]> Penguin Securities Pte. Ltd.

tomofumi.okubo+ietf@gmail.com

DigiCert, Inc.

corey.bonnell@digicert.com

Entrust

john.gray@entrust.com

Entrust

mike.ounsworth@entrust.com

AKAYLA, Inc.

joe@akayla.com

Algorithm Agility Operational Redundancy Dual Use This document specifies a method to discover a secondary X.509 certificate associated with an X.509 certificate to enable efficient multi-certificate handling in protocols. The objective is threefold: to enhance cryptographic agility, improve operational availability, and accommodate multi-key/certificate usage. The proposed method aims to maximize compatibility with existing systems and is designed to be legacy-friendly, making it suitable for environments with a mix of legacy and new implementations. It includes mechanisms to provide information about the target certificate's signature algorithm, public key algorithm and the location of the secondary X.509 certificate, empowering relying parties to make informed decisions on whether to fetch the Secondary Certificate. The primary motivation for this method is to address the limitations of traditional certificate management approaches, which often lack flexibility, scalability, and seamless update capabilities. By leveraging this mechanism, subscribers can achieve cryptographic agility by facilitating the transition between different algorithms or X.509 certificate types. Operational redundancy is enhanced by enabling the use of backup certificates and minimizing the impact of Primary Certificate expiration or CA infrastructure failures. The approach ensures backward compatibility with existing systems and leverages established mechanisms, such as the subjectInfoAccess extension, to enable seamless integration. About This Document The latest revision of this draft can be found at . Status information for this document may be found at . Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at .

Introduction The efficient discovery of X.509 certificates play a critical role in modern cryptographic systems. Traditional certificate management approaches often face challenges in terms of flexibility, scalability, and seamless updates. To address these limitations, this document proposes a novel approach to certificate discovery utilizing the Subject Information Access extension within X.509 certificates. The primary objective of this approach is to enable efficient multi-certificate handling in protocols, offering several key benefits. First, it enhances cryptographic agility by facilitating smooth transitions between different algorithms or X.509 certificate types. This is particularly valuable in scenarios where subscribers need to upgrade their cryptographic algorithms or adopt new certificate types while maintaining backward compatibility with existing systems. Second, the proposed method improves operational availability by introducing redundancy in certificate usage. It enables the use of secondary certificates that can serve as backups, ensuring seamless continuity of services even in the event of Primary Certificate expiration or disruptions in the CA infrastructure. Finally, the approach accommodates multi-key/certificate usage, allowing for a relying party to obtain certificates to perform cryptographic operations that are not certified by a single certificate. The proposed method is designed to maximize compatibility with existing systems, including legacy implementations. It leverages the subjectInfoAccess extension, which is already established in X.509 certificates, and does not require modifications to the referring certificates. This ensures ease of adoption and avoids disruptions to current certificate management practices. The following sections outline the details of the proposed approach, including the structure of the SIA extension, the modes of operation, and the considerations for secure implementation and deployment. By leveraging the capabilities of the SIA extension for certificate discovery, organizations can enhance cryptographic agility, improve operational availability, and accommodate complex multi-key/certificate scenarios, leading to more secure and resilient cryptographic systems.

Use Case 1: Algorithm Agility The first use case is improving algorithm agility. For example, the Primary Certificate uses a widely adopted cryptographic algorithm while the Secondary Certificate uses the algorithm that is new and not widely adopted yet. The relying party will be presented with the opportunity to try the new algorithms and certificate types. This will be particularly useful when transitioning from one algorithm to another or to a new certificate/credential type. In addition, the server may look at the logs to determine how ready the client side is to shift to completely rollover to the new algorithm. This allows the subscriber to gather the metrics necessary to make an informed decision on the best timing to do an algorithm rollover without relying on third parties or security researchers. This is particularly useful for PKIs that have a wide array of client software and requires careful consideration.

Use Case 2: Operational Redundancy The second use case is where the Primary and Secondary Certificate adopts the same cryptographic algorithms but for instance, uses certificates issued by two different CAs or two certificates that have different validity periods. The Secondary Certificate may be used as a backup certificate in case the Primary Certificate validity is about to expire. A common issue is when the intermediate CA certificate expires, and the subscriber forgets to update the intermediate CA configured on the server. Similar to when some software collects the parent certificate through authorityInfoAccess CA Issuer access method when the intermediate certificate is absent, the peer certificate can be obtained. Due to increased adoption of the ACME protocol, the burden of maintaining the availability of a service is shifted to the CA issuance infrastructure and the availability would be dependent on the CA infrastructure. To increase the operational redundancy, this mechanism can be used to point to another set of certificates that are independent from the Primary Certificate to minimize the chance of a failed transaction.

Use Case 3: Dual Use The third use case is where one certificate is used by the named subject for a particular cryptographic operation and a relying party wishes to obtain the public key of the named subject for a different cryptographic operation. For example, the recipient of an email message which was signed using a key that is certified by a single use signing S/MIME certificate may wish to send an encrypted email to the sender. In this case, the recipient will need the sender's public key used for encryption. A pointer to the named subject's encryption certificate will permit the recipient to send an encrypted reply.

Conventions and Definitions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

Definitions For conciseness, this section defines several terms that are frequently used throughout this specification. Primary Certificate: The X.509 certificate that has the subjectInfoAccess extension with the certDiscovery accessMethod pointing to a Secondary Certificate. Secondary Certificate: The X.509 certificate that is referenced by the Primary Certificate in the subjectInfoAccess extension certDiscovery accessMethod. This certificate may also have a reference to the Primary Certificate in the subjectInfoAccess extension.

Certificate Discovery Access Method This document specifies the new certDiscovery access method for X.509 Subject Information Access (SIA) extension defined in . The syntax of subject information access extension syntax is repeated here for convenience: This document defines a new access method id-ad-certDiscovery which is an OBJECT IDENTIFIER that indicates the accessMethod is for certificate discovery. The 'accessLocation' is a GeneralName otherName type as defined in . Recall that the otherName type is defined as AnotherName: This document defines the RelatedCertificateDescriptor type and its corresponding identifier as follows: When the accessMethod has a value of id-ad-certDiscovery, then the accessLocation MUST contain an otherName whose type-id is id-on-relatedCertificateDescriptor and the value is RelatedCertificateDescriptor. RelatedCertificateDescriptor is defined as follows: RelatedCertificateDescriptor is composed of 4 components which are defined below.

CertDiscoveryMethod CertDiscoveryMethod is defined by the following: CertDiscoveryMethod is the only required field of RelatedCertificateDescriptor. It describes how the related certificate can be retrieved. There are three methods:

1. The byUri method provides a location where the related certificate can be retrieved. The syntax of CertLocation is described below.
2. The byInclusion method encodes the DER encoding of the related certificate directly.
3. The byLocalPolicy method signals that the related certificate is available in a repository that is usable by the application consuming the certificate.

CertLocation CertLocation is defined by the following: The certificate is referenced by an IA5String that contains the URI of the Secondary Certificate. The DER encoding of the Secondary Certificate MUST be available at the specified location.

DiscoveryIntentId DiscoveryIntentId provides optional information to describe the intent of including the discovery information for the related certificate. Currently, the following intent identifiers are defined:

Algorithm Agility This intent indicates the referenced certificate's intent is to provide algorithm agility; i.e. the two certificates will use different cryptographic algorithms for the same key operations. The two certificates SHOULD be equivalent except for cryptographic algorithm; i.e. the key usages SHOULD match.

Redundancy This intent indicates the referenced certificate's intent is to provide operational redundancy; i.e. the Secondary Certificate could be issued by a different CA or has a different validity period which can be used as a backup if the Primary set of certificates is about to expire.

Dual Usage This intent indicates the referenced certificate's intent is for dual usage; i.e. the related certificates belong to the same entity and one provides a signing-type key while the other provides an encryption-type key. The two certificates MUST describe the same entity and therefore SHOULD have matching Subject DN and SAN values.

Statement of Possession of a Private Key This intent indicates that the Primary Certificate did not not do a full proof-of-possession at enrollment time, but instead it provided a statement of possession as per signed by the Secondary Certificate. The reason for carrying a RelatedCertificateDescriptor of this type is to track that the Primary Certificate had a trust dependency on the Secondary Certificate at the time of issuance and that presumably the two private keys are co-located on the same key storage. Therefore if one certificate is revoked, they SHOULD both be revoked.

Self reference This intent indicates the Uniform Resource Identifier where this certificate is located. Applications which retrieve this certificate can then compare the retrieved certificate with this value to ensure that the correct certificate was retrieved. This intent can be used to bind the subjects of Primary and Secondary Certificates. The Primary Certificate contains a self-reference to its location, as well as a reference to the Secondary Certificate. The Secondary Certificate contains a self-reference to its location, and a reference to the Primary Certificate. Provided that policy requires subject equivalence when this mechanism is used, then the consuming application can treat both certificates as certifying the same entity.

Signature Algorithm and Public Key Algorithm fields The signatureAlgorithm is used to indicate the signature algorithm used in the Secondary Certificate and is an optional field. The publicKeyAlgorithm indicates the public key algorithm used in the Secondary Certificate and is an optional field. When the validation of the Primary Certificate fails, the software that understands the SIA extension and the certDiscovery access method uses the information to determine whether to fetch the Secondary Certificate. The software will look at the signatureAlgorithm and publicKeyAlgorithm to determine whether the Secondary Certificate has the signature algorithm and certificate public key algorithm it can process. If the software understands the signature algorithm and certificate public key algorithm, the software fetches the certificate from the URI specified in the relatedCertificateLocation and attempts another validation. Otherwise, the validation simply fails.

Security Considerations Retrieval of the Secondary Certificate is not sufficient to consider the Secondary Certificate trustworthy. The certification path validation algorithm as defined in section 6 of MUST be performed for the Secondary Certificate. The use of the self-reference intent can be used to provide a subject binding between the Primary and Secondary Certificates. However, the procedure for validating subject equivalence MUST be defined by policy. As a result, validation of subject equivalence is out of scope of this document. The Secondary Certificate may also have the certDiscovery access method. In order to avoid cyclic loops or infinite chaining, the validator should be mindful of how many fetching attempts it allows in one validation. The same security considerations for caIssuers access method outlined in applies to the certDiscovery access method. In order to avoid recursive certificate validations which involve online revocation checking, untrusted transport protocols (such as plaintext HTTP) are commonly used for serving certificate files. While the use of such protocols avoids issues with recursive certification path validations and associated online revocation checking, it also enables an attacker to tamper with data and perform substitution attacks. Clients fetching certificates using the mechanism specified in this document MUST treat downloaded certificate data as untrusted and perform requisite checks to ensure that the downloaded data is not malicious.

IANA Considerations

Module Identifier IANA is requested to add the following entry in the "SMI Security for PKIX Module Identifier" registry, defined by [RFC7299]:

Decimal	Description	References
TBD1	id-mod-CertDiscovery	[this-RFC]

Access Descriptor IANA is requested to add the following entry in the "SMI Security for PKIX Access Descriptor" registry, defined by [RFC7299]:

Decimal	Description	References
TBD2	id-ad-certDiscovery	[this-RFC]

Other Name Form IANA is requested to add the following entry in the "SMI Security for PKIX Access Descriptor" registry, defined by [RFC7299]:

Decimal	Description	References
TBD3	id-on-relatedCertificateDescriptor	[this-RFC]

Certificate Discovery Intent Identifiers To allocate id-rcd, this document introduces a new PKIX OID arc for certificate discovery intent identifiers: IANA is requested to add the following entry to "SMI Security for PKIX" registry, defined by [RFC 7299]:

Decimal	Description	References
TBD4	Certificate Discovery Intent Identifier	[this-RFC]

IANA is requested to create the "Certificate Discovery Intent Identifiers" registry with the following initial values:

Decimal	Description	References
1	id-rcd-agility	[this-RFC]
2	id-rcd-redundanc	[this-RFC]
3	id-rcd-dual	[this-RFC]
3	id-rcd-priv-key-stmt	[this-RFC]
5	id-rcd-self	[this-RFC]

Updates to this table are to be made according to the Specification Required policy as defined in [RFC8126].

Normative References In many standards track documents several words are used to signify the requirements in the specification. These words are often capitalized. This document defines these words as they should be interpreted in IETF documents. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. RFC 2119 specifies common key words that may be used in protocol specifications. This document aims to reduce the ambiguity by clarifying that only UPPERCASE usage of the key words have the defined special meanings. This memo profiles the X.509 v3 certificate and X.509 v2 certificate revocation list (CRL) for use in the Internet. An overview of this approach and model is provided as an introduction. The X.509 v3 certificate format is described in detail, with additional information regarding the format and semantics of Internet name forms. Standard certificate extensions are described and two Internet-specific extensions are defined. A set of required certificate extensions is specified. The X.509 v2 CRL format is described in detail along with standard and Internet-specific extensions. An algorithm for X.509 certification path validation is described. An ASN.1 module and examples are provided in the appendices. [STANDARDS-TRACK] Vigil Security, LLC This document specifies an attribute for a statement of possession of a private key by a certificate subject. As part of X.509 certificate enrollment, a Certification Authority (CA) typically demands proof that the subject possesses the private key that corresponds to the to-be-certified public key. In some cases, a CA might accept a signed statement from the certificate subject. For example, when a certificate subject needs separate certificates for signature and key establishment, a statement that can be validated with the previously issued signature certificate for the same subject might be adequate for subsequent issuance of the key establishment certificate.

Acknowledgments TODO acknowledge.

Appendix A. ASN.1 Module The following ASN.1 module provides the complete definition of the Certificate Discovery access descriptor.