- From: Joseph Swaminathan <jswamina@cisco.com>
- Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 12:40:24 -0800
- To: Rich Salz <rsalz@datapower.com>
- Cc: Anders Rundgren <anders.rundgren@telia.com>, w3c-ietf-xmldsig@w3.org
Michael, Rich,
Thanks to both of you for the clarification. I was
not aware a same key be certified by different bodies,
and/or for different rolls.
Even a full cert-chain validation, cannot determine
the fraud in that situation, if the hacker has in possession
one valid message each signed by the sender in his each
role.
thanks
Joseph
Rich Salz wrote:
>
>> A novice question. Pardon me if it is obvious.
>> What is the need for signing the X509 certificate.
>
>
> Suppose I have a single keypair, but multiple certificates for that
> pair. For example, I might have a cert that identifies me as an
> employee, for signing email, and I might have a cert that identifies
> me as an officer of the company, for signing official documents.
>
> Unless I sign the cert, I can swap the two roles, and the receiver
> cannot tell.
>
> Even worse, a "fraudulent" or irrespoinsible CA can mint a new
> certificate for my public key that contains all sorts of things.
> Unless the receiver does full cert-chain validation (and really, who
> does that? nobody:), they can be fooled by this fraudulent cert.
>
> /r$
Received on Thursday, 11 March 2004 15:40:58 UTC