[Technical Errata Reported] RFC5280 (7661)

RFC Errata System <[email protected]> Thu, 28 Sep 2023 06:10:36 -0700 (PDT)
Newsgroups gmane.ietf.x509
Message-ID <[email protected]>
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/eid7661

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Type: Technical
Reported by: Benjamin Strauss <[email protected]>

Section: 3.5

Original Text
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      (g)  cross-certification:  Two CAs exchange information used in
           establishing a cross-certificate.  A cross-certificate is a
           certificate issued by one CA to another CA that contains a CA
           signature key used for issuing certificates.

Corrected Text
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      (g)  cross-certification:  Two CAs exchange information used in
           establishing a cross-certificate.

Notes
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The removed sentence is factually inaccurate and misleading: "A cross-certificate is a certificate issued by one CA to another CA that contains a CA signature key used for issuing certificates." 
A "signature key used for issuing certificates" would be a private key.  A certificate simply does not contain a private key.  A definition of "cross-certificate" for the purpose of this RFC is already provided in section 3.2, so there is no point in elaborating here.  
(The definition given in section 3.2 conflicts with the narrower, and more generally used, definition given in RFC 4949, but that is beside the point.)

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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