[cabf_validation] [EXTERNAL]Re: Revision to OU requirements

[Ryan Sleevi]

Right, but that's slightly different than the point I was making :)

Up to (through?) AMT 7.0, you could only use several commercial CAs, and
only with SHA-1.
>From AMT 7.0+, an organization can add their own CA to the set of
management hashes, so there's no need to obtain a commercial CA certificate
to function.

While AMT supports a variety of commercial CAs still, expanded as part of
the Great SHA-1 deprecation, these aren't *required*, which is the scenario
that I think we're trying to understand re: VMware. That is, if the Forum,
or browsers, took a step to forbid OU, then there are options for both
commercial CAs (using the root rotation I mentioned) and enterprises using
AMT (using a private CA, whether commercially-managed or privately-managed)
to function.

AMT using commercial CAs baked into firmware is a bit like the payment
terminal scenario, or, for that matter, certificate pinning, both of which
Forum members have largely recognized as problematic for security,
interoperability, and of course, for CAs not on those lists, competition.
Luckily, we have options to avoid that.

On Wed, Sep 2, 2020 at 5:17 PM Bruce Morton <
Bruce.Morton at entrustdatacard.com> wrote:

> Intel trusts a number of public CAs,
> https://software.intel.com/sites/manageability/AMT_Implementation_and_Reference_Guide/default.htm?turl=WordDocuments%2Frootcertificatehashes.htm
> .
>
>
>
> Bruce.
>
>
>
> *From:* Ryan Sleevi <sleevi at google.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 2, 2020 4:59 PM
> *To:* Bruce Morton <Bruce.Morton at entrustdatacard.com>
> *Cc:* Jeremy Rowley <jeremy.rowley at digicert.com>; CA/Browser Forum
> Validation SC List <validation at cabforum.org>
> *Subject:* [EXTERNAL]Re: [cabf_validation] Revision to OU requirements
>
>
>
> *WARNING:* This email originated outside of Entrust Datacard.
> *DO NOT CLICK* links or attachments unless you trust the sender and know
> the content is safe.
> ------------------------------
>
> I thought private CAs for AMT were supported since AMT 7.0, which was
> circa-2010/2011 if I remember correctly?
>
>
>
> Prior to that, Intel hard-coded a list of commercial CAs into the firmware
> of their chips, which is just... many levels of "don't do that". On the
> upside, it's possible to smoothly transition to new roots, for the
> commercial CAs still wanting to provide those certificates, by spinning up
> new roots, cross-signing new with old, issuing BR-compliant certs from new,
> and withdrawing old from root stores (so they could issue non-BR compliant
> certs). Basically, SHA-1 transition, but more structured, but I think that
> should only matter for hardware more than 10 years old, and I think the old
> stuff only supported SHA-1 anyways?
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2020 at 4:53 PM Bruce Morton <
> Bruce.Morton at entrustdatacard.com> wrote:
>
> Intel also uses the OU for Intel VPro/AMT use case where they require OU=
> Intel (R) Client Setup Certificate.
>
>
> https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/software/software-applications/Intel_SCS_Deployment_Guide.pdf
>
>
>
> Bruce.
>
>
>
> *From:* Validation <validation-bounces at cabforum.org> *On Behalf Of *Jeremy
> Rowley via Validation
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 2, 2020 4:29 PM
> *To:* Ryan Sleevi <sleevi at google.com>
> *Cc:* CABforum3 <validation at cabforum.org>
> *Subject:* [EXTERNAL]Re: [cabf_validation] Revision to OU requirements
>
>
>
> *WARNING:* This email originated outside of Entrust Datacard.
> *DO NOT CLICK* links or attachments unless you trust the sender and know
> the content is safe.
> ------------------------------
>
> Yeah – we wanted to see what would happen if we turned it off. So far,
> there hasn’t been  a lot of noise. This is the first one we’ve encountered.
>
>
>
> VMware generate the OU as part of the cert request to create a unique
> identifier. The tool uses that unique identifier to do the installation.
> Removing the OU is breaking the VMware install tool and causing it not to
> load the certificate. We’re reaching out to them to see if we can get them
> to update their software and stop requiring OU.
>
>
>
> *From:* Ryan Sleevi <sleevi at google.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 2, 2020 2:23 PM
> *To:* Jeremy Rowley <jeremy.rowley at digicert.com>
> *Cc:* CABforum3 <validation at cabforum.org>; Richard Smith <rich at sectigo.com
> >
> *Subject:* Re: [cabf_validation] Revision to OU requirements
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2020 at 4:14 PM Jeremy Rowley <jeremy.rowley at digicert.com>
> wrote:
>
> We’ve been working to shut off OU completely to see if there are issues
> with doing so.  So far, we’ve found one automation tool that requires OU:
> https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2044696
>
>
>
> Thanks Jeremy! I saw DigiCert was taking a good step here, in
> https://knowledge.digicert.com/alerts/ou-removal.html , and think that's
> a model for all CAs (by virtue of the BRs)
>
>
>
> I'm hoping you can share more details about the issue there. Are you
> saying the system doesn't load a publicly-trusted certificate if it's
> missing the OU field, or merely that their tool produces CSRs with the OU
> field populated, as part of ensuring a globally unique DN?
>
>
>
> Much like past work on working out interoperable, standards-based
> approaches to IP addresses (
> https://cabforum.org/guidance-ip-addresses-certificates/ ), it'd be great
> to understand the problem more to see what options we have.
>
>
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