The definition of OTHER-NAME

["Tom Biskupic" <tbiskupic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I'm sure this must have been discussed previously, but not having found an
answer in the first 12Mb archive of this mailing list I thought I'd float it
anyhow.

There seems to be a discrepancy in the definition of Othername in RFC2459
and X509V3

The definition of OtherName in RFC2459 is as follows :-

     OtherName ::= SEQUENCE {
           type-id    OBJECT IDENTIFIER,
           value      [0] EXPLICIT ANY DEFINED BY type-id }

where as X509.V3 defines it as

OTHER-NAME ::= TYPE-IDENTIFIER

Which does not have the [0] tag on the value (see X.681 Annex A)

The draft-ietf-pkix-new-part1-00.txt even says
	-- AnotherName replaces OTHER-NAME ::= TYPE-IDENTIFIER, as
	-- TYPE-IDENTIFIER is not supported in the '88 ASN.1 syntax

But then goes on to define AnotherName to include the [0] tag.

Why is the [0] tag there? I don't see any ambiguity in the encoding that
would require a context specific tag.

Thanks,

Tom Biskupic,
Software Engineer
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------
Baltimore Technologies
Tel. +353 1 647 7435   Fax. +353 1 647 7499
Baltimore - Global e-Security
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------