[ipwave] RFC8902 - TLS with ITS Certificates, EXPERIMENTAL, and the one PKI and one Internet

[Alexandre Petrescu <[e-mail]>]

Hi, IPWAVErs,

A colleague pointed me to this recently issued RFC 8902 about TLS with 
ITS Certificates.

This RFC is of an EXPERIMENTAL Category.

It might be in agreement with other IEEE standards such as 1609.2.

But I must say that I think it further deepens the discrepancy between 
what is PKI in the Internet and what is the closed PKI for ITS.  That is 
a discrepancy that exists for a long time, and I must share that - IMHO 
- I am surprised that the IETF issues an RFC that further promotes such 
a discrepancy.

This discrepancy is the following: in a few trials I participated, and 
some about I heard of, people use normal PKI with openssl and normal 
certificates in cars, over IP, on cellular links like 4G.  They work 
fine.  The CA is a local CA (not a commercial CA), but the concept _is_ 
compatible with normal CAs.  These dont use the ETSI ITS-specific 
certificates, neither the 1609.2 certificates.

I think there are more such trial deployments using local (but standard, 
openssl PKIs and certificates) than there are trials using ETSI ITS 
certificates or 1609.2 certificates.  The reason is because the former 
is all open source software and freely accessible standards, whereas 
1609.2 are closed documents and ETSI ITS certificate software is not 
integrated in mainline software like openssl.

There are many easily accessible CAs (Certificate Authorities) that are 
integrated in the Internet and in main web browsers, whereas the 
ITS-specific CAs are closed, hard to access and the certificate are 
expensive.  Many strong oppinions maintain that it should stay that way: 
cars PKI different than Internet PKI.

There should be one Internet, and that means one trust, and one PKI.

Everything else should not be done at IETF, I think; hence my comment 
about this particular RFC.

That is my humble oppinion.

I would like to hear other oppinions?  Maybe I miss something...

Alex