RE: Using client certificates for signing

Exposing private keys seems like it is *never* a good idea. You use a private key to encrypt a challenge to prove possession with respect to the public key. Once the private key is disclosed, the value of the key pair is destroyed. Why would you want to do that?

-----Original Message-----
From: Mitar [mailto:mmitar@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 10:56 PM
To: Martin Thomson <martin.thomson@gmail.com>
Cc: public-webappsec@w3.org
Subject: Re: Using client certificates for signing

Hi!

On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 7:46 AM, Martin Thomson <martin.thomson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22 February 2016 at 21:42, Mitar <mmitar@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> You don't *need* a certificate to sign.  WebCrypto is enough.
>>
>> You do. Because your certificate is signed by the state CA. And this 
>> makes your digital signature legally equivalent to the normal 
>> signature for almost any purpose. At least some countries in Europe 
>> have such laws.
>
> You do not.  The private key that you use to sign is not in a 
> certificate.  If the key pair that was used to generate the 
> certificate is made available to WebCrypto, that is enough.

Oh, you are objecting to my terminology, but it seems that we agree otherwise. So you are agreeing that exposing the private key of the certificate's key pair to WebCrypto would be one of ways to address this? I agree. So how can we this available?


Mitar

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Received on Wednesday, 24 February 2016 07:02:04 UTC