Digital Signatures on Internet-Draft Documents
RFC 5485

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Network Working Group                                         R. Housley
Request for Comments: 5485                                Vigil Security
Category: Informational                                       March 2009

             Digital Signatures on Internet-Draft Documents

Status of This Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2009 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 in effect on the date of
   publication of this document (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.

Abstract

   This document specifies the conventions for digital signatures on
   Internet-Drafts.  The Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) is used to
   create a detached signature, which is stored in a separate companion
   file so that no existing utilities are impacted by the addition of
   the digital signature.

Housley                      Informational                      [Page 1]
RFC 5485         Digital Signatures on Internet-Drafts        March 2009

1.  Introduction

   This document specifies the conventions for storing a digital
   signature on Internet-Drafts.  The Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)
   [CMS] is used to create a detached signature.  The signature is
   stored in a separate companion file so that no existing utilities are
   impacted by the addition of the digital signature.

   Shortly after the IETF Secretariat posts the Internet-Draft in the
   repository, the digital signature is generated and posted as a
   companion file in the same repository.  The digital signature allows
   anyone to confirm that the contents of the Internet-Draft have not
   been altered since the time that the document was posted in the
   repository.

   The signature of the IETF Secretariat is intended to provide a
   straightforward way for anyone to determine whether a particular file
   contains the document that was made available by the IETF
   Secretariat.  The signing-time included by the IETF Secretariat
   provides the wall-clock time; it is not intended to provide a trusted
   timestamp.

1.1.  Terminology

   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 [STDWORDS].

1.2.  ASN.1

   The CMS uses Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) [X.680].  ASN.1 is
   a formal notation used for describing data protocols, regardless of
   the programming language used by the implementation.  Encoding rules
   describe how the values defined in ASN.1 will be represented for
   transmission.  The Basic Encoding Rules (BER) [X.690] are the most
   widely employed rule set, but they offer more than one way to
   represent data structures.  For example, both definite-length
   encoding and indefinite-length encoding are supported.  This
   flexibility is not desirable when digital signatures are used.  As a
   result, the Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER) [X.690] were invented.
   DER is a subset of BER that ensures a single way to represent a given
   value.  For example, DER always employs definite-length encoding.

Housley                      Informational                      [Page 2]
RFC 5485         Digital Signatures on Internet-Drafts        March 2009

2.  Internet-Draft Signature File

   All Internet-Draft file names begin with "draft-".  The next portion
   of the file name depends on the source of the document.  For example,
   documents from IETF working groups usually have "ietf-" followed by
   the working group abbreviation, and this is followed by a string that
   helps people figure out the subject of the document.

   All Internet-Draft file names end with a hyphen followed by a two-
   digit version number and a suffix.  The suffix indicates the type of
   file.  A plain text file with a suffix of ".txt" is required.  Other
   formats may also be provided, and they employ the appropriate suffix
   for the file format.

   The companion signature file has exactly the same file name as the
   Internet-Draft, except that ".p7s" is added to the end.  This file
   name suffix conforms to the conventions in [MSG].  Here are a few
   example names:

      Internet-Draft: draft-ietf-example-widgets-03.txt
      Signature File: draft-ietf-example-widgets-03.txt.p7s

      Internet-Draft: draft-ietf-example-widgets-03.ps
      Signature File: draft-ietf-example-widgets-03.ps.p7s

      Internet-Draft: draft-housley-internet-draft-sig-file-00.txt
      Signature File: draft-housley-internet-draft-sig-file-00.txt.p7s