Medium security NIKHEF X.509 policy



Document source: nikhef.nl:/global/ices/grid/dutchgrid/ca/policy-medium
Version: $Id: medium.html,v 1.5 2001/05/15 09:02:52 davidg Exp $
Status: draft
On-line reference: http://certificate.nikhef.nl/

1 Introduction

This document describes the certification policy for encryption and authentication keys, used by the NIKHEF/DutchGrid certification authority for medium-security (ms) X.509 certification. In short, ms X.509 certification guarantees that, for every certificate issued, the identity of the requester has been determined (using a proof-of-identity or in accordance with the rules specified in section X). Moreover, the relation of the requester to the organisation mentioned in the certificate has been found to be correct at the moment the certificate was issued.

This document should enable users of the NIKHEF ms X.509 CA to judge what value can be attributed to X.509 certificated signed by the NIKHEF ms X.509 certification authority. It also serves as an operation manual for the NIKHEF CA operators. Similar documents exist for the low-security X.509 policy.

2 The NIKHEF CA

Mailing address: NIKHEF, c/o David Groep, P.O. Box 41882, NL 1009 DB Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Internet e-mail: ca@nikhef.nl
Sources of information: http://certificate.nikhef.nl/
Validity: this document is valid until December 31, 2001.

3 Limitations of the NIKHEF CA

The liability of the NIKHEF CA is limited to those persons or objects that are affiliated to organisations participating in the Dutch Data Grid (DutchGrid) and/or the WCW. The NIKHEF CA Organisation (NCAO) mains at building a trustworthy certificate-based security infrastructure, suitable for use on production systems of the participating organisations. In this version of the ms X.509 policy, financial transactions based on NCAO ms X.509 certificates are not allowed.

3.1 Legal aspects

The NIKHEF CA X.509 certification service is run with a reasonable level of security, but is provided on a best effort only basis, by following the procedures outlined in this document. De facto, the NIKHEF CA guarantees: Apart from the guarantees given above, NIKHEF, the foundation `FOM', the NIKHEF CA, its subordinate RA's, and its personnel are not to be held liable for any damages, including but not limited to lost profit, lost savings and incidental or consequential damages. The NIKHEF CA is not to be held legally responsible for problems arising from its operation, or for the use made of the certificates it issues.  It is explicitly forbidden to use certificates issues by the NIKHEF CA under the ms X.509 policy in any way for financial transactions and for any kind of trade.

The NIKHEF CA will publish a list of certificates issues under the ms X.509 policy and a list of all such certificated that are revoked. Except for the data contained in the certificate itself, no personal data shall be published by the NIKHEF CA. Any additional data presented to the NIKHEF CA in the coarse of the authentication process may be verified, but will not be retained by the NIKHEF CA in the on-line repository. By requesting a certification from the NIKHEF CA, you grant permission to the NIKHEF CA to publish your certificate data in the aforementioned on-line repository (as meant by the Dutch `wet persoonsregistratie'). Identification data derived from official proofs of identity will not be retained (no passport number will be stored by the NIKHEF CA in any way). For identity checks performed by RAs or by personal introduction, the name of the introducing party will be recorded.

3.2 The NIKHEF CA certification hierarchy

The NIKHEF CA hierarchy contains one and only one Certification Authority. In order to facility the identification of persons requesting certificates in the participating institutes, Registration Authorities (RA's) may be appointed. These RAs will not sign the certificates themselves, but will forward the requests to the NIKHEF CA, after they have established the identity of the requester in accordance with the guidelines detailed in this document.
Multiple Certification Authorities with different distinguished names (DNs) may exist for different purposes and policies. The DN will make sufficiently clear with policy applies to the CA.

3.3 Registration Authorities

Registration Authorities (RAs) are trusted intermediaries that verify the identity of requesters and forward the requests to a certification authority. An RA itself does not certify requests. RAs are certified by the NCAO according to the same procedures that apply to regular end-users. Thy do not need a separate `RA' key.
The RA will verify the identity of the requester based on the policy outlines in section 5. He will make sure that the requester is currently affiliated to the organisation mentioned in the certificate request, that should correspond to the organisation to which the RA belongs. The verified request data will be passed by the RA to the NCAO. If this transfer is to be electronically, the message sent from the RA to the CA will be digitally signed. The NCAO should verify the signature to a satisfactory level.
The request should mention the kind of certification required.

Before appointing a RA, the Certification Authority will make sure that the candidate RA is aware of his responsibilities, that he has read the applicable policy documents and that he considers himself bound by the terms of the policy statement. The RA shall not retain any private data presented by the subject to the RA as part of the verification process.

4 Security

4.1 Protection of the NIKHEF CA

The following security demands will apply for the NIKHEF CA:

4.2 Protection of Registration Authorities

4.3 Protection of end-users

End-users applying for certification by the NIKHEF CA Organisation will comply with the following rules:

4.4 Protection of certified entities (non-persons)

Non-personal entities can be certified by means of X.509 certificates (e.g. servers, Java applets, etc). In such cases it might be necessary to store the private key part of the certificate on-line. In these cases, the following rules apply:

5 Certification Rules

This section describes the procedures for certification of persons and systems. No automatic processing of certificate requests is allowed under the m.s. X.509 policy.

Certificates will be issues under the NCAO m.s. X.509 policy only after both the identity and the affiliation have been verified by the CA. There are several possibly verification methods:

5.1 For persons directly affiliated to participating DutchGrid organisations

When an RA has been appointed at the end-users institute, certification requests can only be issues to the NIKHEF CA via the assigned RA. In case no RA has yet been appointed, end-users may request certification directly at the NIKHEF CA.
The RA or the NIKHEF CA will certify the request, only after the identity has been established by: and only after the affiliation to the organisation mentioned in the request by: The RA of CA may verify the possession of the private key part pertaining to the request by sending an encoded challenge to the requester.

5.3 For non-personal entities affiliated to DutchGrid organisations

A certificate for non-personal entities (e.g. web-servers) implies that the NCAO certifies that the server or program was, at the time of certification, being maintained by the organisation mentioned in the certificate. This affiliation is verified by out-of-band communication between the RA or CA and a pre-certified person affiliated to the organisation involved. The NIKHEF CA will not issues `wild card' certificates on the the m.s. X.509 policy.

5.3 For persons and entities not affiliated to the DutchGrid organisations

The NCAO will not issue certificates to such persons or entities.

5.4 Validity

The validity of certification for persons and non-personal entities is at most 1 year.

6 Certificate publication and Operational Requirements

The NIKHEF CA Organisation will publish its certificate and a signed list of revoked certificates (CRL). The NCAO will publish a list of names of certificates signed by the NCAO and a list of names of certificates revoked by the NCAO.
This publication will be on a publicly available server, accessible via HTTP (Web). The NCAO will publish the certificates issues to end-users publicly to enable secure message exchanges, but the list will not contain electronic mail addresses unless part of the public certificate data as requested by the subject.

Newly signed certificates will be sent to the original requester. In case of a request received electronically, the certificate will be sent to the mail address specified in the reply-to header field. When this field is not present, the certificate will be sent to the address of the sender.

When the original request was received by other means, a suitable return path will be chosen.

6.1 Certification Records

The NIKHEF CA will keep records of the following events: Such records are kept for a period of at least three years.

6.2 CA key compromise and CA termination

If the CA's private key is compromised or suspected to be compromised, the NIKHEF CA will inform the end-users known to the NIKHEF CA, all cross-certifying CAs, and all certified persons and entities.

Before termination of services by the NIKHEF CA, it will inform the end-users known to the NIKHEF CA, all persons and entities currently holding a valid NIKHEF CA certificate. It will publicly announce termination of its services and stop issuing certificates and CRL.

7 Certificate revocation

The NIKHEF CA may revoke certificates before their expiration date. Such revocation might be triggered by: In the following cases, instant revocation by the NIKHEF CA is mandatory: Besides, the legitimate owner of a certified key can request revocation, without stating reasons. The NIKHEF CA will honour such a request immediately, but only after the NIKHEF CA has sufficiently verified that the requester is the same person as the one that originally requested certification.

Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL) are issues whenever a certificate is revoked, but at least every one month.

8 Naming conventions

All certificates issued by the NIKHEF CA should have clear and unambiguous names. Aliases are not allowed. Organisations should be mentioned using either their official or current name. The key of a certification authority shall be recognisable as such, preferably by including the abbreviation `CA' in its common name.

Certificates signed by the NIKHEF/DutchGrid CA should start with a top-level  organisation name `/O=dutchgrid/', followed by an identification of the entity (`O=users' or `O=hosts' -for globus hosts or `O=servers' for (web)servers), followed by the name or the organisation and the common name of the requester or entity. For persons, an electronic-mail address may be included but is not compulsory.

Examples of possible distinguished named:

8.1 Certificate Contents

The NIKHEF CA issues X.509v3 certificates. Its purpose field will reflect the allowed usage: SSL client/server, S/MIME signing and encryption, and Netscape SSL server when relevant. When needed by applications of the certificate, purpose `Any' may be assigned. Every certificate will contain a URI reference to the relevant policy document.

9 Obligations of users of the NIKHEF CA

Persons, organisations or entities are only allowed to make use of the certificates issued by the NIKHEF CA if they comply with the following rules:

10 Change Log

1.2 to 1.3: allowed keys for certs within /O=hosts/ to be stored unencrypted.
1.3 to 1.4: extented the validity period of this policy to December 2001. Made explicit the requirement for RA's to destroy any private data used in the validation process. The NCAO will now disclose also the certificates themselves in a web-accessible repository (as was already allowed for but not used in version 1.2). Updated web-references to certificate.nikhef.nl. 1.4 to 1.5: corrected error in version numbering in section 10 (off-by-one).
David Groep <davidg@nikhef.nl>