Well Sebastian you clearly know the technical specifications at a level far 
deeper than I do.  That's not where I was heading.  Sorry if I wasn't clear.

The key point of my post was less on how the scans/verifications get done 
technically, and more that if you need to verify identity for a personal BIMI 
certificate, there are secure and well-established combined identity document 
and facial scan-based workflows, so no need to reinvent the wheel there.

Best of luck on your personal BIMI certificate initiative.

BTW, in a recent conversation I had with one of the BIMI Working Group members, 
I was told that the primary reason for BIMI was to motivate larger companies 
that care about their brand identity (and which send a lot of email, and which 
are attractive to bad actors as companies to spoof) to deploy DMARC faster.

Regards, 
Mark 

-- 
_________________________________________________________________ 
L. Mark Stone, Founder 
North America's Leading Zimbra VAR/BSP/Training Partner 
For Companies With Mission-Critical Email Needs 
Winner of the Zimbra Americas VAR Partner of the Year - Two Years Running !

----- Original Message -----
| From: "Sebastian Nielsen via mailop" <[email protected]>
| To: "Mailing List" <[email protected]>
| Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2025 3:38:21 PM
| Subject: Re: [mailop]  VMC/BIMI - Getting a personal VMC certificate?

| Wrong. The passport scan uses something called NFC, 13.56 MHz.
| 
| You scan the 2 data lines (called the MRZ). Scanning the MRZ is just for
| convience, it would be as secure as if you keyed in the MRZ on the phone's
| keyboard.
| You can also key in the number written as "CAN" on the passport, which acts 
as a
| "PIN code" to unlock the passport.
| 
| The MRZ or CAN, is then used to calculate a decryption key, (PACE) which are
| then used to "authenticate" against the NFC chip inside the passport.
| This authentication, is to prevent someone from scanning your passport through
| the pocket or bag.
| 
| The NFC chip contains all the information visible on the passport, including
| picture and signature.
| 
| This information, is then signed, using a certificate, which is signed by your
| country (government).
| Also on the passport, there is a second certificate, signed by the passport's
| certificate, for which the NFC chip possess the private key. (this certificate
| is DIFFERENT from the certificate used to sign the passport details).
| This second certificate, can then be used to perform challenge-response
| validation against the passport by asking the passport to sign a random blob 
of
| data to gurantee it has not been duplicated into 2 identical passports.
| 
| This is an extremely secure process, that makes it impossible to send in a
| fraudulent passport for validation.
| If you want to try out this process for yourself, try this app:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.innovalor.nfciddocshowcase
| 
| 
| 
| -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
| Från: L. Mark Stone via mailop <[email protected]>
| Skickat: den 19 november 2025 21:27
| Till: Mailing List <[email protected]>
| Ämne: Re: [mailop] VMC/BIMI - Getting a personal VMC certificate?
| 
| FWIW,
| 
| The (mobile) apps I've used which require a passport and a facial photograph
| require the user, in the mobile app, first to use the app to scan the passport
| (like when doing a mobile deposit of a check) and then immediately thereafter,
| use the mobile device's camera to take a selfie.
| 
| The passport scan to my understanding includes verification of reflective and
| other anti-fraud features of most passports, so no possibility of using a
| pre-existing photo of one's passport (I tried, as I didn't have my passport
| handy but keep a photo of it that I printed out).
| 
| The selfie scan requires you to move your face up, down and around in a 
circle,
| so no possibility of using a pre-existing photo of a face with a stolen
| passport.
| 
| The app's Mothership then compares the passport scan to the facial photograph
| and says pass or fail.
| 
| I had to do this when signing up for Clear for example.  Same workflow when I
| took my AWS certification exams remotely.  Seems standard.
| 
| Regards,
| Mark
| 
| --
| _________________________________________________________________
| L. Mark Stone, Founder
| North America's Leading Zimbra VAR/BSP/Training Partner
| For Companies With Mission-Critical Email Needs
| Winner of the Zimbra Americas VAR Partner of the Year - Two Years Running !
| 
| ----- Original Message -----
|| From: "Sebastian Nielsen via mailop" <[email protected]>
|| To: "Mailing List" <[email protected]>
|| Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2025 1:19:54 PM
|| Subject: Re: [mailop]  VMC/BIMI - Getting a personal VMC certificate?
| 
|| I sent to the CA/B group proposed 2 validation possibilities:
|| 
|| 1: Either that you must supply BOTH passport and ID card in MRTD format. 
This is
|| a method that was used by StartSSL to prevent using stolen ID card documents 
to
|| aquire a certificate.
|| The tought behind this is that if you pickpocket someone on the street, you 
are
|| only gonna get EITHER passport or ID card, thus not being able to do full
|| validation.
|| (StartSSL didn't require electronic ID cards however, it was fine with a 
scanned
|| driver's license, but the intention behind "at least TWO ID documents" was to
|| curb theft of ID documents since they didn't do any face scan or live
|| validation via webcam meeting)
|| Locking this to only electronic ID documents (NFC readable passport and ID 
card)
|| makes it even more secure.
|| 
|| 2: Or a biometric automated face scan.
|| 
|| I personally think both are okay to validate someone's identity.
|| Its something that can be discussed in the CA/B group how to do really 
securely.
|| 
|| Requiring two subsuquent validations with a specific time period - lets say 
at
|| least 48 hours between, can also increase security, as it increases the time 
an
|| thief must maintain control of the ID documents, and thus risking getting
|| caught or the ID documents being blocked by the government because the owner
|| reported them stolen.
|| 
|| Best regards, Sebastian Nielsen
|| 
|| 
|| -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
|| Från: Andrew C Aitchison via mailop <[email protected]>
|| Skickat: den 19 november 2025 18:51
|| Till: Sebastian Nielsen via mailop <[email protected]>
|| Ämne: Re: [mailop] VMC/BIMI - Getting a personal VMC certificate?
|| 
|| On Wed, 19 Nov 2025, Sebastian Nielsen via mailop wrote:
|| 
||> I feel it should be very feasible as with a good vectorization tool
||> you can actually get a good output as you see here:
||> https://sebbe.eu/bimi/face.svg
||>
||> And to gurantee genuineness and facilitate fully automated
||> validation (which drives down the prices of the certificates) the
||> passport picture can be extracted from a MTRD or a "national ID
||> card" ('passport in credit card format') and then if a good
||> normalization algoritm and vectorization algorim is applied to
||> convert the passport picture to the SVG, then the CA can be sure
||> that the picture is correct without having to visually compare the
||> face pictures with each other.
|| 
|| How long would I need to borrow a machine readable travel document for
|| in order to get a personal certificate with someone's face on it ?
|| 
||> Which makes fully automated validation a possibility with a mobile
||> app, NFC and a MRTD.
|| 
|| Sorry, are you automating the issuing of a personal certificate, or
|| using it to verify that the person in front of you is the certificate
|| holder (or the passport-holder) ?
|| 
|| When I last used my passport for online my phone looked at me and my
|| passport under multiple lighting conditions. Unless the CA does the
|| same, I fear a reduction in security.
|| 
||> The algoritm has to however, be able to automatically add
||> optimizations to the color profile to ensure the resultant SVG is
||> below 32 kB.
||>
||> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
||> Från: Al Iverson via mailop <[email protected]>
||> Skickat: den 19 november 2025 17:26
||> Till: Mailing List <[email protected]>
||> Ämne: Re: [mailop] VMC/BIMI - Getting a personal VMC certificate?
||>
||> And separately, I'll put this on the wish list of stuff that I'll
||> bring up in discussions with others in the BIMI Group. I love the idea
||> of a "personal mark certificate," though I don't know how feasible it
||> is. I'm in the same boat as you, in that I'm not really a company, but
||> I'd love to implement BIMI as broadly as possible.
||>
||> Cheers,
||> Al Iverson
||>
||> On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 4:02 PM Todd Herr via mailop <[email protected]> 
wrote:
||>>
||>> On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 4:44 PM Sebastian Nielsen via mailop 
<[email protected]>
||>> wrote:
||>>>
||>>> Is there a way to send suggestions to CA/B forum to implement a personal 
VMC
||>>> certificate?
||>>>
||>>>
||>>
||>> According to https://cabforum.org/about/email-lists/, Questions from the 
public
||>> may be submitted by email to the Questions list at [email protected].
||>>
||>> --
||>> Todd
||>>
||>> _______________________________________________
||>> mailop mailing list
||>> [email protected]
||>> https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
||>
||>
||>
||> --
||>
||> Al Iverson // 312-725-0130 // Chicago
||> http://www.spamresource.com // Deliverability
||> http://www.aliverson.com // All about me
||> https://xnnd.com/calendar // Book my calendar
||> _______________________________________________
||> mailop mailing list
||> [email protected]
||> https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
||>
||> _______________________________________________
||> mailop mailing list
||> [email protected]
||> https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
||>
|| 
|| --
|| Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
||                    [email protected]
|| 
|| _______________________________________________
|| mailop mailing list
|| [email protected]
|| https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
| _______________________________________________
| mailop mailing list
| [email protected]
| https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
| 
| _______________________________________________
| mailop mailing list
| [email protected]
| https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
_______________________________________________
mailop mailing list
[email protected]
https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop

Reply via email to