INTERNET DRAFT R. Housley Intended Status: Informational Vigil Security Expires: 22 August 2010 22 February 2010 The application/pkix-attr-cert Media Type for Attribute Certificates Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Abstract This document specifies a MIME media type used to carry a single attribute certificate as defined in RFC 3281. Housley [Page 1] INTERNET DRAFT February 2010 1. Introduction RFC 2585 [RFC2585] defines the MIME media types for public key certificates and certificate revocation lists (CRLs). This document specifies a MIME media type for use with attribute certificates as defined in RFC 3281 [RFC3281]. Attribute certificates are ASN.1 encoded [X.680]. RFC 3281 [RFC3281] tells which portions of the attribute certificate must use the distinguished encoding rules (DER) [X.690] and which portions are permitted to use the basic encoding rules (BER) [X.690]. Since DER is a proper subset of BER, BER decoding all parts of a properly constructed attribute certificate will be successful. 2. IANA Considerations This document registers with IANA the "application/pkix-attr-cert" Internet Media Type for use with an attribute certificate as defined in [RFC3281]. This registration follows the procedures defined in BCP 13 [RFC4288]. Type name: application Subtype name: pkix-attr-cert Required parameters: None Optional parameters: None Encoding considerations: binary Security considerations: An attribute certificate provides authorization information. An attribute certificate is most often used in conjunction with public key certificate [RFC5280], and the two certificates should use the same encoding of the distinguished name as described in the Security Considerations of this document. Interoperability considerations: The media type will be used with HTTP to fetch attribute certificates. Other uses may emerge in the future. Published specification: RFC 3281 Applications which use this media type: The media type is used with a MIME-compliant transport to transfer an attribute certificate. Attribute certificates convey authorization information, and they are most often used Housley [Page 2] INTERNET DRAFT February 2010 in conjunction with public key certificates as defined in [RFC5280]. Additional information: Magic number(s): None File extension(s): .ac Macintosh File Type Code(s): none Person & email address to contact for further information: Russ Housley housley@vigilsec.com Intended usage: COMMON Restrictions on usage: none Author: Russ Housley Intended usage: COMMON Change controller: The IESG 3. Security Considerations Attribute certificate issuers must encode the holder entity name in exactly the same way as the public key certificate distinguished name. If they are encoded differently, implementations may fail to recognize that the attribute certificate and public key certificate belong to the same entity. 4. References 4.1. Normative References [RFC3281] S. Farrell, S., and R. Housley, "An Internet Attribute Certificate Profile for Authorization", RFC 3281, April 2002. 4.2. Informative References [RFC2585] Housley, R., and P. Hoffman, " Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Operational Protocols: FTP and HTTP", RFC 2585, May 1999. [RFC4288] Freed, N., and J. Klensin, "Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC 4288, December 2005. Housley [Page 3] INTERNET DRAFT February 2010 [RFC5280] Cooper, D., S. Santesson, S. Farrell, S. Boeyen, R. Housley, W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008. [X.680] ITU-T Recommendation X.680 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8824-1:2002, Information technology - Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Specification of basic notation. [X.690] ITU-T Recommendation X.690 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8825-1:2002, Information technology - ASN.1 encoding rules: Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER). Authors' Addresses Russell Housley Vigil Security, LLC 918 Spring Knoll Drive Herndon, VA 20170 USA EMail: housley@vigilsec.com Housley [Page 4]