[99109] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: PKI operators anyone?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Wed Sep 5 16:15:52 2007
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 15:58:19 -0400
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Joe Maimon <jmaimon@ttec.com>
Cc: North American Networking and Offtopic Gripes List <nanog@nanog.org>
In-Reply-To: <46DF06CA.3030404@ttec.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:43:06 -0400
Joe Maimon <jmaimon@ttec.com> wrote:
> Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> > The question about root key lifetime turns not just on the security
> > issues but on how easy it is to change the root key, either
> > routinely or in event of a compromise. To a first approximation,
> > no certificate acceptor *ever* changes its notion of root keys. In
> > that case, the question is how many acceptors you have, what their
> > lifetime is, and how easily you can be one of the rare people who
> > does change the root. That's why browsers have long-lived
> > certificates built in -- that list rarely changes. You suggest an
> > 80-year lifetime for your root key. How many of your current
> > devices do you expect to be using in 80 years? I thought so...
> Hopefully none, at half-life. Thats the point.
I'd be surprised if very many devices lasted more than 10 years.
> > > Beyond that, at this point I would not issue any certificates that
> > expire after 03:14:07 UTC on Jan 19, 2038. Doing otherwise is just
> > asking for trouble. The reason is left as an exercise for the
> > reader.
> This is actually a good point. Epoch rollover? Are you suggesting
> that any cert set to expire after the epoch may tickle issues now?
I think the odds of trouble are very high. A naive implementation will
convert the expiration date to a time_t -- a signed int, as best I can
tell, on many platforms -- and compare it to time(NULL). To such code,
very long-lived certificates have already expired. (Aside: somewhere
at home, I have a T-shirt that says, roughly, "Y2K? No problem. Jan
19, 2038? Help!") I'm sure that some code does it properly today.
I'm morally certain that other code doesn't...
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
