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README.md

Class 3 re-signing procedure 2022

The CAcert class3 re-signing in 2021 produced a subordinate CA certificate with at least two known issues:

The CA certificate has a CA issuer URL that points to itself instead of to the Root CA certificate, this makes at least Icinga's check_ssl_cert monitoring plugin fail, if a endpoint certificate issued by the 2021 class3 certificate is checked
The class 3 subordinate CA certificate does not contain all expected extended key usages, some providers (i.e. Google) do not accept the certificate for verifying document or email signatures

The re-signing planned for 2022 is just an intermediate step. We are aware that our current certificate hierarchy is not state of the art, and we need to do a properly planned re-creation. There is a work-in-progress design document in the internal Nextcloud instance.

Requirements for the new class 3 certificate

The class 3 certificate must contain the following fields:

Version: v3
Serial Number: determined by signing procedure (ascending integer currently)
Signature: sha512WithRSAEncryption OID 1.2.840.113549.1.1.13
Issuer:

emailAddress=support@cacert.org,CN=CA Cert Signing Authority,OU=http://www.cacert.org,O=Root CA (Subject of CAcert Root CA certificate aka class1, applied by signing procedure)
Validity: include validity duration with a "do not use after" field value before the "do not use after" field value of the root certificate and a validity of 5 years (use the smaller/earlier expiry value)

The Root CA certificate has a validity of
```
Validity
  Not Before: Mar 30 12:29:49 2003 GMT
  Not After : Mar 29 12:29:49 2033 GMT
```
The class 3 certificate should therefore use Not Before = issuing date, Not After = issuing date + 5 years

The timestamps must be encoded as UTCTime (according to RFC-5280 Section 5.1.2.5.1)
Subject:

CN=CAcert Class 3 Root,OU=http://www.CAcert.org,O=CAcert Inc.

using the same encoding (PrintableString) as the current 2021 class 3 CA certificate for all RDNs

SubjectPublicKeyInfo: use the existing RSA key pair

Public-Key: (4096 bit)
Modulus:
    00:ab:49:35:11:48:7c:d2:26:7e:53:94:cf:43:a9:
    dd:28:d7:42:2a:8b:f3:87:78:19:58:7c:0f:9e:da:
    89:7d:e1:fb:eb:72:90:0d:74:a1:96:64:ab:9f:a0:
    24:99:73:da:e2:55:76:c7:17:7b:f5:04:ac:46:b8:
    c3:be:7f:64:8d:10:6c:24:f3:61:9c:c0:f2:90:fa:
    51:e6:f5:69:01:63:c3:0f:56:e2:4a:42:cf:e2:44:
    8c:25:28:a8:c5:79:09:7d:46:b9:8a:f3:e9:f3:34:
    29:08:45:e4:1c:9f:cb:94:04:1c:81:a8:14:b3:98:
    65:c4:43:ec:4e:82:8d:09:d1:bd:aa:5b:8d:92:d0:
    ec:de:90:c5:7f:0a:c2:e3:eb:e6:31:5a:5e:74:3e:
    97:33:59:e8:c3:03:3d:60:33:bf:f7:d1:6f:47:c4:
    cd:ee:62:83:52:6e:2e:08:9a:a4:d9:15:18:91:a6:
    85:92:47:b0:ae:48:eb:6d:b7:21:ec:85:1a:68:72:
    35:ab:ff:f0:10:5d:c0:f4:94:a7:6a:d5:3b:92:7e:
    4c:90:05:7e:93:c1:2c:8b:a4:8e:62:74:15:71:6e:
    0b:71:03:ea:af:15:38:9a:d4:d2:05:72:6f:8c:f9:
    2b:eb:5a:72:25:f9:39:46:e3:72:1b:3e:04:c3:64:
    27:22:10:2a:8a:4f:58:a7:03:ad:be:b4:2e:13:ed:
    5d:aa:48:d7:d5:7d:d4:2a:7b:5c:fa:46:04:50:e4:
    cc:0e:42:5b:8c:ed:db:f2:cf:fc:96:93:e0:db:11:
    36:54:62:34:38:8f:0c:60:9b:3b:97:56:38:ad:f3:
    d2:5b:8b:a0:5b:ea:4e:96:b8:7c:d7:d5:a0:86:70:
    40:d3:91:29:b7:a2:3c:ad:f5:8c:bb:cf:1a:92:8a:
    e4:34:7b:c0:d8:6c:5f:e9:0a:c2:c3:a7:20:9a:5a:
    df:2c:5d:52:5c:ba:47:d5:9b:ef:24:28:70:38:20:
    2f:d5:7f:29:c0:b2:41:03:68:92:cc:e0:9c:cc:97:
    4b:45:ef:3a:10:0a:ab:70:3a:98:95:70:ad:35:b1:
    ea:85:2b:a4:1c:80:21:31:a9:ae:60:7a:80:26:48:
    00:b8:01:c0:93:63:55:22:91:3c:56:e7:af:db:3a:
    25:f3:8f:31:54:ea:26:8b:81:59:f9:a1:d1:53:11:
    c5:7b:9d:03:f6:74:11:e0:6d:b1:2c:3f:2c:86:91:
    99:71:9a:a6:77:8b:34:60:d1:14:b4:2c:ac:9d:af:
    8c:10:d3:9f:c4:6a:f8:6f:13:fc:73:59:f7:66:42:
    74:1e:8a:e3:f8:dc:d2:6f:98:9c:cb:47:98:95:40:
    05:fb:e9
Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)

Extensions

AuthorityKeyIdentifier: reference the Root CA certificate's public key in the keyIdentifier field:

16:b5:32:1b:d4:c7:f3:e0:e6:8e:f3:bd:d2:b0:3a:ee:b2:39:18:d1 (sha1 hash of the Root CA certificate's public key)

SubjectKeyIdentifier: reference the own public key

$ openssl sha1 -c class3_pubkey.der
SHA1(class3_pubkey.der)= f0:61:d8:3f:95:8f:4d:78:b1:47:b3:13:39:97:8e:a9:c2:51:ba:9b

KeyUsage:

key cert sign, crl sign; critical
CertificatePolicies:
```
PolicyInformation [
  CertPolicyId 1.3.6.1.4.1.18506.4.4
  PolicyQualifiers [
    id-qt-cps
    cPSuri https://www.cacert.org/policy/CertificationPracticeStatement.html
  ]
]
```
The CertPolicy OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.18506.4.4 is defined at https://wiki.cacert.org/OidAllocation. The 2021 class 3 CA certificate contained a cps.php link, which does not make sense for a static document.
BasicConstraints: CA: true, patLenConstraint: 0; critical
Extended Key Usage:

not set

Note: server auth, client auth, email protection, code signing, OCSP signing, SmartCard logon, anyExtendedKeyUsage might be a good option, but might confuse at least some relying party applications

Note: this will not be sufficient to fulfill the Google requirements for S/MIME certificates
CRL Distribution Points: http://crl.cacert.org/revoke.crl

Note: CRL URLs must use the http URL scheme, this must be the CRL issued by the signing CA (in this case the Root CA)
Authority Information Access:
- CA issuers: http://www.cacert.org/certs/root_X0F.der
  
  Reference the Root CA certificate's canonical DER URL
- OCSP: URI:http://ocsp.cacert.org/
Note: CA issuers and OCSP URLs must use the http URL scheme

Re-Signing procedure

According to https://wiki.cacert.org/SystemAdministration/Systems/Signer the signer is running a Debian 5.0 Lenny minimal system based operating system. The procedure documented here has therefore been tested using a Debian 5.0 virtual machine.

Generate a CSR from the existing private key and certificate

export TZ=UTC
openssl x509 -signkey class3.key.pem -x509toreq -in class3.crt.pem -out class3.csr.pem \
  2>&1 | tee -a class3-signing-$(date +%Y%m%d).log

Sign the new CA certificate with the openssl configuration file

TZ=UTC \
openssl ca \
  -config openssl-class3-resign.conf \  # use CA re-signing configuration
  -extensions class3_ca_ext          \  # use class3 CA extension section
  -in class3.csr.pem                 \  # use the CSR from the previous step
  -startdate $(date +%y%m%d%H%M%SZ --date="today")  \  # use the current date
  -enddate $(date +%y%m%d%H%M%SZ --date="today + 5 years 0:00")  # use 5 years later
  -out class3.crt.pem                \  # output class3 certificate
  2>&1 | tee -a class3-signing-$(date +%Y%m%d).log

Post-signing changes on the signer

Certificates signed by the new class3 CA certificate should contain links to the CRL, OCSP and DER CA certificate URLs of the new class3 certificate. It would be a good idea to decide and document these URLs in advance.

The CA extension configurations for the different types of end entity certificates should be configured on the signer accordingly, i.e.

[client_ext]
authorityKeyIdentifier = hash
basicConstraints       = CA:FALSE
keyUsage               = digitalSignature,keyEncipherment,keyAgreement
extendedKeyUsage       = emailProtection,clientAuth,msSGC,msEFS,nsSGC
crlDistributionPoints  = URI:http://crl.cacert.org/class3-revoke.crl
authorityInfoAccess    = caIssuers;URI:http://www.cacert.org/certs/CAcert_Class3Root_x14E228.der, OCSP;URI:http://ocsp.cacert.org

Note: it might be preferable to use a stable URL like http://www.cacert.org/certs/class3_ca.der instead of using a name containing the serial number. URLs that will cause redirects should be avoided, because some relying party applications may not follow redirects.

The OCSP, CRL and CAIssuers URLs should use the http URL scheme.