The CMS and ESS specs mention attribute types defined in the RSA-copyrighted
"PKCS #9: Selected Attribute Types" specification. These include:
ContentType, SigningTime, CounterSignature, and MessageDigest.
These are actually defined by us, the S/MIME folk. The definitions are at
<http://www.imc.org/ietf-smime/oids.html>.
I can't find
an Internet Draft for PKCS #9. IMHO, either PKCS #9 needs to be re-produced
as an Internet Draft or the aforementioned PKCS #9 attributeTypes need to be
defined in ESS or CMS.
The latter is our only choice.
Paul Hoffman: do you know of any plans to re-define PKCS #9 as an Internet
Draft?
Last I heard from RSA, they didn't want to do this because PKCS #9 is a
"living document" that they want to be able to change at will. They update
it when they feel like it. So, it would not be appropriate for this to
become an informational RFC. That's why we set up our own OIDs registry.
Depending on the feeling of this group and of IANA, this registry might
transition to IANA if we can come up with clear enough rules for how things
get added to it or changed in it. I'll be making a stab at that wording in
the near future, but it might be problematic. For instance, who decides
which OID to register for a new key algorithm? What if someone wants to add
a private attribute type? The naming issue rears its ugly head again.
However, I believe we can handle it.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium