ietf-smime
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RE: RFC2632bis and subjectAltName

2003-07-29 14:08:05

Blake:

I do not think that the specification does #1. SHOULD is very different than "required."

Russ


At 02:04 PM 7/29/2003 -0700, Blake Ramsdell wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ietf-smime(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org
> [mailto:owner-ietf-smime(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of Russ 
Housley
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:14 AM
> To: ietf-smime(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
> Subject: RFC2632bis and subjectAltName
>
> The document says:
>
>     The email address SHOULD be in the subjectAltName extension
>
> This is exactly the same thing that RFC 2632 says.
>
> If the certificate does not bind the public key to the email
> address, how
> is this done?  Should we mandate an alternate mechanism?  Or,
> should we
> change "SHOULD" to "MUST?"

I think that the current spec tries to address at least two issues here:

1. Is it required that an email address be present in the certificate

2. If the email address is present, where should it be located (subject
DN vs. subjectAltName)

Are you asking about:

3. How do we understand if the CA was putting the email address in the
certificate purely for informational reasons vs. actually doing some
work to make sure that the public key "belongs" to that email address

If so, I have no idea -- it's "do what PKIX says" in this case.

Blake


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