General Purpose Extended Key Usage (EKU) for Document Signing X.509 Certificates

Status of This Memo

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

[RFC5280] specifies several extended key purpose identifiers (KeyPurposeIds) for X.509 certificates. In addition, several KeyPurposeIds have been added [RFC7299] under the IANA repository "SMI Security for PKIX Extended Key Purpose". While usage of the "anyExtendedKeyUsage" KeyPurposeId is bad practice for publicly trusted certificates, there is no public and general KeyPurposeId explicitly assigned for Document Signing. The current practice is to use id-kp-emailProtection, id-kp-codeSigning or a vendor-defined KeyPurposeId for general document signing purposes.¶

In circumstances where code signing and S/MIME certificates are also widely used for document signing, the technical or policy changes that are made to code signing and S/MIME certificates may cause unexpected behaviors or have an adverse impact such as decreased cryptographic agility on the document signing ecosystem and vice versa.¶

There is no issue if the vendor-defined KeyPurposeIds are used in a PKI (or a trust program) governed by the vendor. However, if the KeyPurposeId is used outside of vendor governance, the usage can easily become out of control (e.g. - When the end user encounters vendor-defined KeyPurposeIds, they might want to ask that vendor about use of the certificate, however, the vendor may not know about the particular use. - If the issuance of the cert is not under the control of the KeyPurposeId owner, there is no way for the KeyPurposeId owner to know what the impact will be if any change is made to the KeyPurposeId in question, and it would restrict vendor's choice of OID management. etc.).¶

Therefore, it is not favorable to use a vendor-defined KeyPurposeId for signing a document that is not governed by the vendor.¶

This document defines a extended key purpose identifier for Document Signing.¶

2. Conventions and Definitions

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. Extended Key Purpose for Document Signing

This specification defines the KeyPurposeId id-kp-documentSigning.¶

As described in [RFC5280], If the Extended Key Usage extension is present, then the certificate MUST only be used for one of the purposes indicated. [RFC5280] also describes that If multiple key purposes are indicated the application need not recognize all purposes indicated, as long as the intended purpose is present.¶

Document Signing applications MAY require that the Extended Key Usage extension be present and that the id-kp-documentSigning be indicated in order for the certificate to be acceptable to that Document Signing application.¶

The term "Document Signing" in this document refers to digitally signing contents that are consumed by people. To be more precise, contents are intended to be shown to a person with printable or displayable form by means of services or software, rather than processed by machines.¶

  ExtKeyUsageSyntax  ::=  SEQUENCE SIZE (1..MAX) OF KeyPurposeId
  KeyPurposeId  ::=  OBJECT IDENTIFIER

  id-kp  OBJECT IDENTIFIER  ::=
      { iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1)
        security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) 3 }
  id-kp-documentSigning  OBJECT IDENTIFIER  ::=  { id-kp XX }

4. Using the Extended Key Purpose for Document Signing in a Certificate

[RFC8358] specifies the conventions for digital signatures on Internet-Drafts. This is one of the intended use cases for the general document signing key purpose described in this document. [RFC8358] uses CMS to digitally sign a wide array of files such as ASCII, PDF, EPUB, HTML etc. Currently, there are no specification regarding key purposes for certificates signing those files except those which are defined by the software vendor.¶

The signed contents of Internet-Drafts are primarily intended to be consumed by people. To be more precise, contents are intended to be shown to a person in a printable or displayable form by means of services or software, rather than processed by machines. The digital signature on the contents is to indicate to the recipient of the contents that the content has not changed since it was signed by the identity indicated as the subject of the certificate. To validate the digital signature which is signed on contents intended to be consumed by people, implementations MAY perform the steps below during certificate validation:¶

The implementation MAY examine the KeyPurposeId(s) included in the Extended Key Usage extension as follows: A Restriction on Extended Key Usage is derived and implemented from (or configured with) the policy to which the implementation conforms.¶

1. If there are no restrictions set for the relying party and the relying party software, the certificate is acceptable.¶

2. If there are restrictions set for the relying party and relying party software, then process the KeyPurposeId(s) as described below.¶

   Each restriction on "Excluded KeyPurposeId" or "Permitted KeyPurposeId" is handled as described below.¶

   This procedure is intended to permit or prohibit presence of a certain KeyPurposeId or complete absence of KeyPurposeIds. It is outside the scope of this document, but the relying party can permit or prohibit combinations of KeyPurposeIds. A consideration on prohibiting combinations of KeyPurposeIds is described in the Security Considerations section of this document.¶

   Excluded KeyPurposeId procedure:

   "Excluded KeyPurposeId" is a KeyPurposeId which the relying party or the relying party software prohibits. Examples of "Excluded KeyPurposeId" are, presence of the anyExtendedKeyUsage KeyPurposeId or complete absence of the EKU extension in a certificate. If a KeyPurposeId of the certificate meets the conditions set by the "Excluded KeyPurposeId" restriction, the relying party or the relying party software rejects the certificate.¶

   Permitted KeyPurposeId procedure:

   "Permitted KeyPurposeId" is a KeyPurposeId which the relying party or the relying party software accepts. Examples of "Permitted KeyPurposeId" are, presence of this general document signing KeyPurposeId and/or protocol specific document signing-type KeyPurposeIds. If a KeyPurposeId of the certificate meets the condition set by a "Permitted KeyPurposeId" restriction, the certificate is acceptable. Otherwise, relying party or the relying party software rejects the certificate.¶

When a single application has the capability to process various data formats, the software may choose to make the excluded and permitted decisions separately in accordance with the format it is handling (e.g. text, pdf, etc).¶

5. Implications for a Certification Authority

The procedures and practices employed by a certification authority MUST ensure that the correct values for the EKU extension are inserted in each certificate that is issued. Unless certificates are governed by a vendor specific PKI (or trust program), certificates that indicate usage for document signing MAY include the id-kp-documentSigning KeyPurposeId. The inclusion of the id-kp-documentSigning KeyPurposeId does not preclude the inclusion of other KeyPurposeIds.¶

6. Security Considerations

The usage of id-kp-documentSigning KeyPurposeId is to provide an alternative to id-kp-emailProtection being used for non-email purposes and id-kp-codeSigning being used to sign objects other than binary code. This extended key purpose does not introduce new security risks but instead reduces existing security risks by providing means to separate other extended key purposes used for communication protocols namely, TLS or S/MIME etc. in order to minimize the risk of cross-protocol attacks.¶

To reduce the risk of specific cross-protocol attacks, the relying party or relying party software may additionally prohibit use of specific combinations of KeyPurposeIds.¶

While a specific protocol or signing scheme may choose to come up with their own KeyPurposeIds, some may not have significant motive or resources to set up and manage their own KeyPurposeIds. This general document signing KeyPurposeId may be used as a stop-gap for those that intend to define their own KeyPurposeId or those who do not intend to set up a KeyPurposeId but still would like to distinguish document signing from other usages.¶

Introduction of this id-kp-documentSigning KeyPurposeId does not introduce any new security or privacy concerns.¶

7. IANA Considerations

This document requests that IANA make two assignments. One assignment is for the addition of the id-kp-documentSigning object identifier (OID), as defined in Section 3.1, to the "SMI Security for PKIX Extended Key Purpose" (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3) registry. The other assignment is for the addition of the id-mod-docsign-eku ASN.1 module [X.680] object identifier (OID), as defined in Appendix A, to the "SMI Security for PKIX Module Identifier" (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.0) registry. No further action is necessary by IANA.¶

Appendix A. ASN.1 Module

The following ASN.1 module provides the complete definition of the Document Signing KeyPurposeId.¶

  DocSignEKU { iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1)
    security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) id-mod(0)
    id-mod-docsign-eku(TBD1) }

  DEFINITIONS EXPLICIT TAGS ::=

  BEGIN

  -- EXPORTS ALL --

  -- IMPORTS NOTHING --

  -- OID Arc --

  id-kp  OBJECT IDENTIFIER  ::= {
    iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1)
    security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) kp(3) }

  -- Document Signing Extended Key Usage --

  id-kp-documentSigning OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-kp TBD2 }

  END

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Russ Housley for verifying the ASN.1 module. Additionally, we would like to thank Corey Bonnell, Wendy Brown, Russ Housley, Prachi Jain, and Stefan Santesson for their comments.¶

Authors' Addresses