Re: Certificate Policies (was Re: Trivial PKI Question)

[Al Arsenault <awa1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Margus Freudenthal wrote:

> Al Arsenault wrote:
> >
> > >From a technical standpoint, typically nothing prevents this.  It's not
> > commonly done because:
> >
> >     a.  There's more of a management problem; e.g., if the key is ever
> > compromised for whatever reason, you have to track down ALL of the
> > certificates it was bound to and revoke them;  and
> >
> Each certificate that is issued to you brings along some kind of
> liability (documents signed using that certificate are considered to be
> signed by you). Therefore you'd be crazy not to keep track of all your
> certificates/liabilities.
>

This is certainly true in theory, but people being people, I wouldn't count
on everybody having a perfect system for tracking all of the certificates,
if there were a lot of them.  Especially if something needs to be done in a
hurry; e.g., "the private key is compromised because Mike found out he was
being laid off, used an attack against the machine to discover it, and has
posted it on the Web.  Revoke all the certs now, and don't miss any."

Yes, a good organization has policies and procedures to both defend against
and recover from such situations, but anybody who thinks they're always
going to work hasn't experienced much of the world.

        Al Arsenault