Subject: summary of PKIX session on 12.3.2007

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 18:58:40 -0500

PKIX WG Summary for IETF 70

Ongoing WG Activities

- SCVP was approved and is in AUTH 48 now.

- The CMC trio has been revised by Jim, and was approved by Tim on Wednesday.

- 3280bis is undergoing minor fixes in response to IETF last call 
with the intent that the fixes will be agreed to by the Wg by the 
time the IET last call is completed. The WG is now trying to finalize 
the requisite text.

- The EC algorithm info design team , lead by Tim Polk, presented a 
new proposal, which requires an update to RFC 4055 and 3279, but is 
in keeping with the spirit of 4055. The proposal would make 
PKIX-compliant representation of ECC algorithm info a compatible 
subset of what ANSI X9.62 proposed. The WG has been asked to agree to 
this proposed way forward, which will require two new documents (one 
very small).

- PHB proposed an optional extension to OCSP to facilitate agility 
for both hash and signature algorithms, thus removing some ambiguity 
I the current specs. The WG will be asked to consider this as a new 
work item, once Phil has posted an I-D describing his proposal.

Other Actions

- PKIX will respond to two liaison statements from ITU-T. The first 
statement deals with removing the upper bound from X.520 attributes 
used in DNs.  The PKIX position is "just say no (to unbounded strings 
in DNs)." He second statement deals with he real world situation of 
DN collisions in CA and EE Subject names in the global context. Here 
the PKIX position is that yes, this does happen and no, we are not 
going to try to fix the problem (e.g., by creating guidelines for CA 
name selection or by establishing a list of extant CA names).

- Paul Hoffman and Jim Schaad have developed an open source ASN.1 
compiler for the 1998/2002 versions of ASN.1. PKIX needs to determine 
if it wants to update its specs to use the newer syntax.

- PKIX was briefed on a proposal for a model for trust anchor 
management, and a companion management protocol. The WG will decide 
if it wishes to pursue this as a work item. A straw poll was 
initiated on Wednesday.

- PRPQ was briefed again by Max, and will be considered by the WG as 
a possible Experimental RFC work item. A straw poll was initiated on 
Wednesday.