S/MIME Example Keys and Certificates

D. K. Gillmor

doi:10.17487/RFC9216

1 Introduction
- 1.1 Terminology
- 1.2 Prior Work
2 Background
3 Example RSA Certification Authority
4 Alice's Sample Certificates
5 Bob's Sample
6 Example Ed25519 Certification Authority
7 Carlos's Sample Certificates
8 Dana's Sample Certificates
9 Security Considerations
10 IANA Considerations
11 References
- 11.1 Normative References
- 11.2 Informative References
Acknowledgements
Author's Address

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RFC 9216: S/MIME Example Keys and Certificates

D. K. Gillmor, Ed.

Informational

RFC Tips

Abstract

The S/MIME development community benefits from sharing samples of signed or encrypted data. This document facilitates such collaboration by defining a small set of X.509v3 certificates and keys for use when generating such samples.¶

Status of This Memo

This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.¶

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.¶

Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9216.¶

Copyright Notice

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

1. Introduction

The S/MIME ([RFC8551]) development community, in particular the email development community, benefits from sharing samples of signed and/or encrypted data. Often, the exact key material used does not matter because the properties being tested pertain to implementation correctness, completeness, or interoperability of the overall system. However, without access to the relevant secret key material, a sample is useless.¶

This document defines a small set of X.509v3 certificates ([RFC5280]) and secret keys for use when generating or operating on such samples.¶

An example RSA Certification Authority is supplied, and sample RSA certificates are provided for two "personas", Alice and Bob.¶

Additionally, an Ed25519 ([RFC8032]) Certification Authority is supplied, along with sample Ed25519 certificates for two more "personas", Carlos and Dana.¶

This document focuses narrowly on functional, well-formed identity and key material. It is a starting point that other documents can use to develop sample signed or encrypted messages, test vectors, or other artifacts for improved interoperability.¶

1.1. Terminology

"Certification Authority" (or "CA"):: a party capable of issuing X.509 certificates¶
"End Entity" (or "EE"):: a party that is capable of using X.509 certificates (and their corresponding secret key material)¶
"Mail User Agent" (or "MUA"):: a program that generates or handles email messages ([RFC5322])¶

1.2. Prior Work

[RFC4134] contains some sample certificates as well as messages of various S/MIME formats. That older work has unacceptably old algorithm choices that may introduce failures when testing modern systems: in 2019, some tools explicitly marked 1024-bit RSA and 1024-bit DSS as weak.¶

This earlier document also does not use the now widely accepted Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM) encoding (see [RFC7468]) for the objects and instead embeds runnable Perl code to extract them from the document.¶

It also includes examples of messages and other structures that are greater in ambition than this document intends to be.¶

[RFC8410] includes an example X25519 certificate that is certified with Ed25519, but it appears to be self issued, and it is not directly useful in testing an S/MIME-capable MUA.¶

2. Background

2.1. Certificate Usage

These X.509 certificates ([RFC5280]) are designed for use with S/MIME protections ([RFC8551]) for email ([RFC5322]).¶

In particular, they should be usable with signed and encrypted messages as part of test suites and interoperability frameworks.¶

All end-entity and intermediate CA certificates are marked with Certificate Policies from [TEST-POLICY] indicating that they are intended only for use in testing environments. End-entity certificates are marked with policy 2.16.840.1.101.3.2.1.48.1 and intermediate CAs are marked with policy 2.16.840.1.101.3.2.1.48.2.¶

2.2. Certificate Expiration

The certificates included in this document expire in 2052. This should be sufficiently far in the future that they will be useful for a few decades. However, when testing tools in the far future (or when playing with clock-skew scenarios), care should be taken to consider the certificate validity window.¶

Due to this lengthy expiration window, these certificates will not be particularly useful to test or evaluate the interaction between certificate expiration and protected messages.¶

2.3. Certificate Revocation

Because these are expected to be used in test suites or examples, and we do not expect there to be online network services in these use cases, we do not expect these certificates to produce any revocation artifacts.¶

As a result, none of the certificates include either an Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) indicator (see id-ad-ocsp as defined in the Authority Information Access X.509 extension in Section 4.2.2.1 of [RFC5280]) or a Certificate Revocation List (CRL) indicator (see the CRL Distribution Points X.509 extension as defined in Section 4.2.1.13 of [RFC5280]).¶

2.4. Using the CA in Test Suites

To use these end-entity certificates in a piece of software (for example, in a test suite or an interoperability matrix), most tools will need to accept either the example RSA CA (Section 3) or the example Ed25519 CA (Section 6) as a legitimate root authority.¶

Note that some tooling behaves differently for certificates validated by "locally installed root CAs" than for pre-installed "system-level" root CAs). For example, many common implementations of HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP) ([RFC7469]) only applied the designed protections when dealing with a certificate issued by a pre-installed "system-level" root CA and were disabled when dealing with a certificate issued by a "locally installed root CA".¶

To test some tooling specifically, it may be necessary to install the root CA as a "system-level" root CA.¶

2.5. Certificate Chains

In most real-world examples, X.509 certificates are deployed with a chain of more than one X.509 certificate. In particular, there is typically a long-lived root CA that users' software knows about upon installation, and the end-entity certificate is issued by an intermediate CA, which is in turn issued by the root CA.¶

The example end-entity certificates in this document can be used either with a simple two-link certificate chain (they are directly certified by their corresponding root CA) or in a three-link chain.¶

For example, Alice's encryption certificate (alice.encrypt.crt; see Section 4.3) can be validated by a peer that directly trusts the example RSA CA's root cert (ca.rsa.crt; see Section 3.1):¶

¶

Figure 1: Validating Alice's encryption certificate directly when the issuing CA is a trust anchor

And it can also be validated by a peer that only directly trusts the example Ed25519 CA's root cert (ca.25519.crt; see Section 6.1) via an intermediate cross-signed CA cert (ca.rsa.cross.crt; see Section 3.3):¶

¶

Figure 2: Validating Alice's cert from a different trust anchor via an intermediate cross-signed CA certificate

By omitting the cross-signed CA certs, it should be possible to test a "transvalid" certificate (an end-entity certificate that is supplied without its intermediate certificate) in some configurations.¶

2.6. Passwords

Each secret key presented in this document is represented as a PEM-encoded PKCS #8 ([RFC5958]) object in cleartext form (it has no password).¶

As such, the secret key objects are not suitable for verifying interoperable password protection schemes.¶

However, the PKCS #12 ([RFC7292]) objects do have simple textual passwords, because tooling for dealing with passwordless PKCS #12 objects is underdeveloped at the time of this document.¶

2.7. Secret Key Origins

The secret RSA keys in this document are all deterministically derived using provable prime generation as found in [FIPS186-4] based on known seeds derived via SHA-256 ([SHA]) from simple strings. The validation parameters for these derivations are stored in the objects themselves as specified in [RFC8479].¶

The secret Ed25519 and X25519 keys in this document are all derived by hashing a simple string. The seeds and their derivation are included in the document for informational purposes and to allow recreation of the objects from appropriate tooling.¶

All RSA seeds used are 224 bits long (the first 224 bits of the SHA-256 digest of the origin string) and are represented in hexadecimal.¶

3. Example RSA Certification Authority

The example RSA Certification Authority has the following information:¶

Name:: Sample LAMPS RSA Certification Authority¶

3.1. RSA Certification Authority Root Certificate

This certificate is used to verify certificates issued by the example RSA Certification Authority.¶

¶

3.2. RSA Certification Authority Secret Key

This secret key material is used by the example RSA Certification Authority to issue new certificates.¶

¶

This secret key was generated using provable prime generation found in [FIPS186-4] using the seed a5c1b7847614ed661a6b0522351428b4b7f09d8ccca2d99302dd62e9. This seed is the first 224 bits of the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.ca.rsa.seed.¶

3.3. RSA Certification Authority Cross-Signed Certificate

If an email client only trusts the Ed25519 Certification Authority Root Certificate found in Section 6.1, they can use this intermediate CA certificate to verify any end-entity certificate issued by the example RSA Certification Authority.¶

¶

4. Alice's Sample Certificates

Alice has the following information:¶

Name:: Alice Lovelace¶
Email Address:: alice@smime.example¶

4.1. Alice's Signature Verification End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used for verification of signatures made by Alice.¶

¶

4.2. Alice's Signing Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Alice to create signatures.¶

¶

This secret key was generated using provable prime generation found in [FIPS186-4] using the seed 92c89d4330d3d8e31d4fde9b9d0fe6e9fc142141dd65a45e5b436f05. This seed is the first 224 bits of the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.alice.sign.seed.¶

4.3. Alice's Encryption End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used to encrypt messages to Alice.¶

¶

4.4. Alice's Decryption Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Alice to decrypt messages.¶

¶

This secret key was generated using provable prime generation found in [FIPS186-4] using the seed 1cf74849f7445f466c4272251f5f96b77fa0698b3e98b3f1ee8207bf. This seed is the first 224 bits of the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.alice.encrypt.seed.¶

4.5. PKCS #12 Object for Alice

This PKCS #12 ([RFC7292]) object contains the same information as presented in Sections 3.3, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4.¶

It is locked with the simple five-letter password alice.¶

¶

5. Bob's Sample

Bob has the following information:¶

Name:: Bob Babbage¶
Email Address:: bob@smime.example¶

5.1. Bob's Signature Verification End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used for verification of signatures made by Bob.¶

¶

5.2. Bob's Signing Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Bob to create signatures.¶

¶

This secret key was generated using provable prime generation found in [FIPS186-4] using the seed f4afaacbb5473f360e06ac32e00188fe4173ae15c99bcf043a8b8f6e. This seed is the first 224 bits of the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.bob.sign.seed.¶

5.3. Bob's Encryption End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used to encrypt messages to Bob.¶

¶

5.4. Bob's Decryption Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Bob to decrypt messages.¶

¶

This secret key was generated using provable prime generation found in [FIPS186-4] using the seed 98c8998652958929e889e3419f3bfd0edfe0aca15da3060dedf8a1e8. This seed is the first 224 bits of the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.bob.encrypt.seed.¶

5.5. PKCS #12 Object for Bob

This PKCS #12 ([RFC7292]) object contains the same information as presented in Sections 3.3, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4.¶

It is locked with the simple three-letter password bob.¶

¶

6. Example Ed25519 Certification Authority

The example Ed25519 Certification Authority has the following information:¶

Name:: Sample LAMPS Ed25519 Certification Authority¶

6.1. Ed25519 Certification Authority Root Certificate

This certificate is used to verify certificates issued by the example Ed25519 Certification Authority.¶

¶

6.2. Ed25519 Certification Authority Secret Key

This secret key material is used by the example Ed25519 Certification Authority to issue new certificates.¶

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VwBCIEIAt889xRDvxNT8ak53T7tzKuSn6CQDe8fIdjrCiSFRcp
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

¶

This secret key is the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the ASCII string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.ca.25519.seed.¶

6.3. Ed25519 Certification Authority Cross-Signed Certificate

If an email client only trusts the RSA Certification Authority Root Certificate found in Section 3.1, they can use this intermediate CA certificate to verify any end-entity certificate issued by the example Ed25519 Certification Authority.¶

¶

7. Carlos's Sample Certificates

Carlos has the following information:¶

Name:: Carlos Turing¶
Email Address:: carlos@smime.example¶

7.1. Carlos's Signature Verification End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used for verification of signatures made by Carlos.¶

¶

7.2. Carlos's Signing Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Carlos to create signatures.¶

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VwBCIEILvvxL741LfX+Ep3Iyye3Cjr4JmONIVYhZPM4M9N1IHY
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

¶

This secret key is the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the ASCII string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.carlos.sign.25519.seed.¶

7.3. Carlos's Encryption End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used to encrypt messages to Carlos. It contains an SMIMECapabilities extension to indicate that Carlos's MUA expects Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) with the HMAC-based Key Derivation Function (HKDF) using SHA-256, and that it uses the AES-128 key wrap algorithm, as indicated in [RFC8418].¶

¶

7.4. Carlos's Decryption Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Carlos to decrypt messages.¶

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VuBCIEIIH5782H/otrhLy9Dtvzt79ffsvpcVXgdUczTdUvSQsK
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

¶

This secret key is the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the ASCII string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.carlos.encrypt.25519.seed.¶

7.5. PKCS #12 Object for Carlos

This PKCS #12 ([RFC7292]) object contains the same information as presented in Sections 6.3, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4.¶

It is locked with the simple five-letter password carlos.¶

¶

8. Dana's Sample Certificates

Dana has the following information:¶

Name:: Dana Hopper¶
Email Address:: dna@smime.example¶

8.1. Dana's Signature Verification End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used for verification of signatures made by Dana.¶

¶

8.2. Dana's Signing Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Dana to create signatures.¶

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VwBCIEINZ8GPfmQh2AMp+uNIsZMbzvyTOltwvEt13usjnUaW4N
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

¶

This secret key is the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the ASCII string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.dana.sign.25519.seed.¶

8.3. Dana's Encryption End-Entity Certificate

This certificate is used to encrypt messages to Dana. It contains an SMIMECapabilities extension to indicate that Dana's MUA expects ECDH with HKDF using SHA-256, and that it uses the AES-128 key wrap algorithm, as indicated in [RFC8418].¶

¶

8.4. Dana's Decryption Private Key Material

This private key material is used by Dana to decrypt messages.¶

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VuBCIEIGxZt8L7lY48OEq4gs/smQ4weDhRNMlYHG21StivPfz3
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

¶

This seed is the SHA-256 ([SHA]) digest of the ASCII string draft-lamps-sample-certs-keygen.dana.encrypt.25519.seed.¶

8.5. PKCS #12 Object for Dana

This PKCS #12 ([RFC7292]) object contains the same information as presented in Sections 6.3, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4.¶

It is locked with the simple four-letter password dana.¶

¶

9. Security Considerations

The keys presented in this document should be considered compromised and insecure, because the secret key material is published and therefore not secret.¶

Any application that maintains a deny list of invalid key material should include these keys in its list.¶

10. IANA Considerations

This document has no IANA actions.¶

11. References

11.1. Normative References

[RFC5280]: Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S., Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.
[RFC5958]: Turner, S., "Asymmetric Key Packages", RFC 5958, DOI 10.17487/RFC5958, August 2010, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5958>.
[RFC7292]: Moriarty, K., Ed., Nystrom, M., Parkinson, S., Rusch, A., and M. Scott, "PKCS #12: Personal Information Exchange Syntax v1.1", RFC 7292, DOI 10.17487/RFC7292, July 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7292>.
[RFC7468]: Josefsson, S. and S. Leonard, "Textual Encodings of PKIX, PKCS, and CMS Structures", RFC 7468, DOI 10.17487/RFC7468, April 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7468>.
[RFC8032]: Josefsson, S. and I. Liusvaara, "Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA)", RFC 8032, DOI 10.17487/RFC8032, January 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8032>.
[RFC8479]: Mavrogiannopoulos, N., "Storing Validation Parameters in PKCS#8", RFC 8479, DOI 10.17487/RFC8479, September 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8479>.
[RFC8551]: Schaad, J., Ramsdell, B., and S. Turner, "Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 4.0 Message Specification", RFC 8551, DOI 10.17487/RFC8551, April 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8551>.

11.2. Informative References

[FIPS186-4]: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), "Digital Signature Standard (DSS)", FIPS PUB 186-4, DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.186-4, July 2013, <https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.FIPS.186-4>.
[OPENPGP-SAMPLES]: Einarsson, B. R., juga, and D. K. Gillmor, "OpenPGP Example Keys and Certificates", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-bre-openpgp-samples-01, 20 December 2019, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-bre-openpgp-samples-01>.
[RFC4134]: Hoffman, P., Ed., "Examples of S/MIME Messages", RFC 4134, DOI 10.17487/RFC4134, July 2005, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4134>.
[RFC5322]: Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322, DOI 10.17487/RFC5322, October 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5322>.
[RFC7469]: Evans, C., Palmer, C., and R. Sleevi, "Public Key Pinning Extension for HTTP", RFC 7469, DOI 10.17487/RFC7469, April 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7469>.
[RFC8410]: Josefsson, S. and J. Schaad, "Algorithm Identifiers for Ed25519, Ed448, X25519, and X448 for Use in the Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure", RFC 8410, DOI 10.17487/RFC8410, August 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8410>.
[RFC8418]: Housley, R., "Use of the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement Algorithm with X25519 and X448 in the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)", RFC 8418, DOI 10.17487/RFC8418, August 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8418>.
[SHA]: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), "Secure Hash Standard (SHS)", FIPS PUB 180-4, DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4, August 2015, <https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4>.
[TEST-POLICY]: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), "Test Certificate Policy to Support PKI Pilots and Testing", Computer Security Resource Center, May 2012, <https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/Computer-Security-Objects-Register/documents/test_policy.pdf>.

Acknowledgements

This document was inspired by similar work in the OpenPGP space by Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson and juga; see [OPENPGP-SAMPLES].¶

Eric Rescorla helped spot issues with certificate formats.¶

Sean Turner pointed to [RFC4134] as prior work.¶

Deb Cooley suggested that Alice and Bob should have separate certificates for signing and encryption.¶

Wolfgang Hommel helped to build reproducible encrypted PKCS #12 objects.¶

Carsten Bormann got the XML sourcecode markup working for this document.¶

David A. Cooper identified problems with the certificates and suggested corrections.¶

Lijun Liao helped get the terminology right.¶

Stewart Bryant and Roman Danyliw provided editorial suggestions.¶

Author's Address

Daniel Kahn Gillmor (editor)

American Civil Liberties Union

125 Broad St.

New York, NY 10004

United States of America

Email: dkg@fifthhorseman.net

RFC 9216: S/MIME Example Keys and Certificates

Informational

In this section

RFC 9216: S/MIME Example Keys and Certificates