Re: [Trans] Angle brackets in the PRIVATE option (Ticket #1)

Rob Stradling <rob.stradling@comodo.com> Mon, 31 March 2014 09:57 UTC

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Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 10:57:00 +0100
From: Rob Stradling <rob.stradling@comodo.com>
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To: Rick Andrews <Rick_Andrews@symantec.com>, "trans@ietf.org" <trans@ietf.org>
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Archived-At: http://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/trans/wOE2g8pKXjX0_nIzn9ssmgS_QbU
Subject: Re: [Trans] Angle brackets in the PRIVATE option (Ticket #1)
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Rick, thanks for this.  Good catch!

Yes, parentheses would definitely be better.

On 28/03/14 16:46, Rick Andrews wrote:
> We see another potential issue with the proposed PRIVATE option. Rob’s
> current proposal would have us replace a domain label with the literal
> string “<PRIVATE>” (without the quotes). However, we try to encode DN
> components as PrintableString where possible, and angle brackets are not
> part of the PrintableString set (the lowercase letters 'a' through 'z',
> uppercase letters 'A' through 'Z', the digits '0' through '9', eleven
> special characters ' = ( ) + , - . / : ? and space).
> As a result, the type of the DN component would be PrintableString in
> the real cert but utf8String in the pre-certificate, and that would
> cause problems. I suggest using parentheses instead of angle brackets.
> -Rick

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