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Re: [pkix] a question of cert (and OCSP) extension syntax

Rob Stradling <rob.stradling@comodo.com> Wed, 18 March 2015 09:32 UTC

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Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 09:32:03 +0000
From: Rob Stradling <rob.stradling@comodo.com>
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To: Peter Gutmann <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>, IETF PKIX <pkix@ietf.org>
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Subject: Re: [pkix] a question of cert (and OCSP) extension syntax
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On 18/03/15 07:10, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> it's what's in the document until someone can either point to some normative
>> specification that it violates or can point to something that actually would
>> break.
>
> This isn't a case of standards rules-lawyering though (in any case the PKIX
> spec is flexible enough that you can stuff anything you want into a
> certificate if you interpret things just right, see the famous MPEG-of-cat
> quote), it's that this is creating a situation where an *X.509 standards-
> compliant certificate* contains data that can't be processed by an *X.509
> standards-compliant certificate application*.

Peter, are you saying that _all_ X.509 standards-compliant certificate 
applications MUST be able to process _all_ data in _all_ certificates?

That would make it impossible to define any new certificate extensions 
in the future, because existing software cannot possibly already support 
extensions that haven't even been defined yet!

-- 
Rob Stradling
Senior Research & Development Scientist
COMODO - Creating Trust Online

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