[xmlsec] Key management / certificate management

[Aleksey Sanin]

I believe that there are 2 separate question:
1) Is it possible to validate cert *after* signature verification.
The answer is "NO" because the XML DSig standard allows to specify multiple
certs for each key. And application MUST check all the certs in order to 
find
one it accepts. Suppose you have 2 different certs in the signed message 
and
the first one is "bad" from your point of view and the second one is "good".
In the case when cert validation is done *after* signature verification, 
(as you suggest),
the application will pick up the first cert and you cert validation fails.
Of course, you application may return list of the certs, etc. but this 
really complicates
the logic and I am not sure that there no other logic holes. Not mention 
that
this is bad from performance/ Denial Of Service attack point of view (I 
can send you
a message signed with very big 4096 RSA key in my cert and you application
will spend a lot of time validating the signature only to find out that 
cert is invalid).

2) Apps need to have access to certs used to verify key.
You are absoluely correct. I am not sure that I want to open 
xmlSecX509Data structure but
I promise to think about something.

Aleksey


Moultrie, Ferrell (ISSAtlanta) wrote:

>It occurred to me that there's perhaps an easier way than overriding the
>validation function -- I can check the results structure after the
>validation is complete. The --print-all shows everything I need to
>validate the certificate given that I'm controlling the trusted
>certificate store, etc. Looking at results->key->x509Data->verified with
>X509_get_subject_name() and validating that a proper certificate was
>used (and that pResult->key->origin == xmlSecKeyOriginX509) appears
>quite fine for my application. The only problem I've run into in
>prototyping this solution is that _xmlSecX509Data struct is private to
>x509.c. The definition is below:
>  struct _xmlSecX509Data {
>      X509                *verified;
>      STACK_OF(X509)      *certs;
>      STACK_OF(X509_CRL)  *crls;
>  };
>Is there another/better way to access the certificate info used to
>validate the request? Otherwise, shouldn't this be moved into x509.h so
>that callers can access that data using the result structure?
>Thanks!
>  Ferrell
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Aleksey Sanin [mailto:aleksey at aleksey.com] 
>Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 12:01 AM
>To: Moultrie, Ferrell (ISSAtlanta)
>Cc: xmlsec at aleksey.com
>Subject: Re: [xmlsec] Key management / certificate management
>
>
>As you correctly pointed out, the first your problem (limiting allowed 
>keys sources
>to x509 certs only) could be simply solved by setting "allowedOrigins" 
>member
>of  the xmlSecKeysMngr structure.
>Regarding your other questions about certs validation, I have to note 
>that the included
>in XMLSec implementation of xmlSecKeysMngr interface is called "simple"
>:)
>You can extend it or completely overwrite yourself :) You idea about 
>using custom
>verifyX509 callback is absolutely correct. Probably there is one more 
>way (change
>the OpenSSL verification callback) but I am not sure that  it is better 
>(for example,
>because this affects all x509 operations in your application).
>There is no function to load trusted certs from something other than 
>file or a folder.
>Actually, it is a common practice that trusted certs are located in a 
>protected folder
>and you have read-only access to it (see Apache, Mozilla, IE, and other 
>implementations).
>Of course, there are no reasons why you could not load the trusted cert 
>from memory
>or an XML file. You just need to do some copy/paste :)
>
>Aleksey
>
>Moultrie, Ferrell (ISSAtlanta) wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Hi:
>> I'd like to control what public keys and/or certs are used or usable
>>for verifying data. In particular, I'd like to require that the public
>>key be validated by a cert (i.e., that <sig:KeyValue> supplied
>>unvalidated keys not be usable,and, I'd like to impose certain
>>contraints on any cert used (e.g., validating Issuer, Subject, Usage,
>>etc.). While I could search for a KeyValue node before calling
>>validation, it seems like there may be a better way to accomplish this
>>(below). Additionally, it looks like I could store a new verifyX509
>>(xmlSecX509VerifyCallback) pointer in the xmlSecKeysMngr struct and
>>intercept the cert verification. Still, since I'm very new to all of
>>this, I'm wondering if there's not simpler/better/more direct ways to
>>accomplish these types of checks. Any suggestions or pointers would be
>>greatly appreciated!
>> It looks like setting the allowedOrigins flag of the xmlSecKeysMngr
>>structure to xmlSecKeyOriginX509 may solve my first problem and ensure
>>that only keys found in a X509 cert will be usable. Correct?
>> I don't see any such short-cut for validating the X509 cert contents
>>other than the verifyX509 override I mentioned earlier. Any other way /
>>better option?
>> Finally, it looks like xmlSecSimpleKeysMngrLoadPemCert() method can
>>    
>>
>be
>  
>
>>used to load a trusted root certificate for X509 validation from a
>>    
>>
>file.
>  
>
>>I'd rather not have a seperate file storing this information. Is there
>>any way to load a trusted cert from a memory blob or perhaps from a
>>second XML document/tree?
>>Thanks!
>> Ferrell
>>_______________________________________________
>>xmlsec mailing list
>>xmlsec at aleksey.com
>>http://www.aleksey.com/mailman/listinfo/xmlsec
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>xmlsec mailing list
>xmlsec at aleksey.com
>http://www.aleksey.com/mailman/listinfo/xmlsec
>  
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.aleksey.com/pipermail/xmlsec/attachments/20020925/ef25c2b9/attachment.htm