Re: [apps-discuss] [pkix] PKIX text encodings

[Martin Rex <[e-mail]>]

Simon,

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> 
> See announcement below for a document that attempts to describe the
> de-facto deployed usage of so called "PEM encoding" of X.509 related
> data blobs, including the '-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----' format.  Many
> applications and security libraries rely on these formats, but to my
> knowledge they have never been standardized and there is unfortunately
> some confusion and ambiguity as a result.
> 
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-josefsson-pkix-textual
 
the Label that is used within '-----BEGIN <some-label>----'
should be ignored on the receiver side, and all implemented formats
should be tried, that are applicable for the requested operation.

Normally, these PEM-framed base64 encodings are used for administrative
interfaces used by humans that are used with a low frequency,
rather for authentication exchanges that are used with a high
frequency. For administrative user interfaces it is usually sensible to
spend a few extra CPU cycles to improve the usability.

Strongly recommeding standardized labelling on output of these formats
is OK, and may facilitate troubleshooting.

But on input, e.g. when processing a certification response, the
administrative interface should IMO be tolerant to accept a single
certificate (provided the remaining certs required to build a
complete path are already present), accept a sequence of several
certificates, or a PKCS#7 container carry multiple certificates,
independent of what labels are used with BEGIN/END.

When the administrative interface has access to the PKI credentials
for which a certification response is to be processed, then it
can detect the end-entity cert automatically, compose the full
and correctly ordererd certificate chain automatically, and ignore
any superfluous/unrelated certs that may have been part of the input.


Btw. PKCS#7 can also be used as a carry bag for multiple CRLs,
which can be used to allow revocation checking in offline
scenarios or on isolated networks.

-Martin