Subject: [TLS] clarifications on TLS extension "Certificate Status Request"

From: Nagendra Modadugu <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:05:54 -0700

I am currently implementing the "Certificate Status Request" extension
(RFC4366) for NSS.  The primary use of this implementation will be
OCSP verification of certificates presented by SSL websites.

For the general Internet context, I am unable to find a case where a
client should specify a non-empty responder_id_list.  But in any case,
say that the client does specify a responderID (to a general SSL
webserver), what is the server supposed to do?  The responderID is
supposed to be either 1) the hash of the responder public key, or 2) a
name (convention appears to be SubjectName of the responder).

Unless convention for a responderID "name" is a AIA URL (and clients
use a URL over a hash), the webserver will have to be pre-configured
to determine appropriate end-points for each possible responder.  What
is the recommended way to specify responderIDs?

Also, for the next revision of this RFC, it would useful to allow
servers to return multiple OCSP responses, as EV certificates tend to
be chained.

nagendra