Eric, Silence does not mean approval. It may mean that the corrections are so numerous that it would take too long to respond and that people do not have that time available at the moment. e.g.: an End-entity attribute certificate is not linked to a public-key certificate. a cross-certificate is not linked to an AA certificate. an Authority Certificate is not linked to an Attribute Certificate. This is only a start ... Denis ----- Message reçu ----- De : owner-ietf-pkix À : x500standard,'PKIX' Date : 2009-04-03, 17:00:01 Sujet : RE: [x500standard] Certificate definitions I take silence as approval. Erik Andersen Andersen's L-Service Elsevej 48, DK-3500 Vaerloese Denmark Mobile: +45 2097 1490 email: era@xxxxxxx www.x500.eu www.x500standard.com -----Original Message----- From: x500standard-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:x500standard-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Erik Andersen Sent: 1. april 2009 14:40 To: Directory list; PKIX Subject: [x500standard] Certificate definitions Hi I got a number of responses on user certificates, but quite little that actually answered my question. I have tried to dig a little bit more in X.509 to get hold of the terminology and then produced below figure. I will not comment all the boxes. I will like you to comments as to the correctness of above figure. The end-entity certificate is not defined in the definition clause. However it is used widely in the main text. It is mentioned the first time in clause 7 as a public-key certificate. There are several other places where it is a public-key certificate. In 15.5.2.4 is used in the context of attribute certificates. The conclusion must be that an end-entity certificate can either be a end-entity public-key certificate or an end-entity attribute certificate. However, in most places, it is implied that we only talks about public-key certificates. For veterans, this is not a major problem, but new-comers may get confused. Anyway, I thing our specifications should be clear and not subject to interpretation. RFC 5280 does not use the term at all. It seems just to use the term ?certificate? as a synonym for ?end-entrity public key certificate?. The ?User Certificate? is not defined in X.509, but is wide used. It seems to be a synonym for ?end-entrity public key certificate?. It is also used in X.511. RFC 5280 uses the term once without differenting it from just ?certificate?. The term ?cross-certificate? should probably also be qualified. I suggest to add in X.509 definitions for: ?end-entity public-key certificate? ?user certictate? as a synonym for ?end-entity public-key certificate? ?end-entity attrubute certificate? The X.509 text should be updated to make use of these definitions. X.509 has four attribute types for holding certificates. UserCertificate: For end-entity public-key certificates cAcertificate: For CA certificates attributeCertificateAttribute: For end-entity attrubute certificates aACertificate: For AA Certificates Any comments? Erik Andersen Andersen's L-Service Elsevej 48, DK-3500 Vaerloese Denmark Mobile: +45 2097 1490 email: era@xxxxxxx www.x500.eu www.x500standard.com