[Servercert-wg] Subscriber key pair generation by the CA

[Ryan Sleevi]

Always with the edge cases ;) It's good to be thinking about that, though!

As worded, the definitions for CA say:
Certification Authority: An organization that is responsible for the
creation, issuance, revocation, and management of Certificates. The term
applies equally to both Roots CAs and Subordinate CAs.

So the question is which organization is generating the key. If I generate
key on my MacBook Pro, using an Apple-provided copy of BoringSSL, would it
be reasonable to say that Apple generated my Key Pair? I don't think so, so
I think you'd be fine.

If your software makes a webservice call to some DigiCert endpoint, and
this DigiCert endpoint generates a key pair and returns it, I would say
yes, DigiCert did generate the key pair then.

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 9:07 PM Jeremy Rowley <jeremy.rowley at digicert.com>
wrote:

> Question. Would this be violated if the CA had software that was on prem
> at the client that incorporated a key gen tool? Technically it's the tool
> generating the key, but it is software provided by the CA. Is that
> considered a violation?
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Servercert-wg <servercert-wg-bounces at cabforum.org> on behalf of
> Ryan Sleevi via Servercert-wg <servercert-wg at cabforum.org>
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 28, 2020 4:03:31 PM
> *To:* Clint Wilson <clintw at apple.com>
> *Cc:* CA/B Forum Server Certificate WG Public Discussion List <
> servercert-wg at cabforum.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Servercert-wg] Subscriber key pair generation by the CA
>
> https://github.com/sleevi/cabforum-docs/pull/25
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 5:06 PM Clint Wilson <clintw at apple.com> wrote:
>
> We’re supportive of incorporating this into the browser alignment ballot.
> Thanks for spotting and raising this, Adriano!
>
> On May 27, 2020, at 7:04 AM, Ryan Sleevi <sleevi at google.com> wrote:
>
> This seems like something easy to add to the Browser Alignment draft
> ballot, and something Google would support.
>
> Mike, Clint: Do you have opinions here on behalf of Microsoft and Apple?
> I'm loathe to add additional requirements after y'all already reviewed, but
> this does seem worth tackling.
>
> On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 9:37 AM Adriano Santoni via Servercert-wg <
> servercert-wg at cabforum.org> wrote:
>
> All,
>
> tt seems to me there's an inconsistency between §5.2 of Mozilla Root
> Policy, which very clearly prohibits CAs from generating Subscribers' key
> pairs for SSL Server certs, and §6.1.2 of the BR which seemingly allows
> that. It would seem logical, and should not harm any CAs, if it was
> clarified in the BR that subscriber key pair generation by the CA is not
> allowed, in line with the requirement set forth in Mozilla Root Policy.
>
> What do the people here think?
>
> Adriano
>
>
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