[Technical Errata Reported] RFC5280 (6830)

The following errata report has been submitted for RFC5280,
"Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile".

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You may review the report below and at:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/eid6830

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Type: Technical
Reported by: Corey Bonnell <[email protected]>

Section: Appendix A.1

Original Text
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-- Note - upper bounds on string types, such as TeletexString, are
-- measured in characters.  Excepting PrintableString or IA5String, a
-- significantly greater number of octets will be required to hold
-- such a value.  As a minimum, 16 octets, or twice the specified
-- upper bound, whichever is the larger, should be allowed for
-- TeletexString.  For UTF8String or UniversalString at least four
-- times the upper bound should be allowed.

Corrected Text
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-- Note - upper bounds on string types, such as TeletexString, are
-- measured in characters.  Excepting PrintableString or IA5String, a
-- significantly greater number of octets will be required to hold
-- such a value.  As a minimum, 16 octets, or twice the specified
-- upper bound, whichever is the larger, should be allowed for
-- TeletexString.  For UTF8String or UniversalString, four
-- times the upper bound should be allowed.

Notes
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"at least four times" is likely a holdover from RFC 3280, as the same text exists in that RFC. In RFC 3280, the definition of UTF-8 in UTF8String was normatively referencing RFC 2279, which allowed for a maximum of 6 octets to represent a single Unicode character in UTF-8. However, RFC 5280 was updated to normatively reference RFC 3629, which restricts the allowed set of characters in a UTF-8 string to match those allowed in UTF-16 (i.e., the BMP and 16 supplementary planes as opposed to all 32k planes). As a result, the maximum length for a single RFC 3629 UTF-8 character is 4 octets, rendering the guidance of "at least four times" wholly unnecessary; "four times" is sufficient in all cases.

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RFC5280 (draft-ietf-pkix-rfc3280bis-11)
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Title               : Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile
Publication Date    : May 2008
Author(s)           : D. Cooper, S. Santesson, S. Farrell, S. Boeyen, R. Housley, W. Polk
Category            : PROPOSED STANDARD
Source              : Public-Key Infrastructure (X.509)
Area                : Security
Stream              : IETF
Verifying Party     : IESG