X.509, SSL & security of decentalized certification (RE: RSA getting rid of trusted third parties?)

[Eric Rescorla]

"Amir Herzberg" <inbox at amir.herzberg.name> writes:
> Ian Clelland said, 
> This is not as simple as one may expect. X.509 has a hierarchy mechanism
> designed for allowing organizations issue (or at least control)
> certificates of departments and employees - the Distinguished Name (DN)
> and its keywords. However, browsers normally identify the server by its
> DNS name, which is usually included in the dNSName attribute in the
> subjectAltName extension, rather than in the X.509 DN.
We could only hope :( It should be in the dNSName but actually,
it's usually stuffed into the Common Name, unless things have changed.

> Anyway, the validation is up to the browser - it is _not_ part of the
> SSL/TLS functionality. Furthermore, while X.509 and PKIX have mechanisms
> to allow a root CA to restrict the scope of certificates issued by a
> root CA, these mechanisms seem to focus on restricting the distinguished
> names in the issued certificates, rather than the subjectAltName (and in
> particular the DNS name). So my bet is that all or most browsers will
> not reject certificates with arbitrary DNS names issues by a corporation
> with a CA certified by RSA (or any other root CA). 
As far as I know, this is completely the case.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

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