On 15/08/13 11:22, Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
> No. The site's public key does not need to be changed to request a
> new certificate. 

Technically, no. But there are other occasions on which it does - key
length upgrade, cert private key loss or compromise (or possible
compromise). In the current system, none of these things have to bother
the user.

> only reason CAs need to renew the signatures in the first place is
> that they sign for limited time for monetary purposes. (Officially
> CAs claim that the time limit is for security purposes but why allow
> 2 year certs if time limit increases security? Why not issue a new
> signature every day and be done with broken revocation lists?)

Several points:

1. That's what OCSP is. The equivalent of a new signature every few minutes.

2. Limited cert lifetimes mean that if an algorithm starts to look dodgy
(e.g. as MD5 did) we can move the industry to new algorithms without
having to worry about 20-year end-entity certs. This is why we have been
pushing in the CAB Forum for shorter max cert lifetimes. It's the CAs
who want longer lifetimes!

Gerv
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