[lamps] Re: [TLS] Re: Re: TLS Client Certificates; a survey

[David Adrian <[e-mail]>]

> > Does the IETF have a Liason to the Chrome Root Program?
>
> + @David Benjamin and @David Adrian both participate in IETF.

Speaking for the Chrome Root Program [1], the policy does not introduce a
blanket prohibition on all CAs from issuing TLS certificates containing
both clientAuth and serverAuth EKUs. Rather, after March 15, 2027, the
Chrome Root Store will, by default, only include anchors representing
serverAuth-only hierarchies.

This does not preclude CAs from:
- Continuing to issue from hierarchies that may be trusted elsewhere
- Issuing clientAuth certificates from a new hierarchy

Nothing also stops non-Chrome clients from altering the content of their
trust stores to trust CAs relevant to their use case.

History has taught us that commingling PKI use cases causes more harm than
good. It is a consistent security problem when PKI hierarchies intended for
public web sites get entangled in non-web use cases. As an example, such
behavior slowed the deprecation of SHA-1 in 2018 because payment card
terminal implementations and their corresponding root stores could not be
updated.

The plan to move to serverAuth only was first communicated to CA Owners at
a CABF meeting in 2021 [2]. It is designed to prevent more situations like
the one above from happening in the future.

[1]: https://googlechrome.github.io/chromerootprogram/#introduction
[2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pwhslUTqqkJci84nzyP4jUEmop4MeSVP/view

On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 4:53 PM Mike Ounsworth <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> > Does the IETF have a Liason to the Chrome Root Program?
>
> + @David Benjamin <[e-mail]> and @David Adrian both
> participate in IETF.
>
> On Mon, 30 Mar 2026 at 15:40, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 08:04:54PM +0000, Salz, Rich wrote:
>> > The overwhelming response (strong consensus) — both posted and via
>> > private replies — is that applications will just switch to
>> > TLS-Server-Auth identities for the client side.
>>
>> That violates RFCs 5280 & 8446 and vitiates the Chrome Root Program's
>> new policy.  Whatever problem that policy change meant to addres might
>> only be made worse by this approach (sure, only for those apps that
>> implement this workaround, but for those, yes, it will be worse).
>>
>> There has to be a better way.
>>
>> Does the IETF have a Liason to the Chrome Root Program?  Can we reach
>> out to them and ask them?  When I did they simply did not respond, but
>> if the IETF TLS and/or LAMPS WG chairs, or IETF Security ADs reach out
>> to them perhaps they'll respond -- failing that then maybe the IETF
>> Chair or the IAB.
>>
>> Nico
>> --
>>
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