WG Review: Recharter of Public-Key Infrastructure (X.509) (pkix)

A modified charter has been submitted for the Public-Key Infrastructure
(X.509) (pkix) working group in the Security Area of the IETF. The IESG
has not made any determination as yet.  The modified charter is provided
below for informational purposes only.  Please send your comments to the
IESG mailing list (iesg@ietf.org) by February 4.

+++

Public-Key Infrastructure (X.509) (pkix)

Chair(s):

Stephen Kent <kent@bbn.com>
Stefan Santesson <stefans@microsoft.com>

Security Area Director(s):

Tim Polk <tim.polk@nist.gov>
Sam Hartman <hartmans-ietf@mit.edu>

Security Area Advisor:

Tim Polk <tim.polk@nist.gov>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: ietf-pkix@imc.org
To Subscribe: ietf-pkix-request@imc.org
In Body: subscribe (In Body)
Archive: http://www.imc.org/ietf-pkix

Description of Working Group:

The PKIX Working Group was established in the fall of 1995 with the 
goal of developing Internet standards to support X.509-based Public 
Key Infrastructures (PKIs). Initially PKIX pursued this goal by 
profiling X.509 standards developed by the CCITT (later the ITU-T). 
Later, PKIX initiated the development of standards that are not 
profiles of ITU-T work, but rather are independent initiatives 
designed to address X.509-based PKI needs in the Internet. Over time 
this latter category of work has become the major focus of PKIX work, 
i.e., most PKIX-generated RFCs are no longer profiles of ITU-T X.509 
documents.

PKIX has produced a number of standards track and informational RFCs. 
RFC 3280 (Certificate and CRL Profile), and RCF 3281 (Attribute 
Certificate Profile) are recent examples of standards track RFCs that 
profile ITU-T documents. RFC 2560 (Online Certificate Status 
Profile), RFC 3779 (IP Address and AS Number Extensions), and RFC 
3161 (Time Stamp Authority) are examples of standards track RFCs that 
are IETF-initiated. RFC 4055 (RSA) and RFC 3874 (SHA2) are examples 
of informational RFCs that describe how to use public key and hash 
algorithms in PKIs.

PKIX Work Plan

PKIX will continue to track the evolution of ITU-T X.509 documents, 
and will maintain compatibility between these documents and IETF PKI 
standards, since the profiling of X.509 standards for use in the 
Internet remains an important topic for the working group.

PKIX does not endorse the use of specific cryptographic algorithms 
with its protocols. However, PKIX does publish standards track RFCs 
that describe how to identify algorithms and represent associated 
parameters in these protocols, and how to use these algorithms with 
these protocols. We anticipate efforts in this arena will continue to 
be required over time.

PKIX will pursue new work items in the PKI arena if working group 
members express sufficient interest, and if approved by the cognizant 
Security Area director. For example, certificate validation under X. 
509 and PKIX standards calls for a relying party to use a trust 
anchor as the start of a certificate path. Neither X.509 nor extant 
PKIX standards define protocols for the management of trust anchors. 
Existing mechanisms for managing trust anchors, e.g., in browsers, 
are limited in functionality and non-standard. There is considerable 
interest in the PKI community to define a standard model for trust 
anchor management, and standard protocols to allow remote management. 
Thus a future work item for PKIX is the definition of such protocols 
and associated data models.

UPDATED PKIX Milestones

Feb 2008 Update to CMC approved as PROPOSED Standard
Mar 2008 RFC 3280bis approved as PROPOSED Standard
Mar 2008 ECC Algorithms approved as PROPOSED Standard
Mar 2008 TAM Problem Statement published as Informational
Jul 2008 TAM Protocols and Models published as PROPOSED Standard

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