Internet-Draft Unsigned X.509 Certificates October 2024
Benjamin Expires 13 April 2025 [Page]
Workgroup:
Network Working Group
Internet-Draft:
draft-davidben-x509-alg-none-00
Published:
Intended Status:
Standards Track
Expires:
Author:
D. Benjamin
Google LLC

Unsigned X.509 Certificates

Abstract

This document defines a placeholder X.509 signature algorithm that may be used in contexts where the consumer of the certificate does not intend to verify the signature.

About This Document

This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://davidben.github.io/x509-alg-none/draft-davidben-x509-alg-none.html. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-davidben-x509-alg-none/.

Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/davidben/x509-alg-none.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

This Internet-Draft will expire on 13 April 2025.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

An X.509 certificate [RFC5280] relates two entities in the PKI: information about a subject and a proof from an issuer. Some applications, however, only require subject information. For example, an X.509 trust anchor is described by information about the subject (a root certification authority, or root CA). The relying party trusts this information out-of-band and does not require an issuer's signature.

X.509 does not define such a structure. Instead, X.509 trust anchors often use "self-signed" certificates, where the CA's key is used to sign the certificate. Other formats, such as [RFC5914] exist to convey trust anchors, but self-signed certificates remain widely used. Additionally, some TLS [RFC8446] server deployments use self-signed certificates when they do not intend to present a CA-issued identity, instead expecting the relying party to authenticate the certificate out-of-band, e.g. via a known fingerprint.

These self-signatures typically have no security value, aren't checked by the receiver, and only serve as placeholders to meet syntactic requirements of an X.509 certificate.

Computing signatures as placeholders has some drawbacks:

This document defines a profile for unsigned X.509 certificates, which may be used when the certificate is used as a container for subject information, without any specific issuer.

2. Conventions and Definitions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

3. Constructing Unsigned Certificates

This document defines the id-unsigned OID:

id-unsigned OBJECT IDENTIFER ::= { TBD }

To construct an unsigned X.509 certificate, the sender MUST set the Certificate's signatureAlgorithm and TBSCertificate's signature fields each to an AlgorithmIdentifier with algorithm id-unsigned and omitted parameters. The Certificate's signatureValue field MUST be an empty BIT STRING.

4. Consuming Unsigned Certificates

Signatures of type id-unsigned are always invalid. This contrasts with [JWT]. When processing X.509 certificates without verifying signatures, receivers MAY accept id-unsigned. When verifying X.509 signatures, receivers MUST reject id-unsigned. In particular, X.509 validators MUST NOT accept id-unsigned in the place of a signature in the certification path.

X.509 applications must already account for unknown signature algorithms, so applications are RECOMMENDED to satisfy these requirements by ignoring this document. An unmodified X.509 validator will not recognize id-unsigned and is thus already expected to reject it in the certification path. Conversely, in contexts where an X.509 application was ignoring the self-signature, id-unsigned will also be ignored, but more efficiently.

5. Security Considerations

If an application uses a self-signature when constructing a subject-only certificate for a non-X.509 key, the X.509 signature payload and those of the key's intended use may collide. The self-signature might then be used as part of a cross-protocol attack. Using id-unsigned avoids a single key being used for both X.509 and the end-entity protocol, eliminating this risk.

If an application accepts id-unsigned as part of a certification path, or in any other context where it is necessary to verify the X.509 signature, the signature check would be bypassed. Thus, Section 4 prohibits this and recommends that applications not treat id-unsigned differently from any other previously unrecognized signature algorithm. Non-compliant applications that instead accept id-unsigned as a valid signature risk of vulnerabilities analogous to [JWT].

6. IANA Considerations

This document has no IANA actions.

7. References

7.1. Normative References

[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC5280]
Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5280>.
[RFC8174]
Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

7.2. Informative References

[JWT]
Sanderson, J., "How Many Days Has It Been Since a JWT alg:none Vulnerability?", , <https://www.howmanydayssinceajwtalgnonevuln.com/>.
[RFC5914]
Housley, R., Ashmore, S., and C. Wallace, "Trust Anchor Format", RFC 5914, DOI 10.17487/RFC5914, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5914>.
[RFC8446]
Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446>.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Bob Beck, Nick Harper, and Sophie Schmieg for reviewing an early iteration of this document. Thanks to Alex Gaynor for providing a link to cite for [JWT].

Author's Address

David Benjamin
Google LLC