Frank Hecker wrote, On 2008-10-02 14:43: > In accordance with the schedule at > > https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:Schedule > > I am now opening the first public discussion period for a request from > Microtec Ltd to add the Microsec e-Szigno Root CA root certificate to > Mozilla. This is bug 370505, and Kathleen has produced an information > document attached to the bug.
Speaking only for myself ... several things about this application bother me. At least one of them is not entirely clear. The statements below reflect my understanding after reading their statements in bug 370505, and also bug 277797. 1. OCSP issues - a) Their OCSP service reportedly does not conform to the IETF RFCS. The OCSP responder certs are neither i) the CA cert of the issuer of the cert under test, nor ii) a cert issued by the issuer of the cert under test. This means that any OCSP response obtained from their responder will be deemed invalid, with an illegitimate signer. b) They explain that OCSP service is an extra cost service for relying parties. I wonder: do all their certs have AIA extensions with OCSP URLs? What sort of OCSP response do non-paying relying parties receive? I won't go so far as to insist that CAs use OCSP, but I think it is very reasonable to insist that CAs who issue certs with OCSP URLs in AIA extensions MUST make those OCSP responses conform to the RFCs, and work correctly for Mozilla users. Some of us hope someday soon to treat certs for which we receive invalid OCSP responses (as opposed to NO OCSP responses) as revoked. If we have admitted CAs that are known to produce certs that will not work in that case, I think that becomes a strong disincentive to ever institute that stronger interpretation of invalid responses. :( 2. Incentives to be accurate - They have different financial liability limits for each class of cert that they issue, and according to comment 10 in that bug, for one of their classes (class2 non-qualified certificates), that limit is ZERO. For their qualified certs, they include an extension that reports the limit of their liability, as an integer number of Hungarian Forints (HUF). (Tell me, do you know how much money 100K HUF is? Does is surprise you to learn that 1 HUF is about half a penny? 100K HUF is ~500 USD.) Browsers do not show this information to users. Hungarian representatives have requested that Mozilla browsers should do so. See bug 277797. Even if browsers did show this information, users are not likely to know the value of the monetary units of various European nations. They do not claim to include this information in non-qualified certs. Apparently the absence of an explicit liability limit should be understood to mean no liability. Any cert for which the issuer has no liability is a cert for which the issuer has no incentive to be accurate. If a CA has no liability for doing so, what stops it for issuing lots of certs for paypal.com? I would advise Mozilla against trusting certs from a CA that disclaims liability for the information in any of its cert classes. 3. Inclusion of unrecognized critical certificate extensions When bug 277797 was filed, it was claimed that Hungarian law required Hungarian CAs to include in their qualified certificates a certain extension, marked critical, that is relatively unknown. This meant that those certificates were rejected by Mozilla software, because Mozilla software complies with the IETF RFC that requires relying party software to reject certs with critical extensions that it does not completely understand and honor. IMO, Mozilla definitely should not add a root CA cert for a CA whose certs will be rejected for that reason. Hungary has legislated much of this. Perhaps their legislators thought they could pressure the browsers and other software for relying parties into displaying this liability limit information. In summary, although they may be able to claim that they are in conformance with Hungarian law, given these other issues, I'm not convinced this is really a service of value to typical Mozilla product users. That's my opinion. _______________________________________________ dev-tech-crypto mailing list dev-tech-crypto@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tech-crypto
