Christophe,

to facilitate discussion and understanding by everyone, could you explain in detail what worries you?

What exactly is the difficulty that, in your opinion, the revision that Dimitris and I (not sure if Martijn is endorsing as well) are proposing would entail?

Adriano


Il 24/10/2023 10:14, Christophe Bonjean ha scritto:

Hi Adriano,

There’s no definition to support that a mailbox address is an individual attribute in all cases, but as you indicated there are circumstances where it is (i.e. If the Subscriber or the Enterprise RA assert this is a mailbox address for an individual). I'm not convinced that this is sufficient reason to ban it completely.

Although the purpose might be to align with the definition, we are changing the permitted contents of the CommonName, which is a significant change. I also think it’s up to the wider community to indicate whether this is a niche use case, before we consider this a fact.

Can we put this on the agenda for further discussion?

Christophe

*From:*Adriano Santoni <adriano.sant...@staff.aruba.it>
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 24, 2023 9:43 AM
*To:* Christophe Bonjean <christophe.bonj...@globalsign.com>; SMIME Certificate Working Group <smcwg-public@cabforum.org>; Ashish Dhiman <ashish.dhi...@globalsign.com>; Martijn Katerbarg <martijn.katerb...@sectigo.com> *Subject:* Re: [External Sender] RE: [Smcwg-public] RE: Re: Re: Re: SV certificates devoid of individual attributes

Hi Christophe,

frankly, it seems obvious to me that an email address is not, generally speaking, an individual attribute. Would you argue that i...@example.com is a natural person's attribute? It may be so in specific cases (for example when it is of the type givenname.surn...@example.com and the email service provider applies a rule that ensures proper attribution to users and disambiguation of similar names), but it certainly is not so by definition.

Evidently a natural person (or more likely more than one) can have access to the mailbox at an address like i...@example.com, but it is evident that such address is not specific to any particular natural person in the same sense and in the same way in which givenname and surname are attributes of a natural person.

And no, no intent at all to modify the SV profile; quite the opposite: to respect its definition even in the legacy case (where among other things, the needs of niche use cases can very well be satisfied by OV certificates).

Adriano

Il 24/10/2023 09:25, Christophe Bonjean ha scritto:

    Hi Adriano,

    From your proposed change, it seems that you are not considering a
    mailbox address as an individual (natural person) attribute? Could
    you provide some context on that?

    We should also keep in mind the initial purpose of the legacy
    profile. Even though the suggestion of using an OV profile for
    CN=email, O=Company might be sensible, we’re still fundamentally
    modifying the legacy SV profile.

    Christophe

    *From:*Smcwg-public <smcwg-public-boun...@cabforum.org>
    <mailto:smcwg-public-boun...@cabforum.org> *On Behalf Of *Adriano
    Santoni via Smcwg-public
    *Sent:* Friday, October 20, 2023 10:33 AM
    *To:* Ashish Dhiman <ashish.dhi...@globalsign.com>
    <mailto:ashish.dhi...@globalsign.com>; SMIME Certificate Working
    Group <smcwg-public@cabforum.org>
    <mailto:smcwg-public@cabforum.org>; Martijn Katerbarg
    <martijn.katerb...@sectigo.com> <mailto:martijn.katerb...@sectigo.com>
    *Subject:* Re: [Smcwg-public] [External Sender] RE: Re: Re: Re: SV
    certificates devoid of individual attributes

    Ashish,

    my intent would not be to prohibit anything, but rather to make
    two types of certificates (OV, SV) distinguishable that otherwise
    are not, and to make the S/MIME baseline requirements consistent
    with the definition of Sponsor-Validated.

    Furthermore, I don't understand why what I'm proposing could cause
    problems for those who need, for their legacy use case, S/MIME
    certificates that simultaneously contain Subject.organizationName
    AND /any type /of email address in the Subject.commonName (like
    departm...@example.com or ashish.dhi...@globalsign.com to quote
    your examples), plus of course locality and
    organizationIdentifier. In fact, in such use case you can very
    well use OV-type S/MIME certificates. Don't you?

    Adriano

    Il 20/10/2023 10:20, Ashish Dhiman ha scritto:

        NOTICE:Pay attention - external email - Sender is
        ashish.dhi...@globalsign.com

        Respected: CA/B – S/MIME Forum Members.

        I feel the problem that we are trying to solve by prohibiting
        email address from CN in Legacy will only make things complex
        rather than solve it. During our discussion, the intent for
        legacy, always was to have minimum impact on existing
        practices and give time for wider industry to move to
        multipurpose or strict profile. I feel, we are defeating the
        whole purpose of legacy with suggested change, as I am trying
        to understand how; eliminating email address from CN will help
        us differentiate a sponsor profile from organization profile.
        As, Technically, people can still use departm...@example.com
        in sponsor profile as email address and also use
        ashish.dhi...@globalsign.com in Organization Profile as email
        address.

        On the other hand, this change will also deviate from current
        practices for CN use for legacy use cases Also, during
        implementation, we see in most of the cases; email address
        used in Sponsor profiles are correct.

        I think removing email in CN makes legacy no longer like
        legacy and seems to make it stricter than multi and strict
        where its allowed. There is also no indication that the intent
        for changes, will be achieved without mandatory use of Given
        Name and Sur Name in Legacy profile, which is again a big
        change considering legacy intent, and make these profiles
        similar to multi and strict version. Overall, this change
        seems to defeat its goal of supporting wider ecosystem for a
        while.

        Ashish

        *From:* Smcwg-public <smcwg-public-boun...@cabforum.org>
        <mailto:smcwg-public-boun...@cabforum.org> *On Behalf Of*
        Adriano Santoni via Smcwg-public
        *Sent:* Thursday, October 19, 2023 5:00 PM
        *To:* Martijn Katerbarg <martijn.katerb...@sectigo.com>
        <mailto:martijn.katerb...@sectigo.com>; SMIME Certificate
        Working Group <smcwg-public@cabforum.org>
        <mailto:smcwg-public@cabforum.org>
        *Subject:* Re: [Smcwg-public] [External Sender] Re: Re: Re: SV
        certificates devoid of individual attributes

        I have created the pull request below.

        https://github.com/cabforum/smime/pull/218

        Even if there exists some niche legacy uses cases, I believe
        it would be highly preferable to avoid allowing SV
        certificates that do not match the SV definition and are
        indistinguishable from OV certs. Besides, it appears that in
        such particular contexts OV certificates would still meet the
        need.

        Looking for endorsers.

        Adriano

        Il 16/10/2023 18:38, Martijn Katerbarg ha scritto:

            Happy to work with you on that. I do wonder what the cause
            and original intent behind this was.

            I wonder if they key lies in the Note added to section
            7.1.4.2.5:

            “Legacy Generation profiles MAY omit the
            |subject:givenName|, |subject:surname|, and
            |subject:pseudonym| attributes and include only the
            |subject:commonName| as described in Section 7.1.4.2.2(a)
            
<https://github.com/cabforum/smime/blob/main/SBR.md#71422-subject-distinguished-name-fields>.”

            Could it be that the original intent here was that
            subject:givenName, subject:surname and subject:pseudonym
            are allowed to be left out, *only* if subject:commonName
            was included *and* had either the pseudonym or
            givenName+surname in it?




            I could see that as a possible legacy use case, with the
            intend to deprecate. I’m not sure if any CA needs that use
            case at current though.

            Regards,

            Martijn

            *From:* Smcwg-public <smcwg-public-boun...@cabforum.org>
            <mailto:smcwg-public-boun...@cabforum.org> on behalf of
            Adriano Santoni via Smcwg-public
            <smcwg-public@cabforum.org> <mailto:smcwg-public@cabforum.org>
            *Date:* Monday, 16 October 2023 at 18:09
            *To:* smcwg-public@cabforum.org
            <smcwg-public@cabforum.org> <mailto:smcwg-public@cabforum.org>
            *Subject:* Re: [Smcwg-public] [External Sender] Re: Re: SV
            certificates devoid of individual attributes

            CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the
            organization. Do not click links or open attachments
            unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.

            I would suggest an amendment in order to correct this
            unintended result; I'm available to dratf a proposal it if
            there are any endorsers.

            Adriano

            Il 16/10/2023 17:17, Dimitris Zacharopoulos via
            Smcwg-public ha scritto:

                NOTICE:Pay attention - external email - Sender is
                
0100018b3910b1a1-5f63e11d-cb86-4599-8385-07abf817d4d1-000...@amazonses.com

                I agree it's not a good thing. The SV profile was to
                support certificates that include attributes of
                individuals validated by the Enterprise RA. If we
                allow those to be missing, making it effectively an OV
                Certificate, seems like an unintended result.

                Best regards,






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