Root CA Certificate Rekeying in the Scenario of Post Quantum Migration
draft-wang-lamps-root-ca-cert-rekeying-00
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draft-wang-lamps-root-ca-cert-rekeying-00
Limited Additional Mechanisms for PKIX and SMIME G. Wang, Ed.
Internet-Draft Y. Yang
Intended status: Standards Track Huawei Int. Pte Ltd
Expires: 6 January 2025 J. Zhang
Huawei Tech. Ltd
5 July 2024
Root CA Certificate Rekeying in the Scenario of Post Quantum Migration
draft-wang-lamps-root-ca-cert-rekeying-00
Abstract
In the public key infrastructures (PKIs), root certifcation authority
(CA) certificate rekeying is crucial to guarantee business
continuity. Two approaches are given in [RFC4210] for entities which
are belonging to different generations to verify each other's
certificate chain. However, these two approaches rely on the
assumption that the old entities can be updated. In this draft, we
propose a one-way link certificate based solution such that old
entities are transparent to root CA certificate rekeying. Namely,
during the overlapping lifetime of two root CA certificates, without
any update in old entities, old and new entities can verify each
other's certificate chain smoothly. Furthermore, the proposed
solution works in both traditional PKIs, and post-quantum (PQ) PKIs,
where the cerficate can be pure PQ ones or hybrid ones.
Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor)
Discussion of this draft takes place on the rfc-interest mailing list
([email protected]), which has its home page at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/mailman/listinfo/rfc-interest.
Status of This Memo
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provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 6 January 2025.
Copyright Notice
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Design Goals of a New Solution for Root CA Rekeying . . . . . 5
4. The Proposed Solution Based on One-way Link Certificate . . . 6
5. Testing Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Introduction
In the public key infrastructures (PKIs), root certification
authority (CA) certificate management is crucial to guarantee
business continuity, as the CA certificate is the trust anchor for
certificate chains, which establish the trust paths in PKIs from end
users to the trusted authority, i.e., the root CA.
However, just like the certificates for end users, the root CA
certificate has a limited time of liftime as well, which normally
varies from a few years to several decades to satsify various
applications. Further more, while new end user certificates can be
issued when old ones are nealy expiring, but a new root CA
certificate should be issued normally when the old root CA
certificate has been just used for half of its lifetime. Here are
the main reasonos behind this pratice.
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A root CA ceritifate is generally used to issue one or more
suborniate CA (sub-CA) certificates (for different departments in a
given organization, for exmpale), and then each of scuh sub-CA
certificate is used to issue lower level sub-CA certificates or end
user certificates. The lifetime of ened user ceritificates are
expected to be around a given period, say 5 years (for some specific
products, for example). Accoridg to [RFC4210], to issue end user
certificates with validity of 5 years, the remaining lifetime of the
sub-CA certificate must be 5 years or more, such that the lifetime of
each end user certificate MUST be covered by that of the sub-CA
certificate. However, to avoid frequenly apply and mannage multiple
or even many sub_CA certificates, the liftetime of each sub-CA
certicate could be set as 10 years, which means for each 5 years sub-
CA sub_CA certificates should be updated so that end ceritificates
for new users or products can still be continously issued to
guarratte business continuity. Similarly, for continously issuing
sub_CA certificates with validity of 10 years without frequently
changing the root CA certificate, it can be expected that each root
CA certificate may has lifetime of 20 years, which also implies that
each root CA certificate should be updated for each 10 years, not
nearly the expiry date of the root CA certificate. Each such new
root CA certificate can be called a new generation of root CA
certificate, though all of them still belong to the same legal
entity, a particular CA.
However, this also implies that different sub-CA certificates and end
user certificates issued under different generations of root CA
certificate co-exit during the overlapping period of those root CA
certificastes. So, it may be not easy to verify each other's
certificate chain between entities that hold different generations of
certificates issued by the same CA in the aspect of legal meaning but
under different generations of root CA certificates.
Say, for the above example, the sub-CA certifiates and end user
certifiates issued under the first genarteation of root CA
certificate may still be valid in the year of 12 when a given CA has
been established, but the newly issued sub-CA certifiates and end
user certifiates are actually under the second genarteation of root
CA certificate. For simpliciy, we call the owner of a sub-CA
certifiate or such an end user as an entity or a device. Moreover, a
device or entity hold certificate chain issued by an old generation
of root CA certificate are called as old device or old entity, while
a device or entity hold certificate chain issued by a new generation
of root CA certificate are called as new device or new entity. These
terms are in a relative way.
Actually, to address the above issue, there are two solutions given
in [RFC4210]:
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* Old and new entities upload both old and new root CA certificates,
* Or upload two-way link certificates which introduce old CA to new
CA and vice versa.
However, these two solutions do not work if old entities cannot
upload the new root certificates or the necessary link certificate,
or old devices are even out of maintenance. In fact, such worse
cases are possible, due to either limited prediction fo product
design such that old devices may do not support adding multiple root
CA or link certificates (automatically), or still running old devices
are not maintained well and automatically update is not supported.
Back a little bit, basically, there are actullay two approaches to
update root CA certifiate, i.e., renewing and rekeying. The former
means to extend the validity of an existing root CA certificate but
the root CA key pair and the associated cryptographical algorithm is
still the same. In this case, the validity of the same (old) key
pair of the root CA will be extended for a longer period. So,
attackers shall have longer time to cryptanalyze the same key pairs.
Also, as time goes, the secuirty strenth of the associated
cryptographical algorithm for the root CA certificate may become
weaker and weaker. So, soon or later, it still needs to issue a
brand new CA certificate.
For the latter, namely rekeying approach, a brand new root CA
certificate will be issued to replace the old key pair. In this
case,no just a new pair of keys, even different key length or new
algorithm can be used for generating the new root CA certificate by
considering the progress of cryptoanlysis and potentil security
threads in the near future, like quantum computing. However, in this
situation, a big challenge is to manage two or even multiple root CA
certificates during the overlapping periods, which could be 20 years
or more, as mentioned in the above. In particular, some old devices
may be not able to install the new root CA or link certificates, such
that the two solutions given in [RFC4210] do not work. Therefore,
old devices may not be able to verify the new certificate chain of a
new device, though a new device can be intalled all necessary
certifiates and verify the old certificate chains of old devices.
Motivated by the above observation, this draft proposes a one-way
link certificate based solution such that root CA certificate
rekeying is transparent to old entities:
* During the overlapping period of two or multiple root CA
certificates, without any update in old entities, old and new
entities can verify each other's certificate chain smoothly.
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* The proposed solution works in the scenario of traditional PKIs,
pure post-quantum PKIs, and also hybrid PKIs [I-D.D24], as the
rationale of the solution does not rely on the type of undelying
cryptographic algorithms.
* Esentially, the solution can be viewed as an extension of the
approach for root CA certificate issuing and managnement
specififed in [RFC4210] and [RFC5280].
2. Requirements Language
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. Design Goals of a New Solution for Root CA Rekeying
Basically speaking, to design the root CA rekeying solution based on
one-way link certificate, the following principles are followed to
maximize the potential employment of the solution in practice:
* Requirements on old devices are minimized such that the solution
is applicable to as many as possible scenarios.
* New devices are supposed to do more as they are normally more
powerful and designed with better prediction.
* When possbile, the usage of the new root CA keys will be maximized
as normally they associated with cryptographically sronger
algorithms .
* The existing standards [RFC4210] and [RFC5280] will be followed as
much as possible, so that the deployment of the new solution for
root CA rekeying can be implemented as easy as possile.
In Section 6.1 of [RFC5280] : the following is sepecified:
"A prospective certification path (a sequence of n certificates)
satisfies the following conditions:
* (a) for all x in {1, ..., n-1}, the subject of certificate x is
the issuer of certificate x+1;
* (b) certificate 1 is issued by the trust anchor;
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* (c) certificate n is the certificate to be validated (i.e., the
target certificate); and
* (d) for all x in {1, ..., n}, the certificate was valid at the
time in question. "
While Link certificates was introduced in Section 4.4.1 for
specifying CA operator actions to rekeying root CA certificate
[RFC4210] as follows.
" To change the key of the CA, the CA operator does the following:
* 1. Generate a new key pair;
* 2. Create a certificate containing the old CA public key signed
with the new private key (the "old with new" certificate);
* 3. Create a certificate containing the new CA public key signed
with the old private key (the "new with old" certificate);
* 4. Create a certificate containing the new CA public key signed
with the new private key (the "new with new" certificate);
* 5. Publish these new certificates via the repository and/or other
means (perhaps using a CAKeyUpdAnn message);
* 6. Export the new CA public key so that end entities may acquire
it using the "out-of-band" mechanism (if required).
The old CA private key is then no longer required. "
However, as we mentioned in Section 1, the above solution specified
in [RFC4210] assumes that (new and old) end entities may acquire the
new CA public key (using the "out-of-band" mechanism, if needed), as
the above item 6 despicts.
4. The Proposed Solution Based on One-way Link Certificate
Here are the basic idea of the proposed root CA key rekeying based on
One-way Link Certificate:
* Use the one-way link certificate, called newWithOld, which is the
link certificate of the new public signed by the old private key
of the root CA.
* The newWithOld certifies the new root CA key by the old one.
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* So, during the overlapping period, old devices can verify a link
certificate chain from a new device by using the old root CA
certificate as the trust anchor.
* Other cases are simple …
Old Device A New Device C
******************* ***************************
* oldCACet * * oldCACert newCACert *
* ^ * * ^ ^ *
* oldSubCACert * * newWithOld ^ *
* ^ * * ^ ^ *
* oldCertA * * newSubCAcert *
******************* * ^ *
^ * newCertC *
| B sends its ***************************
| link certificate ^ B sends either of its two
| chain to A | certificate chains to C
| |
*****************************
* oldCACert newCACert *
* ^ ^ *
* newWithOld ^ *
* ^ ^ *
* newSubCACert *
* ^ *
* newCertB *
*****************************
New Device B
Figure 1. Illustraion to the Solution Based on One-way Link Certificate.
Figure 1 shows how a new device B can send out its link certificate
chain, (oldCACert, newWithOld, nweSubCACert, newCertB), to an old
device A such that A can verify B's certificate chain by using the
old root CA cerficate, which is A's trust anchor. To repsond B, A
just sends its old certificate chain, (oldCACert, oldSubCACert,
oldCertA), to new device B, which can verify A's certificate chain by
using the old root CA cerificate, which is one of B's two trust
anchors, namely, the old or new root CA certificate.
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To communicate with another new device C, new device B can send out
either its link certificate chain, (oldCACert, newWithOld,
nweSubCACert, newCertB), or the new certificate chain, (newCAcert,
newSubCACert, newCertB), to new device C, which can verify either of
them by using one of its two trust anchors, namely, the old or new
root CA certificate. In this case, as both B and C are new devices,
C can do as B does such that B can verify either of C's two
certificate chains similarly.
The case of one old device communicates with another old device is
simple, as they just behaver as normaly by sending their own old
certificate chain to the other.
More detailed description will be provided later.
5. Testing Results
The proposed solution has been tested using OpenSSL library.
* 3 generations of root CA cert.: G1 (2016-2025), G2 (2018-2027),
and G3 (2020-2029).
* ross verifying tests among OpenSSL 1.0.1c, OpenSSL 1.0.2u、OpenSSL
1.1.1g and JDK 8u251.
The testing results are given in the following table, which show
positve answers for all the cases considered.
+========+===============+=============+===============+
| | 2015 | 2016 | 2018 |
+------------------------------------------------------+
| G1Sever | (TBD) | (TBD) | (TBD) |
+------------------------------------------------------+
| G2Sever | (TBD) | (TBD) | (TBD) |
+------------------------------------------------------+
| G2Sever | (TBD) | (TBD) | (TBD) |
+---------+--------------+-------------+---------------+
Table 1: Testing Results (to be given)
6. Security Considerations
Security analysis will be given later.
7. Acknowledgments
To be added later.
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8. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC4210] Adams, C., Farrell, S., Kause, T., and T. Mononen,
"Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate
Management Protocol (CMP)", RFC 4210,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4210, September 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4210>.
[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, May 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.
9. Informative References
[I-D.D24] F. Driscoll, F., "Terminology for Post-Quantum Traditional
Hybrid Schemes", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,,
February 2024, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-
ietf-pquip-pqt-hybrid-terminology/>.
Authors' Addresses
Guilin Wang (editor)
Huawei Int. Pte Ltd
9 North Buona Vista Drive, #13-01
The Metropolis Tower 1
SINGAPORE 138588
Singapore
Email: [email protected]
Yanjiang Yang
Huawei Int. Pte Ltd
Email: [email protected]
Jie Zhang
Huawei Tech. Ltd
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Email: [email protected]
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