Subject: Re: email oid

From: [email-masked] (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 16:20:52 (NZDT)

>The other day in trying to accommodate a legacy pki, I ran into a problem 
>with an oid specified in draft-ietf-pkix-ipki-part1-11.  The ASN.1 specifies 
>that the oid used for an email address in the distinguished name is 
>1.2.840.113549.1.9.1, which refers to a RSA-pkcs-9 email address.  I and 
>others have been using 0.9.2342.19200300.100.1.3 which is for internet mail 
>as specified in RFC1274.
 
There are currently at least three different locations for specifying the 
email address:
 
  altName.rfc822Name (the correct one which noone actually uses)
  emailAddress (officially deprecated, but everyone uses it anyway)
  rfc822Mailbox (oddball location which virtually noone uses.  A free bilabial 
        fricative to anyone who can explain the origin of the rfc822Mailbox 
        OID without referring the question to one of the RFC's authors.  
        Answers on the back of a postcard to ...  I'll post the explanation in 
        a week or so if anyone cares)
 
Peter.

---

From: David Wilson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 13:10:10 +0000

I have been forward this by a colleague, so I'm not exactly sure of the 
context...

>         a week or so if anyone cares)

I do not know of any standard X.500 schema that defines an attribute called 
altName.rfc822Name. Is there a schema which defines an X.500 attribute which 
uses the GeneralName ASN.1 syntax?

emailAddress and rfc822Mailbox are X.500 (and therefore LDAP) attributes. 

rfc822Mailbox is the common attribute type used for Internet email addresses 
in X.500/LDAP entries (going under a variety of names for LDAP). It is not 
normally used for naming, so the value is not normally in an RDN. The 
intention of the attribute is that its use is within a 'white pages' entry 
for an individual. It would be used by an Email client, for instance, when 
the client enables (L)DAP lookup, and gives the Email address to use.

It has been around for many years, certainly predating LDAP. It is an X.500 
Pilot attribute. Since the much of the early work of this was done University 
College, London, the OIDs allocated to this were under the UCL arc. This is 
allocated according to a scheme based on IPSS X.25 addresses. The 2342 is the 
DNIC for the U.K., and 234219200300 is the IPSS address for UCL.

(O.K. one of the authors is my boss, but I knew this anyway). 

David Wilson                                        [email-masked]
Isode Ltd.                                       Tel: +44 181 332 9091
http://www.isode.com                             Fax: +44 181 332 9019