The application/pkcs10 Media Type
draft-turner-application-pkcs10-media-type-05

Network Working Group                                         S. Turner 
Internet Draft                                                     IECA 
Intended Status: Informational                              May 6, 2010 
Updates: 2986 (once approved) 
Expires: November 6, 2010 
 
 
                                      
                     The application/pkcs10 Media Type 
             draft-turner-application-pkcs10-media-type-05.txt 

Abstract 

   This document specifies a media type used to carry PKCS#10 
   certification requests as defined in RFC 2986. It carries over the 
   original specification from RFC 2311, which recently has been moved 
   to Historic state, and properly links it to RFC 2986. 

Status of this Memo 

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Internet-Draft      application/pkcs10 Media Type              May 2010 
    

   This Internet-Draft will expire on November 6, 2010. 

Copyright Notice 

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   document authors. All rights reserved. 

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   described in the Simplified BSD License. 

1. Introduction 

   [RFC2311] first defined the application/pkcs10 media type.  When 
   [RFC2633] was published, the application/pkcs10 section was dropped, 
   but for some reason the text was not incorporated into the PKCS#10 
   document [RFC2986].  [RFC2311] was moved to historic status by 
   [RFC5751].  To ensure the IANA media type registration points to a 
   non-historic document, this document updates [RFC2986] with the 
   definition of the application/pkcs10 media type and an IANA 
   registration based on [RFC4288]. 

   The text for Section 2 is adapted from Section 3.7 of [RFC2311]. 

1.1. Requirements Terminology 

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 

2. Creating a Certification Request 

   A typical application which allows a user to generate cryptographic 
   information has to submit that information to a certification 
   authority (CA), who transforms it into a certificate.  PKCS #10 
   [RFC2986] describes a syntax for certification requests.  A PKCS #10 
   certification request MUST use the application/pkcs10 media type. 

   The details of certification requests and the process of obtaining a 
   certificate are beyond the scope of this memo. Instead, only the 
   format of data used in application/pkcs10 is defined. 

 
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2.1. Format of the application/pkcs10 Body 

   PKCS #10 defines the ASN.1 type CertificationRequest for use in 
   submitting a certification request. For transfer to a CA, this 
   abstract syntax needs to be encoded and identified in a unique 
   manner.  When the media type application/pkcs10 is used, the body 
   MUST be a CertificationRequest, encoded using the Basic Encoding 
   Rules (BER) [X.690]. 

   Although BER is specified, instead of the more restrictive 
   Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER) [X.690], a typical application 
   will use DER since the CertificationRequest's 
   CertificationRequestInfo has to be DER-encoded in order to be signed. 

   A robust application SHOULD output DER, but allow BER or DER on 
   input. 

   Data produced by BER or DER is 8-bit, but some transports are limited 
   to 7-bit data. In such cases, a suitable 7-bit transfer encoding MUST 
   be applied; in MIME-compatible transports, the base64 encoding 
   [RFC4648] SHOULD be used with application/pkcs10, although any 7-bit 
   transfer encoding may work. 

2.2. Sending and Receiving an application/pkcs10 Body Part 

   For sending a certificate-signing request, the application/pkcs10 
   message format MUST be used to convey a PKCS #10 certificate-signing 
   request. Note that for sending certificates and CRLs without any 
   signed content, the application/pkcs7-mime message format MUST be 
   used to convey a degenerate PKCS #7 signedData "certs-only" message 
   [RFC5751]. 

   To send an application/pkcs10 body, the application generates the 
   cryptographic information for the user. The details of the 
   cryptographic information are beyond the scope of this memo. 

   Step 1. The cryptographic information is placed within a PKCS #10 
   CertificationRequest. 

   Step 2. The CertificationRequest is encoded according to BER or DER 
   (typically, DER). 

   Step 3. As a typical step, the DER-encoded CertificationRequest is 
   also base64 encoded so that it is 7-bit data suitable for transfer in 
   ESMTP. This then becomes the body of an application/pkcs10 body part. 

   The result might look like this: 

 
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Internet-Draft      application/pkcs10 Media Type              May 2010 
    

     Content-Type: application/pkcs10; name=smime.p10 
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 
     Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=smime.p10 

     rfvbnj756tbBghyHhHUujhJhjH77n8HHGT9HG4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYT6 
     7n8HHGghyHhHUujhJh4VQpfyF467GhIGfHfYGTrfvbnjT6jH7756tbB9H 
     f8HHGTrfvhJhjH776tbB9HG4VQbnj7567GhIGfHfYT6ghyHhHUujpfyF4 
     0GhIGfHfQbnj756YT64V 

   A typical application only needs to send a certification request. It 
   is a certification authority that has to receive and process the 
   request. The steps for recovering the CertificationRequest from the 
   message are straightforward but are not presented here. The 
   procedures for processing the certification request are beyond the 
   scope of this document. 

3. IANA Considerations 

   IANA is asked to update the registration for the application/pkcs10 
   media subtype in the Application Media Types registry using the 
   filled-in template from BCP 13 [RFC4288] given below. 

3.1. Registration of media subtype application/pkcs10 

   The media subtype for a PKCS#10 certification request is 
   application/pkcs10. 

     Type name: application 

     Subtype name: pkcs10 

     Required parameters: None 

     Optional parameters: None 

     Encoding considerations: binary; See Section 2.  

     Security considerations: 

      Clients use a certification request to request that a 
      Certification Authority certify a public key.  The certification 
      request is digitally signed.  Also see Section 6. 

     Interoperability considerations: See Section 2. 

     Published specification: This specification. 

 
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     Applications which use this media type: 

       Applications that support PKCS#10 certification requests 
      [RFC2986]. 

     Additional information: 

       Magic number(s): None 
       File extension(s): .p10 
       Macintosh File Type Code(s): 

     Person & email address to contact for further information: 
       Sean Turner <turners@ieca.com> 

     Restrictions on usage: none 

     Author: Sean Turner <turners@ieca.com> 

     Intended usage: COMMON 

     Change controller: The IESG 

4. Security Considerations 

   The security considerations of [RFC2986] and [RFC5751] apply; no new 
   security considerations are introduced by this document. 

5. Acknowledgements 

   I wish to thank the authors of RFC 2311, Steve Dusse, Paul Hoffman, 
   Blake Ramsdell, Laurence Lundblade, and Lisa Repka.  

   I would also like to thank Bjoern Hoehrmann for his review of the 
   media subtype application. 

6. References 

6.1. Normative References 

   [RFC2119]    Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 
                Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. 

   [RFC2986]    Nystrom, M, and B. Kaliski, "PKCS #10: Certification 
                Request Syntax Specification Version 1.7", RFC 2986, 
                November 2000. 

 
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   [RFC4288]    Freed, N., and J. Klensin, "Media Type Specifications 
                and Registration Procedures, BCP 13, RFC 4288, December 
                2005. 

   [RFC4648]    Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data 
                Encodings", RFC 4648, October 2006. 

   [RFC5751]    Turner, S. and B. Ramsdell, "Secure/Multipurpose 
                Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 3.2 Message 
                Specification", RFC 5751, January 2010. 

   [X.690]      ITU-T Recommendation X.690 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8825-
                1:2002.  Information Technology - ASN.1 encoding rules: 
                Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical 
                Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules 
                (DER). 

6.2. Informative References 

   [RFC2311]    Dusse, S., Hoffman, P., Ramsdell, B., Lundblade, L., 
                and L. Repka, "S/MIME Version 2 Message Specification", 
                RFC 2311, March 1998. 

   [RFC2633]    Ramsdell, B., "S/MIME Version 3 Message Specification", 
                RFC 2633, June 1999. 

Authors' Addresses 

   Sean Turner 
   IECA, Inc. 
   3057 Nutley Street, Suite 106 
   Fairfax, VA 22031 
   USA 

   EMail: turners@ieca.com 

 
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