Here are summaries of questions and comments and our responses.

Summary of Questions or Concerns about MRSP § 7.4 (Root CA Lifecycles)
and/or the Root CA Lifecycles guidance
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Root_CA_Lifecycles>:  We received questions
about the process of transitioning from a Root CA certificate that's being
distrusted to a new one. CAs want to ensure a smooth transition to new
roots. One question asked whether distrust dates would be programmed into
systems in advance to handle this process.

Mozilla Response:  First, Mozilla recommends that CAs not wait until the
last moment to request a root CA replacement, but instead ensure sufficient
time when both the old and new roots can coexist in the root store.
Provided that the CA has a good compliance history, Mozilla will then
prioritize with Priority P1 those inclusion requests that involve a root CA
replacement - https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Prioritization. (For Priority P1,
“Applicant has good compliance history and is replacing an already-included
CA certificate or is previously approved as a subordinate CA operator”.)

For root CAs enabled with the email trust bit, the “distrust after”
mechanism will be used.  “Distrust after” will not be used for the websites
trust bit. Instead, the websites trust bit will be removed, so CAs will
need to cease issuing TLS certificates from deprecated roots at least one
year / 398 days prior to the date that the websites trust bit will be
removed. We plan to add a CA Task List Report to the CA Home page in the
CCADB to alert CAs well in advance of when they should be working on the
replacement for their aging root certificate(s).

Summary of Questions or Concerns about S/MIME requirements and Mozilla's
transition guidance <https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Transition_SMIME_BRs>:  We
were asked about the audits of external subordinate CAs when they are
audited at different times under different audit criteria (Webtrust and
ETSI). There was also uncertainty about audit start dates, for instance,
when the S/MIME audit period does not start on September 1, 2023.

Mozilla Response:  MRSP section 2.3 makes it clear that as of September 1,
2023, S/MIME certificates and CA operations must conform to the S/MIME BRs.
As of that date, CAs should have revised their CPs and CPSes to at least
incorporate the S/MIME BRs by reference–hopefully more extensively. The
transition guidance on the wiki states, “CA operators should modify their
CP or CPS on or before September 1, 2023, to assert compliance with the
S/MIME BRs.”  We are not expecting a CA to file an incident report if it
has not made necessary modifications to its CP and/or CPS before September
1, 2023, but if the CA asserts that it began complying with the S/MIME BRs
after that date or if the audit period does not begin by that date, then
the CA operator should submit an incident report as soon as they are aware
of this situation. Many CAs are already filing incident reports for S/MIME
non-compliance, but we will also be reviewing audit statements as they are
submitted, so all CAs should file one incident bug covering all unreported
S/MIME non-compliances listed in the audit statement (i.e. all
non-compliances arising on or after September 1, 2023). Period-of-time
audits for S/MIME submitted during the next year should have a
period-of-time start date of no later than September 1, 2023.

Period-of-time audits for periods ending between September 1, 2023, and
October 30, 2023, cannot be obtained because 60 days is required to provide
a sufficiently representative sample of CA operations and to ensure the
audit's reliability and effectiveness. Also, given the short time frame and
difficulty in retaining auditors who are prepared to audit according to the
S/MIME BRs, it would not be reasonable to expect point-in-time audits
within this period. Therefore, those few entities whose normal audit
periods end within the timeframe above are expected to submit
period-of-time audits that cover their subsequent audit period. For
instance, a CA whose normal audit period ends on September 30, 2023, would
obtain a period-of-time audit for October 1, 2023, through September 30,
2024, and the audit report would need to be submitted before January 1,
2025.

Summary of Questions or Concerns about security incident and vulnerability
disclosure requirement:  There were questions and general suggestions about
the use of the terms "vulnerability" and "incident", and the difference
between "something that happened" and "something that could happen".
The Vulnerability
Disclosure wiki page <https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Vulnerability_Disclosure>
defines vulnerabilities as potential weak points and incidents as actual
events that pose threats, and yet most of the examples describe incidents
and not vulnerabilities. Also, the term "Reportable Vulnerabilities"
differs from critical CVEs, potentially causing confusion.

Regarding “Incident Reporting”, the guidance says that “information does
not need to be duplicated in the Reportable Vulnerability bug if it can be
provided in the public-facing incident report.” Given the overlap and link
between these processes, clarification is needed regarding the
interdependencies between Incident Reports and Reportable Vulnerability
bugs.

Mozilla Response:  As stated in the wiki page, the purpose of MRSP 2.4.1
and the “CA Security Vulnerability” Bugzilla component is to enable CAs to
provide Mozilla with “Information about security compromises that require
action from Mozilla” and “Security-sensitive information that needs to be
shared with Mozilla”. Thus, CAs need to be sure to mark the “CA Program
Security” checkbox in such Bugzilla reports.

We welcome specific suggestions about how to improve the text in the
Vulnerability Disclosure wiki page. For that purpose, I am sending out a
separate post to this list, and then we will update the wiki page and try
to clarify the use of these terms accordingly.

Thanks,

Ben and Kathleen

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 10:01 AM Ben Wilson <bwil...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> All,
> The period for submitting survey responses has now concluded, and the
> results are in the sheet linked below (in my previous email).
> I will now summarize the comments and post them here.
> Thanks,
> Ben
>
> On Fri, Sep 8, 2023 at 2:12 PM Ben Wilson <bwil...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> While survey responses are not due until Sept. 15th, here are the results
>> we've received thus far.
>>
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xJ6VRs2R0tw3-QHoIRzIIO8MWWoqNs576KOxPKYsp3w/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ben
>>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"dev-security-policy@mozilla.org" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to dev-security-policy+unsubscr...@mozilla.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/d/msgid/dev-security-policy/CA%2B1gtaZPf2-8jsqgNbTL%3DEqAOXC4DTDQhJgo0psNz_cvnVqSdg%40mail.gmail.com.

Reply via email to