RE: Logotypes in certificates

[Stefan Santesson <[e-mail]>]

Steve,

There was a suggestion during a dinner yesterday that logotypes actually 
could be provided as a policy qualifier. That would actually solve your 
problem since you could directly tie acceptance of logotypes in 
certificates to a particular policy.

This enables you to control the path validation problem with the use of 
policy constraints.

/Stefan


At 18:21 2001-03-21 -0500, Stephen Kent wrote:
>Michael,
>
>>Though I don't favor including logotype or reference to a logotype to a
>>cert, considering it as a pure marketing trick (sorry, Stefan :), but my
>>realisation was that a logotype is by no means related to the establishment
>>of trust. It is 100% meant for a human eye only, and verification algorithm
>>should simply ignore it, as it ingores any other proprietory extentions. If
>>the verification comes up with an answer 'not validated', and the software
>>prompts a user saying 'couldn't validate', and the user still makes a
>>decision to trust the cert, it is an application's problem, which already
>>exists now, and logotypes add no extra pitch to it.
>
>I think the whole purpose of including a displayable logo is precisely an 
>attempt by a CA to gain the trust of users, so I disagree with your 
>stating point. The concern I raised is not one that is addressed by your 
>example, i.e., my example of a "bad outcome" is a cert that carries a logo 
>which will be recognized by a user and thus will engender the user's 
>confidence, but it is contained in a cert that, while valid under our path 
>validation controls, has nothing to do with the entity whose logo appears 
>in the cert and which is displayed to the user.
>
>>As an extreme, if a CA considers logotypes to be anyhow harmful, it simply
>>won't have a logotype in its own cert, and refuse certification of
>>logotypes.
>
>As a CA I can refuse to certify a logo-equipped cert one layer down, but 
>not farther, unless we adopt a means of representing the logo that is 
>subject to existing controls. Tom suggested on possible means, if we put 
>the logo in an altname field and make it a type which can be prohibited 
>using nameConstraints.
>
>Steve