On Jul 19, 2004, at 11:40 AM, Anton Stiglic wrote:
The X.509 PoP (proof-of-possession) doesn't help things out, since a public
key certificate is given to a user by the CA only after the user has
demonstrated to the CA possession of the corresponding private key by
signing a challenge. I suspect most implementation use a random challenge.
I would have thought that de facto standard approach is: the client constructs the certificate request message, which contains things like the public key and identifying info, and signs it. The CA then checks the signature against the public key in the message.
Quickly checking with our deployment folks...this is how it works the standard browser/OS suites, with the iPlanet Certificate Management System at the CA. (We combine CA and RA here.)
It would be interesting to see if there's support software out there that does something as naive as sign a random challenge. I really suspect this is a strawman...
(Darn it, this is creating the need for some real data: how many X.509 certs are in use today, how many of these are on standard user platforms, what are the keys used for, and how was PoP handled?)
--Sean
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