without re-encoding in
a variety of protocol slots.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on December 10, 2016.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Motivation and Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Static Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Relationship with Other Specifications . . . . . . . . . 5
3. certstring Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. certspec Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1. certspec Type and Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Standard Certificate Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.1. Cryptographic Hash-Based Specifications . . . . . . . . . 8
5.2. Content-Based Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.3. Element-Based Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.4. Path-Based Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. Other Certificate Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.1. DBKEY (Reserved) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.2. SELECT (Reserved) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Multiple certspecs (multispec) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8. Certificate Attributes (certattrs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8.1. ABNF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8.2. Mandatory Attribute Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8.3. Canonicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
9. Whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
10. Guidelines for Extending certspec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
11. Use of certspec in Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
12. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
13. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
14. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
14.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
14.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Appendix A. [[Omitted]] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Appendix B. Mandatory Attribute Descriptors for Distinguished
Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Appendix C. Recommended Attribute Descriptors for issuersn
certspec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Appendix D. Algorithm for Distinguishing Between (Public Key)
Certificates and Attribute Certificates . . . . . . 25
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1. Introduction
Digital certificates [RFC5280] are used in many systems and protocols
to identify and authenticate parties. Security considerations
frequently require that the certificate must be identified with
certainty, because selecting the wrong certificate will lead to
validation errors (resulting in denial of service), or in improper
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credential selection (resulting in unwanted disclosure or
substitution attacks). The goal of this document is to provide a
uniform syntax for identifying certificates with precision without
re-encoding in a variety of protocol slots.
Using this syntax, any protocol or system that refers to a
certificate in a textual format can unambiguously identify that
certificate by value or reference. Implementations that parse these
strings can resolve them into actual certificates. Examples include:
SHA-1:3ea3f070773971539b9dbf1b98c54be3a4f0f3c8
ISSUERSN:cn=AcmeIssuingCompany,st=California,c=US;0134F1
BASE64:MIIBHDCBxaADAgECAgIAmTAJBgcqhkjOPQQBMBAxDjAMBgNVBAMT
BVNtYWxsMB4XDTEzMTEwNTE5MjUzM1oXDTE2MDgwMjE5MjUzM1ow
EDEOMAwGA1UEAxMFU21hbGwwWTATBgcqhkjOPQIBBggqhkjOPQMB
BwNCAAS2kwRQ1thNMBMUq5d/SFdFr1uDidntNjXQrc3D/QpzYWkE
WDsxeY8xcbl2m0TBO4TJ/2CevdoOX0OMIOaqJ/TNoxAwDjAMBgNV
HRMBAf8EAjAAMAkGByqGSM49BAEDRwAwRAIgPyF8ok6h2NxMQ4uJ
OcGcXYcvZ1ua0kB+rIv0omHcfNECICKwpTp3LDIwhlHTQ/DulQDD
eYn+lnYQVc2Gm1WKAuxp
/etc/myserver.cer|friendlyName=fluffy the Tomcat
URI:https://certificates.example.com/acme/BAADF00D.cer
1.1. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
1.2. Definitions
The term "certificate" means either a certificate [RFC5280] or an
attribute certificate [RFC5755]. When a certificate [RFC5280] alone
is to be distinguished, this specification may use the term "public
key certificate".
The term "whitespace" means HT, VT, FF, LF, CR, and SP, when
referring to the ASCII range. An implementation SHOULD also consider
whitespace beyond the ASCII range, if the implementation supports it,
e.g., the characters that have the White_Space character property in
[UNICODE].)
The term "content" means a fixed sequence of octets (i.e., data) with
an Internet media type and optional parameters.
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2. Motivation and Purpose
Although certificates [RFC5280] have diverse applications, there has
been no uniform way to refer to a certificate in text. De-facto
standards such as PEM [RFC1421] and PKIX text encoding [RFC7468] are
used to include whole certificates in textual formats, but this
practice is impractical for a variety of use cases. Certificates
that identify long public keys (e.g., 2048-bit RSA keys) and that
contain required and recommended PKIX extensions can easily exceed
many kilobytes in length.
The purpose of this document is to provide a uniform textual format
for identifying individual certificates, with human usability as a
design goal. Certificate specifications, or "certspecs", are not
designed or intended to provide a search tool or query language to
match multiple certificates. The goal is to replace data elements
that would otherwise have to include whole certificates, or that
employ proprietary reference schemes. For example, certspecs fit
easily into XML/SGML data, YAML, JSON, and config files and databases
(e.g., .properties, .ini, and Windows Registry) with minimal required
escaping.
To be usable by humans, certspecs are supposed to be amenable to
copy-and-paste operations. The structure of a certspec is also
supposed to be plainly visible, do that someone glancing at a
certspec can ascertain the data types that it comprises.
2.1. Static Identification
Identifying a specific certificate by reference or value allows
diverse applications to have a common syntax. For example,
applications can store certspecs as local or shared preferences, so
that users can edit them without resorting to application-specific
storage formats or relying on the availability of particular
protocols represented by URIs (such as http:, ldap: [RFC4516], file:
[RFC1738], or ni: schemes). When conveyed in protocol, a certspec
can identify a specific certificate to a client or server using text-
based formats such as YAML, XML, JSON, and others. The format
described in this document is intended to be readily reproducible by
users using common certificate processing tools, so that users can
easily create, recognize, compare, and reproduce them at a glance.
For example, the hash-based identifications use hexadecimal encoding
so that a user can easily compose or compare an URN with a simple
copy-and-paste operation.
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2.2. Relationship with Other Specifications
Previous versions of this draft attempted to define certspecs as a
URN namespace, and then as a family of URI schemes. Certspecs were
found to be incompatible with these approaches for several
engineering reasons.
The definition of URN [I-D.ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn] changed during
the course of this draft's development, and as of this publication,
remains unclear. Overall, URNs are meant to be assigned durably and
persistently by namespace authorities. An algorithm that identifies
a datum with high but not absolute precision does not satisfy this
requirement, because the pigeonhole principle shows that there will
always be collisions for unbounded data sets, even though finding
particular collisions may be computationally infeasible. (The other
specification types are even less precise.)
URI schemes were also pursued and rejected. URIs have dereferencing
semantics, which could have significant security implications. When
a URI is dereferenced, an access mechanism is determined and an
action is performed on the URI's resource (see Section 1.2.2 of
[RFC3986]). When the URI scheme identifies an information retrieval
protocol, such as HTTP, the access mechanisms usually involve
performing actions on the resource (most commonly, retrieving the
resource). However, a wide variety of standardized and proprietary
URI schemes do not correspond to information retrieval protocols;
instead, these URI schemes serve to launch applications associated
with the scheme names. The practical effect of dereferencing a
mailto: URI [RFC6068], for example, is to launch a preferred e-mail
client from a user agent (e.g., a web browser), so that the user can
easily send e-mail to a recipient with certain fields pre-populated
by the contents of a URI. The practical effect of the ymsgr: URI
[PROVURI] is much more application and vendor-specific: dereferencing
such a URI is supposed to launch Yahoo! Messenger to send an instant
message to a designated Yahoo! screen name. The launching semantics
of URIs are exploited in modern consumer desktop and mobile operating
systems as a convenient methodology to launch an application from
another application, as well as to communicate application-specific
data between applications that otherwise have no privileged
relationship.
The arbitrary, misdirected, or outright malicious launching of
applications to handle certificates has grave security implications.
These risks are mitigated by avoiding URI schemes for certspecs.
URI schemes such as ni: [RFC6920] and data: identify resources in a
similar way as (for example) the hash and data-based spec types,
although they were not as usable for copy-and-paste operations.
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Resistance was encountered when new URI scheme names were proposed
that did similar things as ni: and data:, but with better usability
for this use case.
Nevertheless, this draft allows for specifying a certificate by URI,
recognizing that an implementation might categorically decline to
retrieve URI certspecs on security or other grounds.
To distinguish this syntax from URI syntax, this Internet-Draft
capitalizes the "introducer characters" of the various certspec types
and does not require that they be delimited with a colon, even though
these productions (mostly) are case-insensitive and (mostly) end with
a colon. OpenSSL's x509v3_config format inspired this aspect of the
syntax.
3. certstring Syntax
A certificate string ("certstring") is a string with a single
certspec (see Section 4) or multiple certspecs (a "multispec", see
Section 7), followed by an optional set of attributes ("certattrs",
see Section 8). While strings in this document can be in any
character encoding, the delimiter characters in this document are
drawn from ASCII; applications MUST support Unicode. The string has
the ABNF [RFC5234] below (TODO: case-sensitive ABNF, import core
rules).
certstring = (certspec / multispec) [ "|" certattrs ]
Figure 1: certstring ABNF
4. certspec Syntax
A certspec is a string that is intended to identify a single
certificate. A certspec has introducer characters followed by value
characters; these introducer characters MAY be part of the "value" of
the identifier. The string has the ABNF [RFC5234] below (TODO: case-
sensitive ABNF, import core rules).
certspec = certspec-hash / certspec-content / certspec-el /
certspec-path
hexOctet = 2HEXDIG
certspec-hash = "SHA-1" ":" 20hexOctet /
"SHA-256" ":" 32hexOctet /
"SHA-384" ":" 48hexOctet /
"SHA-512" ":" 64hexOctet /
certspec-other-hash
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certspec-other-hash = certspec-hash-type ":" certspec-hash-value
; Proposal: Hash Function Textual Name registry hereby limited
; to RFC 3986 scheme characters
certspec-hash-type = scheme
; implication is that it must be at least 128 bits
certspec-hash-value = 16*hexOctet
certspec-content = ("HEX" / "BASE16") ":" 1*hexOctet /
"BASE64" ":" base64string
base64char = ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "/"
base64string = 1*(4base64char)
[ 3base64char "=" / 2base64char "==" ]
; distinguishedName from [RFC4514]
certspec-el = "ISSUERSN" ":" distinguishedName ";" serialNumber /
"SKI" ":" 1*(hexOctet)
serialNumber = 1*hexOctet
certspec-path = certspec-uri / certspec-filepath
; from RFC3986; RFC 6570
certspec-uri = "URI:" URI-reference / URI-Template
; see POSIX, etc.
certspec-filepath = ("/" / "\" / [A-Z] ":" /
("." / "..") ("/" / "\") / "~" / "%" / "$")
*filepathchar
; BEYONDASCII is from draft-seantek-more-core-rules
filepathchar = %x01-29 / %x2B-3B / "=" / %x40-5B /
%x5D-7B / %x7D-7F / quoted-fpc / BEYONDASCII
quoted-fpc = "\" ("*" / "<" / ">" / "?" / "\" / "|")
; TODO: validate Windows file path characters
; TODO: certattrs
Figure 2: certspec ABNF
4.1. certspec Type and Value
Semantically, a certspec is comprised of its type and value. The
value is always provided, but the type is either explicitly declared,
or is inferred from the initial (introducer) characters in the type.
When types are explicitly provided, they are compared case-
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insensitively. The certspec-value identifies the certificate
specification value.
Several certspecs use hexadecimal encodings of octets. Generally: if
the hex octets are malformed (whether in the source material, such as
the corresponding certificate element, or in the hex text), the
certspec is invalid.
5. Standard Certificate Specifications
Standard certificate specifications are intended for interchange as
intuitive (to users and developers) identifiers for individual
certificates. This section provides four cryptographic hash-based
certspecs, two content-based certspecs, three element-based
certspecs, and two path-based certspecs.
5.1. Cryptographic Hash-Based Specifications
A cryptographic hash or "fingerprint" of a certificate uniquely
identifies that certificate. For hash-based certspecs, the hash is
computed over the octets of the DER encoding of the certificate,
namely, the Certificate type in Section 4.1 of [RFC5280] and the
AttributeCertificate type in Section 4.1 of [RFC5755]. The certspec-
value is the hexadecimal encoding of the hash value octets. For
example, a 256-bit SHA-256 hash is represented by exactly 32 hex
octets, or 64 hex characters. The hexadecimal encoding is not case
sensitive.
A conforming generator SHALL emit only hexadecimal encoded data,
i.e., the characters A-F (case-insensitive) and 0-9.
A conforming parser SHALL accept value productions that contain the
following non-hex digits: whitespace, hyphen, and colon. A
conforming parser MAY accept values that contain other characters.
Conforming implementations to this Internet-Draft MUST process these
hash-based certspecs, unless security considerations dictate
otherwise. Acceptable reasons for refusing to process a certspec
include a) the local policy prohibits use of the hash, or b) the hash
has known cryptographic weaknesses, such as a preimage attacks, which
weaken the cryptographic uniqueness guarantees of the hash.
5.1.1. SHA-1
The introducer production is "SHA-1:". The hash is computed using
SHA-1 [SHS].
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5.1.2. SHA-256
The introducer production is "SHA-256:". The hash is computed using
SHA-256 [SHS].
5.1.3. SHA-384
The introducer production is "SHA-384:". The hash is computed using
SHA-384 [SHS].
5.1.4. SHA-512
The introducer production is "SHA-512:". The hash is computed using
SHA-512 [SHS].
5.2. Content-Based Specifications
Content-based certspecs identify certificates by their constituent
octets. For small-to-medium certificates, identifying the
certificate by embedding it in the certspec will be computationally
efficient and resistant to denial-of-service attacks (by always being
available). A conforming implementation MUST implement base64 and
hex specs.
The octets of a certificate are the octets of the DER encoding of the
certificate, namely, the Certificate type in Section 4.1 of [RFC5280]
and the AttributeCertificate type in Section 4.1 of [RFC5755]. The
DER encoding includes tag and length octets, so it always starts with
30h (the tag for SEQUENCE).
Because users may end up copying and pasting base64 or hex-encoded
certificates into certspecs, and because these certspecs will
routinely exceed 72 characters, a production might contain embedded
whitespace. A conforming generator SHALL emit no whitespace, or
SHALL emit a hanging indent, between semantically significant
characters.
5.2.1. BASE64
The introducer production is "BASE64:". The value production is the
BASE64 encoding of the certificate octets (Section 4 of [RFC4648]).
[[NB: base64url syntax was explicitly considered and rejected for
this draft. This is because certspecs are no longer URIs.]]
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5.2.2. HEX and BASE16
The introducer production is "HEX:" or "BASE16:". Generators MUST
generate "HEX:"; parsers MUST accept "HEX:" and "BASE16:". The value
production is the hexadecimal encoding of the certificate octets.
5.3. Element-Based Specifications
A certificate may be identified by certain data elements contained
within it. The following certspecs reflect the traditional reliance
of PKIX [RFC5280] and CMS [RFC5652] on a certificate's issuer
distinguished name and serial number, a certificate's subject
distinguished name and expiration, or a certificate's subject key
identifier.
Note that distinguished names can contain "|" in attribute value
strings, but this production is unambiguous with the certattr
delimiter because distinguished names are always terminated by ";".
5.3.1. ISSUERSN: Issuer Name and Serial Number
The introducer production is "ISSUERSN:".
5.3.1.1. Issuer
The distinguishedName production encodes the certificate's issuer
distinguished name (DN) field in LDAP string format [RFC4514].
[RFC4514] no longer separates relative distinguished names (RDNs) by
semicolons, as required by its predecessor, [RFC2253]. Accordingly,
";" is used to separate the issuer's DN from the subject's serial
number.
5.3.1.2. Serial Number
The serialNumber production is the hexadecimal encoding the DER-
encoded contents octets of the CertificateSerialNumber (INTEGER,
i.e., not the type or length octets) as specified in Section 4.1.2.2
of [RFC5280].
5.3.1.2.1. Conformance
A conforming implementation SHALL implement the ISSUERSN certspec.
An implementation MUST process serial numbers up to the same length
as required by Section 4.1.2.2 of [RFC5280] (20 octets), and MUST
process distinguished name strings as required by [RFC4514],
including the table of minimum AttributeType name strings that MUST
be recognized. Additionally, implementations MUST process attribute
descriptors specified in [RFC5280] (MUST or SHOULD), and [RFC5750]
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(specifically: E, email, emailAddress). For reference, a complete
list of required attribute descriptors is provided in Appendix B.
Implementations are encouraged to recognize additional attribute
descriptors where possible. A sample list of such attribute
descriptors is provided in Appendix C. Conforming implementations
MUST be able to parse all distinguished name attribute types that are
encoded in OID dotted decimal form, as well as all distinguished name
attribute values that are encoded in "#" hexadecimal form.
5.3.1.3. SUBJECTEXP: Subject and Expiration
The introducer production is "SUBJECTEXP:". The value production is
the [RFC4514] encoding of the subject distinguished name, followed by
a semicolon, followed by the certificate expiration expressed in
standard form [[TODO: ASN.1 text form, or RFC3339 form? Proposal is
to allow both. ASN.1 text form: GeneralizedTime with four-digit
years (UTCTime/four-digit years SHALL NOT be used), in accordance
with Section 4.1.2.5.2 of [RFC5280]. RFC3339 form: The date-time
production from [RFC3339]. (The production requires the full four-
digit year, but allows for a time zone offset. Time zone offsets
MUST be supported on usability grounds.)]] The certificate's
expiration is the notAfter value of the certificate validity period
(Section 4.1.2.5 of [RFC5280]).
A conforming implementation SHALL parse and generate distinguished
name productions with the same adherence as stated above in
Section 5.3.1.2.1.
5.3.1.4. ski: Subject Key Identifier
The introducer production is "SKI:". The value production is the
hexadecimal encoding of the certificate's subject key identifier,
which is recorded in the certificate's Subject Key Identifier
extension (Section 4.2.1.2 of [RFC5280]). The octets are the DER-
encoded contents octets of the SubjectKeyIdentifier (OCTET STRING)
extension value. For a certificate that lacks a subject key
identifier, an underlying implementation MAY operatively associate a
subject key identifier with the certificate.
A conforming generator SHALL emit only hexadecimal encoded data,
i.e., the characters A-F (case-insensitive) and 0-9.
A conforming parser SHALL accept value productions that contain the
following non-hex digits: whitespace (HT, VT, SP, FF, CR, LF),
hyphen, and colon. A conforming parser MAY accept values that
contain other characters.
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5.4. Path-Based Specifications
A certificate may be identified by a path to file or content data. A
conforming parser MUST recognize file path and URI specs, although
conforming implementations merely MAY process them.
5.4.1. File Path
File paths are identified by their introducer productions / \ [A-Z]:
./ ../ .\ ..\ ~ % and $. The characters that follow MUST be valid
path characters for the system on which the files are being accessed.
Since the starting character sequences for file paths are fixed and
determinable, prefixing the file path with a type identifier is
(thought to be) unnecessary.
A relative file path begins with "." or "..", and is relative to a
"current directory". Determining an appropriate "current directory"
is outside the scope of this specification.
When the file is read, implementations MUST accept the following,
regardless of filename:
1. Textual data, which is analyzed as if it were text/plain content
(below)
2. Raw octet-oriented data, which is analyzed as if it were
application/octet-stream content (below)
File paths may have unexpanded environment variables, such as
%USERNAME% or ${LOGNAME}; implementations MUST parse these
environment variable syntaxes, but merely MAY perform environment
variable substitution as environment, capability, and security
concerns dictate.
Note that Unix-oriented file paths can contain "|" in the production
"\|", but this production is unambiguous with the certattr delimiter.
5.4.2. URI
The introducer production is "URI:". The value is a [RFC3986]
conforming URI-reference or [RFC6570] conforming URI-Template.
In the context of URIs, a relative reference conforms to the
relative-ref production of [RFC3986] and the usage described in
Section 4.2 of [RFC3986], it is relative to a "base URI".
Determining an appropriate "base URI" is outside the scope of this
specification.
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When the URI is dereferenced, implementations MUST accept the
following, regardless of the path or query productions:
1. Content with media type application/pkix-cert and application/
pkix-attr-cert
2. Content with media type application/pkcs7-mime and application/
cms, when the content represents a SignedData containing
certificates (regardless of the smime-type or
encapsulatingContent parameters, and regardless of whether or not
the SignedData is in a degenerate, certs-only format)
3. Content with media type text/plain, which is analyzed according
to [RFC7468] for "CERTIFICATE" and "ATTRIBUTE CERTIFICATE"
textual encodings
4. Content with media type application/octet-stream, which is
analyzed for textual or [X.690] data
5. Raw textual data, which is analyzed as if it were text/plain
6. Raw octet-oriented data, which is analyzed as if it were
application/octet-stream
The URI certspec can include a fragment identifier. Implementations
MUST parse fragment identifiers, but merely MAY perform "secondary
resource" isolation and processing as environment, capability, and
security concerns dictate.
The URI certspec can be a URI Template [RFC6570]. Implementations
MUST parse URI templates, but merely MAY expand them in accordance
with [RFC6570] as environment, capability, and security concerns
dictate.
Note that URI templates can contain "|" in the production "{|".."}",
but this production is unambiguous with the certattr delimiter.
6. Other Certificate Specifications
The additional certificate specifications in this section are
provided for applications to use as local identifiers that are
useful, intuitive, or supportive of legacy systems or overriding
design goals. These certspecs SHOULD NOT be used for interchange.
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6.1. DBKEY (Reserved)
The introducer production is "DBKEY:". The DBKEY certspec is meant
for an opaque string that serves as the unique key to a certificate
in an implementation's certificate database. This document reserves
this introducer sequence for future use.
6.2. SELECT (Reserved)
The introducer production is "SELECT" (without a colon). The SELECT
certspec is meant for a valid SQL statement (suitably escaped) that
retrieves a row representing a certificate. This document reserves
this introducer sequence for future use.
7. Multiple certspecs (multispec)
A multispec is a string that contains multiple certspecs, each of
which is intended to identify the exact same certificate. If
multiple certificates match a single spec, a single certificate can
be returned by the access operation, so long as the intersection of
certificates identified by all of the certspecs in the multispec is
one. The purpose of multispec is to provide multiple access and
verification methods. For example, a hash algorithm may have known
weaknesses, but may be the most efficient way to identify a
certificate (e.g., because it is the index method). Providing
additional certspecs (i.e., strong hash algorithms) would increase
the certainty that the correct certificate is accessed.
As the certspecs above make use of almost all other characters in the
ASCII range, < and > have been chosen to delimit certspecs between
each other. (Whitespace can also appear between each < and >
delimited certspec.) The ABNF of multispec is:
multispec = 1*("<" certspec ">")
Figure 3: multispec ABNF
8. Certificate Attributes (certattrs)
A certificate can have additional attributes (i.e., metadata)
operatively associated with--but not intrinsic to--it. For example,
the additional attributes may represent preferences. The syntax is
intended primarily to convey certificate metadata such as attributes
found in PKCS #9 [RFC2985], PKCS #11 [PKCS11], PKCS #12 [RFC7292],
and particular implementations of cryptographic libraries.
Certattrs are delimited from a certspec or multispec production with
"|". Each certattr SHALL have a corresponding ASN.1 definition. The
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textual syntax of certattrs is very similar to (in fact, a superset
of) [RFC4514]: the certattrs production represents the PKCS
Attributes family of types, which are repeatedly defined in those
standards, and standards that derive from them, as
SET SIZE (1..MAX) OF Attribute. E.g., CMS (from PKCS #7) [RFC5652],
private keys (from PKCS #8) [RFC5958], and PKCS #12 [RFC7292].
Attributes are semantically unordered. Multiple attributes are
separated with ",".
Each attribute has a single attrType (canonically defined as OBJECT
IDENTIFIER in [RFC5652]), and a SET OF attrValues. The attrType is
encoded as the string representation of AttributeType (that is,
either a registered short name (descriptor) [RFC4520], or the dotted-
decimal encoding, <numericoid> of the OBJECT IDENTIFIER [RFC4512]).
When an attribute has at least one value, the attrType is followed by
"=" and the encoding of the attrValues (empty strings are possible).
Multiple attrValues are separated by "+". When the attribute has no
values, the attrType MUST NOT be followed by "=".
An attrValue can have one of several encodings:
hex: The attrValue can always be represented by "#" followed by the
hexadecimal encoding of each of the octets of the BER encoding of the
attrValue, following paragraph 1 of Section 2.4 of [RFC4514].
Implementations MUST support this encoding.
string: If the attrValue has a LDAP-specific string encoding, that
encoding can be used as the string representation of the value, with
characters suitably escaped according to paragraph 2 and onward of
Section 2.4 of [RFC4514]. Implementations SHOULD support this
encoding for attributes of interest to it.
XER: The attrValue can be represented by its BASIC-XER encoding
[X.693] (Clause 8). When in BASIC-XER encoding, the string MUST be a
complete XML fragment comprising one element, i.e., there SHALL NOT
be an XML prolog. XER encoding is self-delimiting because it has
balanced elements; this string always begins with "<" and ends with
">". Processing is simplified compared to arbitrary XML in that XML
processing instructions, XML comments, and CDATA sections are
prohibited. Implementations MAY support this encoding.
ASN.1 value: The attrValue can be represented by its ASN.1 value
notation [X.680], enclosed in quotation marks <"> on both ends.
[[NB: per RFC 4514, a leading space might also be unambiguous.]]
ASN.1 value notation requires a bit of finesse in that <"> can appear
inside to delimit "cstring" lexical items (see Clause 12.14 and
Clause 41 of [X.680]). A "cstring" starts and ends with <">, and can
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represent <"> internally with a pair of consecutive <">. Therefore,
<"> is balanced because it always occurs in multiples of two. If the
value is just a cstring, then the representation will have exactly
two <"> at the beginning, and two <"> at the end, with evenly-
balanced <"> pairs inside. Other values that are not composites
(enclosed with "{" and "}") do not have <"> occur within them.
Otherwise, the representation must have at least one "{" "}" balanced
pair at either end, hemming in <"> occurrences to within the balanced
pairs of "{" and "}". Implementations MAY support this encoding.
Of the attrValue encodings listed above, only "hex" can reliably
transfer the underlying BER representation without an implementation
maintaining specific knowledge of every attribute. Therefore, "hex"
is RECOMMENDED for open interchange of certattrs.
8.1. ABNF
The collective ABNF of certattrs is:
certattrs = certattr ["," certattrs]
certattr = certattrType ["=" certattrValues]
; descr, numericoid from RFC 4512
certattrType = descr / numericoid
certattrValues = certattrValue ["+" certAttrValues]
; string, hexstring from RFC 4514
certattrValue = hexstring / string /
basic-xer-string / asn1-value-string
; TODO: complete basic-xer-string, asn1-value-string
basic-xer-string = "<" <balanced tags> ">"
; TODO: may also distinguish with leading space " "--think about it
asn1-value-string = %x22 <balanced quotation marks> %x22
Figure 4: certattrs ABNF
8.2. Mandatory Attribute Support
[[NB: attributes related to certificate objects are in the domain of
CMS attributes, NOT distinguished name attributes. Therefore,
referring to the LDAP Object Identifier Descriptors subregistry may
actually be inappropriate, since it's pretty much filled with
attributes that one would encounter for distinguished names. The
"CMS attributes" encompass things like friendlyName and
smimeCapabilities from PKCS #9; they are a disjoint set from
distinguished name attributes. "CMS attributes" also encompass
things like signingTime and messageDigest; these attributes are not
interesting with respect to certificate objects.]]
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A conforming implementation that supports certattrs SHALL process the
following attributes, including recognizing the following short names
(descriptors) and associated LDAP-specific string encodings.
friendlyName (1.2.840.113549.1.9.20) from PKCS #9 [RFC2985]
localKeyId (1.2.840.113549.1.9.21) from PKCS #9 [RFC2985]
signingDescription (1.2.840.113549.1.9.13) from PKCS #9 [RFC2985]
smimeCapabilities (1.2.840.113549.1.9.15) from PKCS #9 [RFC2985]
[[NB: smimeCapabilities does not have a SYNTAX with an LDAP-specific
encoding. ASN.1 value notation is probably the most readable
alternative, but support for ASN.1 value notation remains OPTIONAL.]]
8.3. Canonicalization
The certattrs production is a textual encoding of the ASN.1
SET SIZE (1..MAX) OF Attribute. The textual format in this section
is not intended to be used as any kind of canonical form. The
canonical form is the DER encoding of the corresponding
SET SIZE (1..MAX) OF Attribute.
9. Whitespace
This specification is intended for textual data that may be visible
to or edited by humans. Whitespace is a key factor in usability, so
this specification permits whitespace in certain productions.
The certspec, multispec, certattrs, and certstring productions are
ideally emitted as one (long) line. The overall intent is that a
bare line break (without leading or trailing horizontal space) is
supposed to delimit these productions from each other.
If it is desirable to break one of these productions across multiple
lines, a hanging indent SHALL be used at syntactically appropriate
places. A hanging indent means a newline production (LF, CRLF, or
other characters appropriate to the character set, e.g., [[UNICODE]])
followed by one or more horizontal space characters. The preferred
horizontal space production is a single SP character.
Generally, where whitespace is permitted, the whitespace either has
no semantic meaning and therefore can be collapsed to a zero-length
substring, i.e., skipped, or can be folded into a single whitespace
character, i.e., a single SP.
Productions that represent the hexadecimal (or base64) encodings of
octets MAY have arbitrary whitespace interspersed between the
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hexadecimal (or base64) characters. The whitespace has no semantic
meaning, and can be collapsed. Certspec and certattrs parsers that
parse "#" delimited attribute values in distinguished names and
certificate attributes MAY accept and collapse whitespace; however,
such whitespace is not permitted by [RFC4514]. Note that the
attribute value MUST begin with "#"; there MUST NOT be leading
whitespace.
A parser MAY accept whitespace preceding the certattrType production
in certattrs.
A parser MAY accept whitespace between each angle-bracket-delimited
certspec in the multispec production.
A parser MAY accept whitespace preceding the attributeType production
in distinguishedName.
Generally, whitespace characters in values are otherwise considered
to be semantically meaningful. A generator SHOULD encode such
characters (e.g., with hexpair [RFC4514]) to avoid ambiguity or
corruption.
10. Guidelines for Extending certspec
The certspec definition presented in this document is intended to be
fairly comprehensive. Nevertheless, there are several points of
extension for implementors who may want to identify a certificate
with more than what is presented in this document.
Firstly, certspec is naturally extended by supporting additional hash
algorithms. The hash introducer characters are tied to the Hash
Function Textual Names Registry; adding a new hash algorithm to that
registry is necessary for certificates to get identified with that
hash algorithm under this specification. However, for security
reasons, the introducers "MD2" and "MD5" SHALL NOT be generated or
parsed.
Secondly, certspec allows for the full range of "local" identifiers
(i.e., file paths, which may not actually be local) and "network"
identifiers (i.e., URIs, which may not actually need the network). A
certspec implementation that can make use of these facilities can
naturally be extended by extending the path (e.g., with pipes and
mount points) or the URI topology (e.g., with novel URI schemes).
Implementations MAY recognize other types of certspecs. However, new
types intended for open interchange require an update to this
document.
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A new certspec SHALL satisfy the following criteria:
1. The type is identified by a keyword, followed by ":", or, the
type is identified by very short sequences of characters that
unambiguously signal the type of the certspec value (as file
paths currently do). The specification MUST state whether the
introducer characters are case-sensitive.
2. The characters "<", ">", and "|" need to be distinguishable from
their uses in multispec and certattrs (certstring) using a
context-free grammar, e.g., ABNF.
3. [[TODO: further elaborate, or remove.]] If internal whitespace
(including line-breaking) is permitted, the internal whitespace
is consistent with this specification.
11. Use of certspec in Systems
certspec is useful wherever a system may need to include or refer to
a certificate. Some systems may wish to refer to a certificate
without enabling all of the expressive power (and security
considerations) of all strings in this specification. Accordingly,
those systems and specifications SHOULD develop profiles of this
specification.
This document guarantees that the introducer characters "URN:" and
"CERT:" are RESERVED and will never be used. Implementors MUST take
note that a raw certspec is not a valid URI: certspec-types are not
registered URI schemes, have a broader character repertoire than
permitted by [RFC3986], and do not have the same semantics as URIs.
12. IANA Considerations
This document implies no IANA considerations.
13. Security Considerations
Digital certificates are important building blocks for
authentication, integrity, authorization, and (occasionally)
confidentiality services. Accordingly, identifying digital
certificates incorrectly can have significant security ramifications.
When using hash-based certspecs, the cryptographic hash algorithm
MUST be implemented properly and SHOULD have no known attack vectors.
For this reason, algorithms that are considered "broken" as of the
date of this Internet-Draft, such as MD5 [RFC6151], are precluded
from being valid certspecs. The registration of a particular
algorithm spec in this namespace does NOT mean that it is acceptable
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or safe for every usage, even though this Internet-Draft requires
that a conforming implementation MUST implement certain specs.
When using content-based certspecs, the implementation MUST be
prepared to process strings of arbitrary length. As of this writing,
useful certificates rarely exceed 10KB, and most implementations are
concerned with keeping certificate sizes down. However, a
pathological or malicious certificate could easily exceed these
metrics.
When using element-based certspecs, the implementation MUST be
prepared to deal with multiple found certificates that contain the
same certificate data, but are not the same certificate. In such a
case, the implementation MUST segregate these certificates so that
the implementation only continues with certificates that it considers
valid or trustworthy (as discussed further below). If, despite this
segregation, multiple valid or trustworthy certificates match the
certspec, the certspec (not in a multispec) MUST be rejected, because
a certspec is meant to identify exactly one certificate (not a family
of certificates).
Certificates identified by certspecs should only be used with an
analysis of their validity, such as by computing the Certification
Path Validation Algorithm (Section 6 of [RFC5280]) or by other means.
For example, if a certificate database contains a set of certificates
that it considers inherently trustworthy, then the inclusion of a
certificate in that set makes it trustworthy, regardless of the
results of the Certification Path Validation Algorithm. Such a
database is frequently used for "Root CA" lists.
14. References
14.1. Normative References
[LDAPDESC]
IANA, "LDAP Parameters: Object Identifier Descriptors",
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/
ldap-parameters#ldap-parameters-3>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2585] Housley, R. and P. Hoffman, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Operational Protocols: FTP and HTTP", RFC
2585, May 1999.
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[RFC3339] Klyne, G. and C. Newman, "Date and Time on the Internet:
Timestamps", RFC 3339, DOI 10.17487/RFC3339, July 2002,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3339>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC
3986, January 2005.
[RFC4512] Zeilenga, K., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
(LDAP): Directory Information Models", RFC 4512, June
2006.
[RFC4514] Zeilenga, K., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
(LDAP): String Representation of Distinguished Names", RFC
4514, June 2006.
[RFC4517] Legg, S., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP):
Syntaxes and Matching Rules", RFC 4517, June 2006.
[RFC4520] Zeilenga, K., "Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
Considerations for the Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP)", BCP 64, RFC 4520, DOI 10.17487/RFC4520,
June 2006, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4520>.
[RFC4648] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
Encodings", RFC 4648, October 2006.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008.
[RFC5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List
(CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008.
[RFC5750] Ramsdell, B. and S. Turner, "Secure/Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 3.2 Certificate
Handling", RFC 5750, January 2010.
[RFC5755] Farrell, S., Housley, R., and S. Turner, "An Internet
Attribute Certificate Profile for Authorization", RFC
5755, January 2010.
[RFC6570] Gregorio, J., Fielding, R., Hadley, M., Nottingham, M.,
and D. Orchard, "URI Template", RFC 6570, DOI 10.17487/
RFC6570, March 2012,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6570>.
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[RFC7468] Josefsson, S. and S. Leonard, "Textual Encodings of PKIX,
PKCS, and CMS Structures", RFC 7468, DOI 10.17487/RFC7468,
April 2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7468>.
[SHS] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Secure
Hash Standard", Federal Information Processing Standard
(FIPS) 180-4, March 2012,
<http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips180-4/
fips-180-4.pdf>.
14.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn]
Saint-Andre, P. and J. Klensin, "Uniform Resource Names
(URNs)", draft-ietf-urnbis-rfc2141bis-urn-16 (work in
progress), April 2016.
[PKCS11] RSA Laboratories, "PKCS #11 v2.30: Cryptographic Token
Interface Standard", PKCS 11, April 2009.
[PROVURI] IANA, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Schemes:
Provisional URI Schemes",
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/
uri-schemes.xml#uri-schemes-2>.
[RFC1421] Linn, J., "Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic
Mail: Part I: Message Encryption and Authentication
Procedures", RFC 1421, February 1993.
[RFC1738] Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and M. McCahill, "Uniform
Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, December 1994.
[RFC2253] Wahl, M., Kille, S., and T. Howes, "Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol (v3): UTF-8 String Representation of
Distinguished Names", RFC 2253, December 1997.
[RFC2985] Nystrom, M. and B. Kaliski, "PKCS #9: Selected Object
Classes and Attribute Types Version 2.0", RFC 2985,
November 2000.
[RFC4516] Smith, M. and T. Howes, "Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP): Uniform Resource Locator", RFC 4516, June
2006.
[RFC5652] Housley, R., "Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)", STD 70,
RFC 5652, September 2009.
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[RFC5958] Turner, S., "Asymmetric Key Packages", RFC 5958, August
2010.
[RFC6068] Duerst, M., Masinter, L., and J. Zawinski, "The 'mailto'
URI Scheme", RFC 6068, October 2010.
[RFC6151] Turner, S. and L. Chen, "Updated Security Considerations
for the MD5 Message-Digest and the HMAC-MD5 Algorithms",
RFC 6151, March 2011.
[RFC6920] Farrell, S., Kutscher, D., Dannewitz, C., Ohlman, B.,
Keranen, A., and P. Hallam-Baker, "Naming Things with
Hashes", RFC 6920, April 2013.
[RFC7292] Moriarty, K., Nystrom, M., Parkinson, S., Rusch, A., and
M. Scott, "PKCS #12: Personal Information Exchange Syntax
v1.1", RFC 7292, July 2014.
[UNICODE] The Unicode Consortium, "The Unicode Standard, Version
8.0.0", ISBN 978-1-936213-10-8, August 2015.
Mountain View, CA: The Unicode Consortium.
[X.680] International Telecommunications Union, "Abstract Syntax
Notation One (ASN.1): Specification of basic notation",
ITU-T Recommendation X.680, August 2015, <https://itu.int/
ITU-T/X.680>.
[X.690] International Telecommunications Union, "ASN.1 encoding
rules: Specification of basic encoding Rules (BER),
Canonical encoding rules (CER) and Distinguished encoding
rules (DER)", ITU-T Recommendation X.690, August 2015,
<https://itu.int/ITU-T/X.690>.
[X.693] International Telecommunications Union, "ASN.1 encoding
rules: XML Encoding Rules (XER)", ITU-T Recommendation
X.693, August 2015, <https://itu.int/ITU-T/X.693>.
Appendix A. [[Omitted]]
[[Omitted in this draft.]]
Appendix B. Mandatory Attribute Descriptors for Distinguished Names
As per [RFC4514], attribute descriptors case-insensitive. A
conformant implementation MUST recognize the attributes in the table
below when parsing certspecs containing distinguished names, both by
the OIDs and by the names recorded in the LDAP Parameters: Object
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Identifier Descriptors registry [LDAPDESC]. A conforming generator
SHOULD emit these attribute descriptors in lieu of their dotted
decimal representations.
+----------------------------+-------------------------------+------+
| OID | Names | RFC |
+----------------------------+-------------------------------+------+
| 2.5.4.3 | cn (CN) | 4514 |
| | commonName | |
| 2.5.4.7 | l (L) | 4514 |
| | localityName | |
| 2.5.4.8 | st (ST) | 4514 |
| | (S)* | |
| | stateOrProvinceName | |
| 2.5.4.10 | o (O) | 4514 |
| | organizationName | |
| 2.5.4.11 | ou (OU) | 4514 |
| | organizationalUnitName | |
| 2.5.4.6 | c (C) | 4514 |
| | countryName | |
| 2.5.4.9 | street (STREET) | 4514 |
| | streetAddress | |
| 0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.25 | dc (DC) | 4514 |
| | domainComponent | |
| 0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.1 | uid (UID) | 4514 |
| | userId | |
| 2.5.4.5 | serialNumber (SERIALNUMBER) | 5280 |
| 2.5.4.46 | dnQualifier (DNQUALIFIER) | 5280 |
| 2.5.4.4 | sn (SN) | 5280 |
| | surname | |
| 2.5.4.42 | gn (GN)** | 5280 |
| | givenName | |
| 2.5.4.12 | (T)* | 5280 |
| | title | |
| 2.5.4.43 | (I)* | 5280 |
| | initials | |
| 2.5.4.44 | (GENQUALIFIER)* | 5280 |
| | generationQualifier | |
| | (GENERATIONQUALIFIER) | |
| 2.5.4.65 | (PNYM)* | 5280 |
| | pseudonym (PSEUDONYM) | |
| 1.2.840.113549.1.9.1 | (E)* | 5750 |
| | emailAddress | |
| | email | |
+----------------------------+-------------------------------+------+
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Names in parentheses are variations that are not assigned as such in
[LDAPDESC]. Implementations MAY parse these names, but SHOULD NOT
generate them.
Names in ALL-CAPS may be emitted by some certificate-processing
applications; these names are compatible with lowercase or mixed-case
variations due to case-insensitivity.
* Name may appear in some implementations, but is not in [LDAPDESC].
** Name commonly appears in implementations, but is RESERVED in
[LDAPDESC]. Conforming implementations MAY generate this name from
2.5.4.42 and MUST parse this name as 2.5.4.42, despite its RESERVED
status.
Table 1: Attribute Descriptors
Appendix C. Recommended Attribute Descriptors for issuersn certspec
As per [RFC4514], attribute descriptors case-insensitive. [[TODO:
complete. Probably date of birth, place of birth, gender, etc.
already defined elsewhere.]]
Appendix D. Algorithm for Distinguishing Between (Public Key)
Certificates and Attribute Certificates
A certspec can identify a (public key) certificate ("PKC") or an
attribute certificate ("AC"). When the type of certificate is
specified unambiguously in the source data, an implementation SHOULD
follow specifier in the source data. However, of the certspecs
listed in this document, only a subset of URIs are capable of
unambiguous specification (e.g., via Internet media type designation
of application/pkix-cert or application/pkix-attr-cert). (The file
extension ought not be considered a reliable indicator of the type.)
Most other certspecs will return a blob of bytes or characters.
Therefore, an implementation needs to implement some content-sniffing
to figure out what the data represents. There are two (not entirely
orthogonal) decisions: is the data textual [RFC7468] or binary (i.e.,
DER-encoded), and does the data represent a PKC or AC? (Note: The
data-based certspecs BASE64 and HEX, always represent one DER-encoded
certificate or ContentInfo/SignedData; the encodings MUST NOT encode
a textual blob.)
This appendix provides an informative algorithm that implementations
MAY use to do such content-sniffing.
Ensure that the first octet is SEQUENCE 30h.
If there are 2 elements -> confirm that the first element is OBJECT
IDENTIFIER 1.2.840.113549.1.7.2 and the second element is explicitly
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tagged (APPLICATION 0, A0). This is a ContentInfo containing
SignedData.
Otherwise, ensure that there are 3 elements, and that the first
element is a SEQUENCE 30h (either AttributeCertificateInfo or
TBSCertificate).
this SEQUENCE has: 6, 7, or 7+ elements
if 6 elements -> V1 certificate
if 7+ elements ->
look at version filed (first element)
if INTEGER (UNIVERSAL 2), it's an attribute certificate
if explicitly tagged (APPLICATION 0, A0) and the contents are INTEGER
(UNIVERSAL 2), it's a public key certificate.
otherwise -> malformed, not in DER.
*END*
If DER (or DER-like material, i.e., BER that an application chooses
to accept as if it were DER anyway) is found, the complete
certificate SHOULD be the only PDU in the data blob, and SHOULD
occupy the entirety of the data blob. Pathological cases may exist,
however, where data is appended to the end of the blob, that is not
part of the certificate. An implementation has three choices: a)
ignore the data, b) attempt to parse the data for additional
certificates, c) reject the entire data blob as malformed (thus,
rejecting at least the initial identified certificate). c) is valid
behavior. a) depends on the nature of the identification (e.g., if
the certspec is a hash, the application MUST confirm that the hash is
computed over the actual certificate octets, and does not include the
jetsam past the end of the certificate). If b) is attempted, the
implementation MUST verify that the first certificate matches the
identification (see comment on a) ), and that subsequent
certificates, if found, match the identification as well.
If the data blob is found not to contain DER (or DER-like material,
see above), the data may be textual. [RFC7468] outlines the
possibilities of PKIX structures that could be present in such text.
After determining one or more appropriate encoding possibilities, an
implementation MUST scan the entire textual blob and handle the
possibility that multiple certificates might be present. The
implementation MUST NOT stop at parsing the first one, the last one,
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or some middle one after it "tires out". Parsers SHOULD [[NB: or
MUST, or MUST NOT??]] treat the label on a textually encoded item as
definitive; therefore, parsers SHOULD NOT need to [[NB: or MUST NOT,
or MUST??]] process all textually encoded items. [[NB: compare with
Content-Type, which this document considers definitive: mislabeled
contents get punished.]]
Author's Address
Sean Leonard
Penango, Inc.
5900 Wilshire Boulevard
21st Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90036
USA
Email: dev+ietf@seantek.com
URI: http://www.penango.com/
Leonard Expires December 10, 2016 [Page 27]