draft-gutmann-scep-05.txt

Network Working Group                                         P. Gutmann
Internet-Draft                                    University of Auckland
Intended status: Standards Track                       November 24, 2016
Expires: May 28, 2017


                 Simple Certificate Enrolment Protocol
                         draft-gutmann-scep-05

Abstract

   This document specifies the Simple Certificate Enrolment Protocol
   (SCEP), a PKI protocol that leverages existing technology by using
   CMS (formerly known as PKCS #7) and PKCS #10 over HTTP.  SCEP is the
   evolution of the enrolment protocol sponsored by Cisco Systems, which
   enjoys wide support in both client and server implementations, as
   well as being relied upon by numerous other industry standards that
   work with certificates.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on May 28, 2017.

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   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of



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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   2.  SCEP Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.1.  SCEP Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       2.1.1.  Client  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       2.1.2.  Certificate Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       2.1.3.  CA Certificate Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.2.  Client authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     2.3.  Enrolment authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     2.4.  Certificate Enrolment/Renewal/Update  . . . . . . . . . .   7
       2.4.1.  Client State Transitions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     2.5.  Certificate Access  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     2.6.  CRL Access  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     2.7.  Certificate Revocation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     2.8.  Mandatory-to-Implement Functionality  . . . . . . . . . .  11
   3.  SCEP Secure Message Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     3.1.  SCEP Message Object Processing  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     3.2.  SCEP pkiMessage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
       3.2.1.  Signed Transaction Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
         3.2.1.1.  transactionID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
         3.2.1.2.  messageType . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
         3.2.1.3.  pkiStatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
         3.2.1.4.  failInfo  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
         3.2.1.5.  senderNonce and recipientNonce  . . . . . . . . .  17
       3.2.2.  SCEP pkcsPKIEnvelope  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
     3.3.  SCEP pkiMessage types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
       3.3.1.  PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq  . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
       3.3.2.  CertRep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
         3.3.2.1.  CertRep SUCCESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
         3.3.2.2.  CertRep FAILURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
         3.3.2.3.  CertRep PENDING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
       3.3.3.  CertPoll (GetCertInitial) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
       3.3.4.  GetCert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
       3.3.5.  GetCRL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
     3.4.  Degenerate certificates-only CMS Signed-Data  . . . . . .  21
     3.5.  CA Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
       3.5.1.  GetCACaps HTTP Message Format . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
       3.5.2.  CA Capabilities Response Format . . . . . . . . . . .  22
   4.  SCEP Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
     4.1.  HTTP POST and GET Message Formats . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
     4.2.  Get CA Certificate  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
       4.2.1.  Get CA Certificate Response Message Format  . . . . .  25
         4.2.1.1.  CA Certificate Response Message Format  . . . . .  25



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         4.2.1.2.  CA Certificate Chain Response Message Format  . .  25
     4.3.  Certificate Enrolment/Renewal/Update  . . . . . . . . . .  26
       4.3.1.  Certificate Enrolment/Renewal/Update Response Message  26
     4.4.  Poll for Client Initial Certificate . . . . . . . . . . .  27
       4.4.1.  Polling Response Message Format . . . . . . . . . . .  27
     4.5.  Certificate Access  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
       4.5.1.  Certificate Access Response Message Format  . . . . .  28
     4.6.  CRL Access  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
       4.6.1.  CRL Access Response Message Format  . . . . . . . . .  28
     4.7.  Get Next Certificate Authority Certificate  . . . . . . .  28
       4.7.1.  Get Next CA Response Message Format . . . . . . . . .  28
   5.  SCEP State Transitions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
     5.1.  Successful Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
     5.2.  Transactions with Errors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
   6.  Contributors/Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
     8.1.  General Security  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
     8.2.  Use of the CA keypair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  33
     8.3.  Challenge Password  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
     8.4.  Lack of Certificate Issue Confirmation  . . . . . . . . .  34
     8.5.  GetCACaps Issues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
     8.6.  Lack of PoP in Renewal and Update Requests  . . . . . . .  34
     8.7.  Unnecessary cryptography  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
   Appendix A.  Background Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
   Appendix B.  Sample SCEP Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39

1.  Introduction

   X.509 certificates serve as the basis for several standards-based
   security protocols such as TLS [16], S/MIME [13], and IKE/IPsec [12].
   When an X.509 certificate is issued there typically is a need for a
   certificate management protocol to enable a PKI client to request a
   certificate, certificate renewal, or certificate update from a
   Certificate Authority (CA).

   This specification defines a protocol, Simple Certificate Enrolment
   Protocol (SCEP), for certificate management and certificate and CRL
   queries.  While widely deployed, this protocol omits some certificate
   management features, e.g. certificate revocation transactions, which
   may enhance the security achieved in a PKI.  The IETF protocol suite
   currently includes two further certificate management protocols with
   more comprehensive functionality, Certificate Management Protocol
   (CMP) [10] and Certificate Management over CMS (CMC) [9].



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   Environments that do not require interoperability with SCEP
   implementations MAY consider using the above-mentioned certificate
   management protocols, however anyone considering this step should be
   aware that the high level of complexity of these two protocols has
   resulted in serious interoperability problems and corresponding lack
   of industry support.  SCEP's simplicity, while being a drawback in
   terms of its slightly restricted functionality, also makes deployment
   relatively straightforward, so that it enjoys widespread support and
   ready interoperability across a range of platforms.  While
   implementers are encouraged to investigate one of the more
   comprehensive alternative certificate management protocols in
   addition to the protocol defined in this specification, anyone
   wishing to deploy them should proceed with caution, and consider
   support and interoperability issues before committing to their use.

   The SCEP protocol supports the following general operations:

   o  CA public key distribution.
   o  Certificate enrolment and issue.
   o  Certificate renewal/update.
   o  Certificate query.
   o  CRL query.

   SCEP makes extensive use of CMS [3] and PKCS #10 [6].

1.1.  Conventions Used in This Document

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [1].

2.  SCEP Overview

   This section provides a high level overview of the functionality of
   SCEP.

2.1.  SCEP Entities

   The entity types defined in SCEP are a client requesting a
   certificate and a Certificate Authority (CA) that issues the
   certificate.  These are described in the following sections.

2.1.1.  Client

   A client MUST have the following information locally configured:

   1.  The CA fully qualified domain name or IP address.




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   2.  The CA HTTP CGI script path (this usually has a default value,
       see Section 4.1).
   3.  The identifying information that is used for authentication of
       the CA in Section 4.2.1, typically a certificate fingerprint.

2.1.2.  Certificate Authority

   A SCEP CA is the entity that signs client certificates.  A CA MAY
   enforce any arbitrary policies and apply them to certificate
   requests, and MAY reject any request.

   Since the client is expected to perform signature verification and
   optionally encryption using the CA certificate, the keyUsage
   extension in the CA certificate MUST indicate that it is valid for
   digitalSignature and keyEncipherment (if required) alongside the
   usual CA usages of keyCertSign and/or cRLSign.

2.1.3.  CA Certificate Distribution

   If the CA certificate(s) have not previously been acquired by the
   client through some other means, the client MUST retrieve the them
   before any PKI operation (Section 3) can be started.  Since no public
   key has yet been exchanged between the client and the CA, the
   messages cannot be secured using CMS, and the data is instead
   transferred in the clear.

   If an intermediate CA is in use, a certificates-only CMS Signed-Data
   message with a certificate chain consisting of all CA certificates is
   returned.  Otherwise the CA certificate itself is returned.  The
   transport protocol (Section 4) MUST indicate which one is returned.

   The CA certificate MAY be provided out-of-band to the client.
   Alternatively, the CA certificate fingerprint MAY be used to
   authenticate a CA Certificate distributed by the GetCACert response
   (Section 4.2) or via HTTP certificate-store access [11].  The
   fingerprint is created by calculating a SHA-256 hash over the whole
   CA certificate (for legacy reasons, a SHA-1 hash may be used by some
   implementations).

   After the client gets the CA certificate, it SHOULD authenticate the
   certificate by comparing its fingerprint with the locally configured,
   out-of-band distributed, identifying information.  Intermediate CA
   certificates, if any, are signed by a higher-level CA so there is no
   need to authenticate them against the out-of-band data.  Clients
   SHOULD verify intermediate-level CA certificate signatures using the
   issuing CA's certificate before use during protocol exchanges.





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   Because a long time can pass between queries from a client to a CA
   and because intermediate CA certificates can change over time, it is
   recommended that a client not store intermediate CA certificates.
   Instead, the client SHOULD retrieve them before each operation.

2.2.  Client authentication

   As with every protocol that uses public-key cryptography, the
   association between the public keys used in the protocol and the
   identities with which they are associated must be authenticated in a
   cryptographically secure manner.  The communications between the
   client and the CA are secured using SCEP Secure Message Objects as
   explained in Section 3, which specifies how CMS is used to encrypt
   and sign the data.  In order to perform the signing operation the
   client uses an appropriate local certificate:

   1.  If the client does not have an appropriate existing certificate
       then a locally generated self-signed certificate MUST be used.
       The keyUsage extension in the certificate MUST indicate that it
       is valid for digitalSignature and keyEncipherment (if required).
       The self-signed certificate SHOULD use the same subject name as
       in the PKCS #10 request.  In this case the messageType is
       PKCS10Req (see Section 3.2.1.2).
   2.  If the requesting system already has a certificate issued by the
       SCEP CA, and the CA supports renewal (see Section 2.4), that
       certificate SHOULD be used.  In this case the messageType is
       RenewalReq (see Section 3.2.1.2).
   3.  If the requesting system has no certificate issued by the new CA,
       but has credentials from an alternate CA the certificate issued
       by the alternate CA MAY be used.  Policy settings on the new CA
       will determine if the request can be accepted or not.  This is
       useful when enrolling with a new administrative domain using a
       certificate from the old domain as credentials.  In this case the
       messageType is UpdateReq (see Section 3.2.1.2).

   Note that although the above text describes three different types of
   operations, in practice most implementations always apply the first
   one even if an existing certificate already exists.  For this reason
   support for the first case is mandatory while support for the latter
   two are optional (see Section 2.8).

   During the certificate enrolment process, the client MUST use the
   selected certificate's key when signing the CMS envelope (see
   Section 3).  This certificate will be either the self-signed one
   matching the PKCS #10 request or the CA-issued one used to authorise
   a renewal or update.  If the key being certified allows encryption
   then the CA's CertResp will use the same certificate's public key
   when encrypting the response.



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   Note that this means that, in the case of renewal and update
   operations, the request is signed with, and the returned response may
   be encrypted with, the key in the previously-issued certificate used
   to authenticate the request, not the key in the PKCS #10 request.
   This has security implications, see Section 8.6.

2.3.  Enrolment authorization

   PKCS #10 [6] specifies a PKCS #9 [5] challengePassword attribute to
   be sent as part of the enrolment request.  When utilizing the
   challengePassword, the CA distributes a shared secret to the client
   which will uniquely associate the enrolment request with the client.

   Inclusion of the challengePassword by the SCEP client is OPTIONAL and
   allows for unauthenticated authorization of enrolment requests
   (which, however, requires manual approval of each certificate issue,
   see below), or for renewal or update requests that are authenticated
   by being signed with an existing certificate.  The CMS envelope
   protects the privacy of the challengePassword.

   A client that is performing certificate renewal or update as per
   Section 2.4 SHOULD omit the challengePassword but MAY send the
   originally distributed password in the challengePassword attribute.
   In the former case the SCEP CA MUST authenticate the request based on
   the certificate used to sign the renewal or update request.  In the
   latter case the SCEP CA MAY use either the challengePassword or the
   previously issued certificate (or both), depending on CA policy, to
   authenticate the request.  The SCEP CA MUST NOT attempt to
   authenticate a client based on a self-signed certificate unless it
   has been verified through out-of-band means such as a certificate
   fingerprint.

   To perform the authorization in manual mode the client's request is
   placed in the PENDING state until the CA operator authorizes or
   rejects it.  Manual authorization is used when the client has only a
   self-signed certificate that hasn't been previously authenticated by
   the CA and/or a challengePassword is not available.  The SCEP CA MAY
   either reject unauthorized requests or mark them for manual
   authorization according to CA policy.

2.4.  Certificate Enrolment/Renewal/Update

   A client starts an enrolment transaction (Section 3.3.1) by creating
   a certificate request using PKCS #10 and sends it to the CA enveloped
   using CMS (Section 3).

   If the CA supports certificate renewal or update and if the CA policy
   permits then a new certificate with new validity dates can be issued



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   even though the old one is still valid.  The CA MAY automatically
   revoke the old client certificate.  To renew or update an existing
   certificate, the client uses the RenewalReq or UpdateReq message (see
   Section 3.3) and signs it with the existing client certificate.  The
   client SHOULD use a new keypair when requesting a new certificate,
   but MAY request a new certificate using the old keypair.

   If the CA returns a CertRep message (Section 3.3.2) with status set
   to PENDING, the client enters into polling mode by periodically
   sending a CertPoll message (Section 3.3.3) to the CA until the CA
   operator completes the manual authentication (approving or denying
   the request).

   If polling mode is being used then the client will send a single
   PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq message (Section 3.3.1), followed by 0
   or more CertPoll messages (Section 3.3.3).  The CA will in return
   send 0 or more CertRep messages (Section 3.3.2) with status set to
   PENDING in response to CertPolls, followed by a single CertRep
   message (Section 3.3.2) with status set to either SUCCESS or FAILURE.

2.4.1.  Client State Transitions

   The client state transitions during the SCEP process are indicated in
   Figure 1.


                                  CertPoll
                                +-----<----+
                                |          |
                                |          | CertRep(PENDING)
                                |          |
  [CERT-NONEXISTENT] ------> [CERT-REQ-PENDING] ---------> [CERT-ISSUED]
        ^            PKCSReq    |           CertRep(SUCCESS)
        |          RenewalReq   |
        |           UpdateReq   |
        |                       |
        +-----------------------+
        CertRep(FAILURE) or
        Max-time/max-polls exceeded


                    Figure 1: State Transition Diagram

   The certificate issue process starts at the state CERT-NONEXISTENT.
   Sending a PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq message changes the state to
   CERT-REQ-PENDING.





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   If the CA returns a CertRep message with pkiStatus set to SUCCESS
   then the state changes to CERT-ISSUED.

   If the CA returns a CertRep message with pkiStatus set to FAILURE or
   there is no response then the state reverts back to CERT-NONEXISTENT.

   If the CA returns a CertRep message with pkiStatus set to PENDING
   then the client will keep polling by sending a CertPoll message until
   either a CertRep message with status set to SUCCESS or FAILURE is
   received or a timeout occurs or the maximum number of polls has been
   exceeded.

   A successful transaction in automatic mode:


       CLIENT                              CA SERVER

   PKCSReq: PKI cert. enrolment message
   --------------------------------> CertRep: pkiStatus = SUCCESS
                                     Certificate attached
                                     <------------------------------
   Receive issued certificate.


   A successful transaction in manual mode:


       CLIENT                              CA SERVER

   PKCSReq: PKI cert. enrolment message
   --------------------------------> CertRep: pkiStatus = PENDING
                                     <------------------------------
   CertPoll: Polling message
   --------------------------------> CertRep: pkiStatus = PENDING
                                     <------------------------------
   ................ <Manual identity authentication> ...............

   CertPoll: Polling message
   --------------------------------> CertRep: pkiStatus = SUCCESS
                                     Certificate attached
                                     <------------------------------
   Receive issued certificate.









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2.5.  Certificate Access

   A certificate query message is defined for clients to retrieve a copy
   of their own certificate from the CA.  It allows clients that do not
   store their certificates locally to obtain a copy when needed.  This
   functionality is not intended to provide a general purpose
   certificate access service, which may be achieved via HTTP
   certificate-store access [11] or LDAP.

   To query a certificate from the CA, a client sends a request
   consisting of the certificate's issuer name and serial number.  This
   assumes that the client has saved the issuer name and the serial
   number of the issued certificate from the previous enrolment
   transaction.  The transaction to query a certificate consists of one
   GetCert (Section 3.3.4) message and one CertRep (Section 3.3.2)
   message, as shown below.


      CLIENT                               CA SERVER

   GetCert: PKI certificate query message
   -------------------------------> CertRep: pkiStatus = SUCCESS
                                    Certificate attached
                                    <-----------------------------
   Receive the certificate.


2.6.  CRL Access

   SCEP clients MAY request a CRL via one of three methods:

   1.  If the CA supports CRL Distribution Points (CRLDPs) [7], then the
       CRL MAY be retrieved via the mechanism specified in the CRDLP.
   2.  If the CA supports HTTP certificate-store access [11], then the
       CRL MAY be retrieved via the AuthorityInfoAcces [7] location
       specified in the certificate.
   3.  Only if the CA does not support CRDLPs or HTTP access should a
       CRL query be composed by creating a GetCRL message consisting of
       the issuer name and serial number from the certificate whose
       revocation status is being queried.

   The CA SHOULD NOT support the GetCRL method because it does not scale
   well due to the unnecessary cryptography (see Section 8.7) and it
   requires the CA to be a high-availability service.

   The message is sent to the SCEP CA in the same way as the other SCEP
   requests.  The transaction to retrieve a CRL consists of one GetCRL
   PKI message and one CertRep PKI message, which contains only the CRL



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   (no certificates) in a degenerate certificates-only CMS Signed-Data
   message (Section 3.4), as shown below.



          CLIENT                           CA SERVER

      GetCRL: PKI CRL query message
   ---------------------------------->
                                     CertRep: CRL attached
                                     <-----------------------------
   Receive the CRL


2.7.  Certificate Revocation

   SCEP does not specify a method to request certificate revocation.  In
   order to revoke a certificate, the client must contact the CA using a
   non-SCEP defined mechanism.

2.8.  Mandatory-to-Implement Functionality

   At a minimum, all SCEP implementations compliant with this
   specification MUST support GetCACaps (Section 3.5.1), GetCACert
   (Section 4.2), PKCSReq (Section 3.3.1) (and its associated response
   messages), communication of binary data via HTTP POST (Section 4.1),
   and the AES and SHA-256 algorithms to secure pkiMessages
   (Section 3.2).

   For historical reasons implementations MAY support communications of
   binary data via HTTP GET (Section 4.1), and the triple DES and SHA-1
   algorithms to secure pkiMessages (Section 3.2).  Implementations
   SHOULD NOT support the obsolete and/or insecure single DES and MD5
   algorithms used in earlier versions of this specification.

3.  SCEP Secure Message Objects

   CMS is a general enveloping mechanism that enables both signed and
   encrypted transmission of arbitrary data.  SCEP messages that require
   confidentiality use two layers of CMS, as shown in Figure 2.  By
   applying both enveloping and signing transformations, the SCEP
   message is protected both for the integrity of its end-to-end
   transaction information and the confidentiality of its information
   portion.  Some messages do not require enveloping, in which case the
   EnvelopedData in Figure 2 is omitted.






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   pkiMessage {
     contentType = signedData { pkcs-7 2 },
     content {
       digestAlgorithms,
       encapsulatedContentInfo {
         eContentType = data { pkcs-7 1 },
         eContent {           -- pkcsPKIEnvelope, optional
           contentType = envelopedData { pkcs-7 3 },
           content {
             recipientInfo,
             encryptedContentInfo {
               contentType = data { pkcs-7 1 },
               contentEncrAlgorithm,
               encryptedContent {
                 messageData  -- Typically PKCS #10 request
                 }
               }
             }
           }
         },
       certificates,          -- Optional
       crls,                  -- Optional
       signerInfo {
         signedAttrs {
           transactionID,
           messageType,
           pkiStatus,
           failInfo,          -- Optional
           senderNonce / recipientNonce,
           },
         signature
         }
       }
     }


                          Figure 2: CMS Layering

   When a particular SCEP message carries data, this data is carried in
   the messageData.  CertRep messages will lack any signed content and
   consist only of a pkcsPKIEnvelope (Section 3.2.2).

   The remainder of this document will refer only to 'messageData', but
   it is understood to always be encapsulated in the pkcsPKIEnvelope
   (Section 3.2.2).  The format of the data in the messageData is
   defined by the messageType attribute (see Section 3.2) of the Signed-
   Data.  If there is no messageData to be transmitted, the entire
   pkcsPKIEnvelope MUST be omitted.



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3.1.  SCEP Message Object Processing

   Creating a SCEP message consists of several stages.  The content to
   be conveyed (in other words the messageData) is first encrypted, and
   the encrypted content is then signed.

   The form of encryption to be applied depends on the capabilities of
   the recipient's public key.  If the key is encryption-capable (for
   example RSA) then the messageData is encrypted using the recipient's
   public key with the CMS KeyTransRecipientInfo mechanism.  If the key
   is not encryption-capable (for example ECDSA) then the messageData is
   encrypted using the challengePassword with the CMS
   PasswordRecipientInfo mechanism.

   Once the messageData has been encrypted, it is signed with the
   sender's public key.  This completes the SCEP message that is then
   sent to the recipient.

   Note that some earlier implementations of this specification dealt
   with non-encryption-capable keys by omitting the encryption stage,
   based on the text in Section 3 that indicated that "the EnvelopedData
   is omitted".  This alternative processing mechanism SHOULD NOT be
   used since it exposes the challengePassword used to authorise the
   certificate issue.

3.2.  SCEP pkiMessage

   The basic building block of all secured SCEP messages is the SCEP
   pkiMessage.  It consists of a CMS Signed-Data content type.  The
   following restrictions apply:

   o  The eContentType in encapsulatedContentInfo MUST be data ({pkcs-7
      1}).
   o  The signed content, if present (FAILURE and PENDING CertRep
      messages will lack any signed content), MUST be a pkcsPKIEnvelope
      (Section 3.2.2), and MUST match the messageType attribute.
   o  The SignerInfo MUST contain a set of authenticatedAttributes
      (Section 3.2.1).

3.2.1.  Signed Transaction Attributes

   At a minimum, all messages MUST contain the following
   authenticatedAttributes:

   o  A transactionID attribute (see Section 3.2.1.1).
   o  A messageType attribute (see Section 3.2.1.2).
   o  A fresh senderNonce attribute (see Section 3.2.1.5).
   o  Any attributes required by CMS.



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   If the message is a CertRep, it MUST also include the following
   authenticatedAttributes:

   o  A pkiStatus attribute (see Section 3.2.1.3).
   o  A failInfo attribute (see Section 3.2.1.4) if pkiStatus = FAILURE.
   o  A recipientNonce attribute (see Section 3.2.1.5) copied from the
      senderNonce in the request that this is a response to.

   The following transaction attributes are encoded as authenticated
   attributes, and are carried in the SignerInfo for this Signed-Data.

   +----------------+-----------------+--------------------------------+
   | Attribute      | Encoding        | Comment                        |
   +----------------+-----------------+--------------------------------+
   | transactionID  | PrintableString | Unique ID for this transaction |
   |                |                 | as a text string               |
   |                |                 |                                |
   | messageType    | PrintableString | Decimal value as a numeric     |
   |                |                 | text string                    |
   |                |                 |                                |
   | pkiStatus      | PrintableString | Decimal value as a numeric     |
   |                |                 | text string                    |
   |                |                 |                                |
   | failInfo       | PrintableString | Decimal value as a numeric     |
   |                |                 | text string                    |
   |                |                 |                                |
   | senderNonce    | OCTET STRING    | Random nonce as a 16-byte      |
   |                |                 | binary data string             |
   |                |                 |                                |
   | recipientNonce | OCTET STRING    | Random nonce as a 16-byte      |
   |                |                 | binary data string             |
   +----------------+-----------------+--------------------------------+



















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   The OIDs used for these attributes are as follows:

   +-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
   | Name              | ASN.1 Definition                              |
   +-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
   | id-VeriSign       | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {2 16 US(840) 1         |
   |                   | VeriSign(113733)}                             |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-pki            | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-VeriSign pki(1)}    |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-attributes     | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-pki attributes(9)}  |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-transactionID  | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-attributes          |
   |                   | transactionID(7)}                             |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-messageType    | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-attributes          |
   |                   | messageType(2)}                               |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-pkiStatus      | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-attributes          |
   |                   | pkiStatus(3)}                                 |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-failInfo       | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-attributes          |
   |                   | failInfo(4)}                                  |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-senderNonce    | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-attributes          |
   |                   | senderNonce(5)}                               |
   |                   |                                               |
   | id-recipientNonce | OBJECT_IDENTIFIER ::= {id-attributes          |
   |                   | recipientNonce(6)}                            |
   +-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

   The attributes are detailed in the following sections.

3.2.1.1.  transactionID

   A PKI operation is a transaction consisting of the messages exchanged
   between a client and the CA.  The transactionID is a text string
   generated by the client when starting a transaction.  The client MUST
   generate a unique string as the transaction identifier, encoded as a
   PrintableString, which MUST be used for all PKI messages exchanged
   for a given operation such as a certificate issue.

3.2.1.2.  messageType

   The messageType attribute specifies the type of operation performed
   by the transaction.  This attribute MUST be included in all PKI
   messages.  The following message types are defined:




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   o  CertRep ("3") -- Response to certificate or CRL request.
   o  RenewalReq ("17") -- PKCS #10 certificate request for renewal of
      an existing certificate.
   o  UpdateReq ("18") -- PKCS #10 certificate request for update of a
      certificate issued by a different CA.
   o  PKCSReq ("19") -- PKCS #10 certificate request.
   o  CertPoll ("20") -- Certificate polling in manual enrolment.
   o  GetCert ("21") -- Retrieve a certificate.
   o  GetCRL ("22") -- Retrieve a CRL.

   Undefined message types MUST BE treated as an error.

3.2.1.3.  pkiStatus

   All response messages MUST include transaction status information,
   which is defined as a pkiStatus attribute:

   o  SUCCESS ("0") -- Request granted.
   o  FAILURE ("2") -- Request rejected.  In this case the failInfo
      attribute, as defined in Section 3.2.1.4, MUST also be present.
   o  PENDING ("3") -- Request pending for manual approval.

   Undefined pkiStatus attributes MUST be treated as an error.

3.2.1.4.  failInfo

   The failInfo attribute MUST contain one of the following failure
   reasons:

   o  badAlg ("0") -- Unrecognized or unsupported algorithm.
   o  badMessageCheck ("1") -- Integrity check (meaning signature
      verification of the CMS message) failed.
   o  badRequest ("2") -- Transaction not permitted or supported.
   o  badTime ("3") -- The signingTime attribute from the CMS
      authenticatedAttributes was not sufficiently close to the system
      time (this failure code is present for legacy reasons and is
      unlikely to be encountered in practice).
   o  badCertId ("4") -- No certificate could be identified matching the
      provided criteria.

       [Question: Is there any demand for a free-form UTF8String
        attribute to explain what really went wrong?  Trying to sort
        out an error when all you ever get back is the near-universal
        badRequest is almost impossible, adding a failInfoText
        attribute to address this could be quite useful since it
        would allow expressing information such as a failure to meet
        CA policy, or indeed anything more complex than "no go away"].




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   Undefined failInfo attributes are treated as an error.

3.2.1.5.  senderNonce and recipientNonce

   The senderNonce and recipientNonce attributes are a 16 byte random
   number generated for each transaction.  These are intended to prevent
   replay attacks.

   When a sender sends a PKI message to a recipient, a fresh senderNonce
   MUST be included in the message.  The recipient MUST copy the
   senderNonce into the recipientNonce of the reply as a proof of
   liveliness.  The original sender MUST verify that the recipientNonce
   of the reply matches the senderNonce it sent in the request.  If the
   nonce does not match, the message MUST be rejected.

   Note that since SCEP exchanges consist of a single request followed
   by a single response, the use of distinct sender and recipient nonces
   is redundant since the client sends a nonce in its request and the CA
   responds with the same nonce in its reply.  In effect there's just a
   single nonce, identified as senderNonce in the client's request and
   recipientNonce in the CA's reply.

3.2.2.  SCEP pkcsPKIEnvelope

   The information portion of a SCEP message is carried inside an
   EnvelopedData content type, as defined in CMS, with the following
   restrictions:

   o  contentType in encryptedContentInfo MUST be data ({pkcs-7 1}).
   o  encryptedContent MUST be the SCEP message being transported (see
      Section 4), and must match the messageType authenticated Attribute
      in the pkiMessage.

3.3.  SCEP pkiMessage types

   All of the messages in this section are pkiMessages (Section 3.2),
   where the type of the message MUST be specified in the 'messageType'
   authenticated Attribute.  Each section defines a valid message type,
   the corresponding messageData formats, and mandatory authenticated
   attributes for that type.

3.3.1.  PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq

   The messageData for this type consists of a PKCS #10 Certificate
   Request.  The certificate request MUST contain at least the following
   items:

   o  The subject Distinguished Name.



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   o  The subject public key.
   o  For a PKCSReq and if authorisation based on a password is being
      used, a challengePassword attribute.

   In addition to the authenticatedAttributes required for a valid CMS
   message, the pkiMessage MUST include the following attributes:

   o  A transactionID attribute (Section 3.2.1.1).
   o  A messageType attribute (Section 3.2.1.2) set to PKCSReq,
      RenewalReq, or UpdateReq as appropriate.
   o  A fresh senderNonce attribute (Section 3.2.1.5).

3.3.2.  CertRep

   The messageData for this type consists of a degenerate certificates-
   only CMS Signed-Data message (Section 3.4).  The exact content
   required for the reply depends on the type of request that this
   message is a response to.  The request types are detailed in
   Section 3.3.2.1 and in Section 4.

   In addition to the authenticatedAttributes required for a valid CMS
   message, this pkiMessage MUST include the following attributes:

   o  The transactionID attribute (Section 3.2.1.1) copied from the
      request that this is a response to.
   o  A messageType attribute (Section 3.2.1.2) set to CertRep.
   o  A recipientNonce attribute (Section 3.2.1.5) copied from the
      senderNonce in the request that this is a response to.
   o  A pkiStatus attribute (Section 3.2.1.3) set to the status of the
      reply.

   Earlier versions of this specification required that this message
   include a senderNonce alongside the recipientNonce, which was to be
   used to chain to subsequent polling operations.  However if a single
   message was lost during the potentially extended interval over which
   polling could take place (see Section 5 for an example of this) then
   if the implementation were to enforce this requirement the overall
   transaction would fail even though nothing had actually gone wrong.
   Because of this issue, implementations mostly ignored the requirement
   to carry this nonce over to subsequent polling messages or to verify
   its presence.  Current versions of the specification no longer
   require the chaining of nonces across polling operations.

3.3.2.1.  CertRep SUCCESS

   When the pkiStatus attribute is set to SUCCESS, the messageData for
   this message consists of a degenerate certificates-only CMS Signed-
   Data message (Section 3.4).  The content of this degenerate



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   certificates-only Signed-Data depends on what the original request
   was, as outlined below.

   +--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
   | Request-type | Reply-contents                                     |
   +--------------+----------------------------------------------------+
   | PKCSReq      | The reply MUST contain at least the issued         |
   |              | certificate in the certificates field of the       |
   |              | Signed-Data.  The reply MAY contain additional     |
   |              | certificates, but the issued certificate MUST be   |
   |              | the leaf certificate.                              |
   |              |                                                    |
   | RenewalReq   | Same as PKCSReq                                    |
   |              |                                                    |
   | UpdateReq    | Same as PKCSReq                                    |
   |              |                                                    |
   | CertPoll     | Same as PKCSReq                                    |
   |              |                                                    |
   | GetCert      | The reply MUST contain at least the requested      |
   |              | certificate in the certificates field of the       |
   |              | Signed-Data.  The reply MAY contain additional     |
   |              | certificates, but the requested certificate MUST   |
   |              | be the leaf certificate.                           |
   |              |                                                    |
   | GetCRL       | The reply MUST contain the CRL in the crls field   |
   |              | of the Signed-Data.                                |
   +--------------+----------------------------------------------------+

3.3.2.2.  CertRep FAILURE

   When the pkiStatus attribute is set to FAILURE, the reply MUST also
   contain a failInfo (Section 3.2.1.4) attribute set to the appropriate
   error condition describing the failure.  The pkcsPKIEnvelope
   (Section 3.2.2) MUST be omitted.

3.3.2.3.  CertRep PENDING

   When the pkiStatus attribute is set to PENDING, the pkcsPKIEnvelope
   (Section 3.2.2) MUST be omitted.

3.3.3.  CertPoll (GetCertInitial)

   This message is used for certificate polling.  For unknown reasons it
   was referred to as "GetCertInitial" in earlier versions of this
   specification.  The messageData for this type consists of an
   IssuerAndSubject:





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   issuerAndSubject ::= SEQUENCE {
       issuer Name,
       subject Name
       }


   The issuer is set to the subjectName of the CA (in other words the
   intended issuerName of the certificate that's being requested).  The
   subject is set to the subjectName used when requesting the
   certificate.

   Note that both of these fields are redundant, the CA is identified by
   the recipientInfo in the pkcsPKIEnvelope (or in most cases simply by
   the server that the message is being sent to) and the client/
   transaction being polled is identified by the transactionID.  Both of
   these fields can be processed by the CA without having to unwrap and
   process the issuerAndSubject.  For this reason implementations SHOULD
   assume that the polling operation will be controlled by the
   recipientInfo and transactionID rather than the contents of the
   messageData.

   In addition to the authenticatedAttributes required for a valid CMS
   message, this pkiMessage MUST include the following attributes:

   o  The same transactionID (Section 3.2.1.1) attribute from the
      original PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq message.
   o  A messageType attribute (Section 3.2.1.2) set to CertPoll.
   o  A fresh senderNonce attribute (Section 3.2.1.5).

3.3.4.  GetCert

   The messageData for this type consists of an IssuerAndSerialNumber as
   defined in CMS which uniquely identifies the certificate being
   requested.  In addition to the authenticatedAttributes required for a
   valid CMS message, this pkiMessage MUST include the following
   attributes:

   o  A transactionID attribute (Section 3.2.1.1).
   o  A messageType attribute (Section 3.2.1.2) set to GetCert.
   o  A fresh senderNonce attribute (Section 3.2.1.5).

   A self-signed certificate MAY be used in the signed envelope.  This
   enables the client to request their own certificate if they were
   unable to store it previously.

   This message type, while included here for completeness, applies
   unnecessary cryptography and messaging overhead to the simple task of
   transferring a certificate (see Section 8.7).  Implementations SHOULD



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   prefer HTTP certificate-store access [11] or LDAP over the use of
   this message.

3.3.5.  GetCRL

   The messageData for this type consists of a IssuerAndSerialNumber as
   defined in CMS containing the issuer name and serial number of the
   certificate whose revocation status is being checked.

   In addition to the authenticatedAttributes required for a valid CMS
   message, this pkiMessage MUST include the following attributes:

   o  A transactionID attribute (Section 3.2.1.1).
   o  A messageType attribute (Section 3.2.1.2) set to GetCRL.
   o  A fresh senderNonce attribute (Section 3.2.1.5).

   This message type, while included here for completeness, applies
   unnecessary cryptography and messaging overhead to the simple task of
   transferring a CRL (see Section 8.7).  Implementations SHOULD prefer
   HTTP certificate-store access [11] or LDAP over the use of this
   message.

3.4.  Degenerate certificates-only CMS Signed-Data

   CMS includes a degenerate case of the Signed-Data content type in
   which there are no signers.  The use of such a degenerate case is to
   disseminate certificates and CRLs.  For SCEP the content field of the
   ContentInfo value of a degenerate certificates-only Signed-Data MUST
   be omitted.

   When carrying certificates, the certificates are included in the
   'certificates' field of the Signed-Data.  When carrying a CRL, the
   CRL is included in the 'crls' field of the Signed-Data.

3.5.  CA Capabilities

   In order to provide support for future enhancements to the protocol,
   CAs MUST implement the GetCACaps message to allow clients to query
   which functionality is available from the CA.

3.5.1.  GetCACaps HTTP Message Format

   This message requests capabilities from a CA, with the format:


   "GET" CGI-PATH CGI-PROG "?operation=GetCACaps"





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   with the message components as described in Section 4.

3.5.2.  CA Capabilities Response Format

   The response for a GetCACaps message is a list of CA capabilities, in
   plain text, separated by <CR><LF> or <LF> characters, as follows
   (quotation marks are NOT sent):

   +--------------------+----------------------------------------------+
   | Keyword            | Description                                  |
   +--------------------+----------------------------------------------+
   | "AES"              | CA supports the AES encryption algorithm.    |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "DES3"             | CA supports the triple DES encryption        |
   |                    | algorithm.                                   |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "GetNextCACert"    | CA supports the GetNextCACert message.       |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "POSTPKIOperation" | CA supports PKIOPeration messages sent via   |
   |                    | HTTP POST.                                   |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "Renewal"          | CA supports the Renewal CA operation.        |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "SHA-1"            | CA supports the SHA-1 hashing algorithm.     |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "SHA-256"          | CA supports the SHA-256 hashing algorithm.   |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "SHA-512"          | CA supports the SHA-512 hashing algorithm.   |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "SCEPStandard"     | CA supports all mandatory-to-implement       |
   |                    | sections of the SCEP standard.  This keyword |
   |                    | implies "AES", "POSTPKIOperation", and       |
   |                    | "SHA-256", as well as the provisions of      |
   |                    | Section 2.8.                                 |
   |                    |                                              |
   | "Update"           | CA supports the Update CA operation.         |
   +--------------------+----------------------------------------------+

   The client SHOULD use SHA-256 in preference to SHA-1 hashing and AES
   in preference to triple DES if they are supported by the CA.
   Although the CMS format allows any form of SHA-2 and AES to be
   specified, in the interests of interoperability the de facto
   universal standards of AES128-CBC and SHA-256 SHOULD be used.

   Announcing some of these capabilities individually is redundant since
   they're required as mandatory-to-implement functionality (see
   Section 2.8) whose presence as a whole is signalled by the
   "SCEPStandard" capability, but it may be useful to announce them in



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   order to deal with old implementations that would otherwise default
   to obsolete, insecure algorithms and mechanisms.

   The CA MUST use the text case specified here, but clients SHOULD
   ignore the text case when processing this message.  Clients MUST
   accept the standard HTTP-style <CR><LF>-delimited text as well as the
   <LF>- delimited text specified in an earlier version of this
   specification.  A client MUST be able to accept and ignore any
   unknown keywords that might be sent back by a CA.

   If the CA supports none of the above capabilities it SHOULD return an
   empty message.  A CA MAY simply return an HTTP error.  A client that
   receives an empty message or an HTTP error SHOULD interpret the
   response as if none of the requested capabilities are supported by
   the CA.

   (Note that at least one widely-deployed server implementation
   supports several of the above operations but doesn't support the
   GetCACaps message to indicate that it supports them.  This means that
   the equivalent of GetCACaps must be performed through server
   fingerprinting, which can be done using the ID string "Microsoft-
   IIS").

   The Content-type of the reply SHOULD be "text/plain".  Clients SHOULD
   ignore the Content-type, as older implementations of SCEP may send
   various Content-types.

   Example:


   GET /cgi-bin/pkiclient.exe?operation=GetCACaps


   might return:


   AES
   GetNextCACert
   POSTPKIOperation
   SCEPStandard
   SHA-256


   This means that the CA supports modern crypto algorithms, the
   GetNextCACert message, allows PKIOperation messages
   (PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq, GetCert, CertPoll, ...) to be sent
   using HTTP POST, and is compliant with the final version of the SCEP
   standard.



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4.  SCEP Transactions

   This section describes the SCEP Transactions and their HTTP [4]
   transport mechanism.

4.1.  HTTP POST and GET Message Formats

   SCEP uses the HTTP "POST" and "GET" messages to exchange information
   with the CA.  The following defines the syntax of HTTP POST and GET
   messages sent from a client to a CA:


   "POST" CGI-PATH CGI-PROG "?operation=" OPERATION
   "GET" CGI-PATH CGI-PROG "?operation=" OPERATION "&message=" MESSAGE


   where:

   o  CGI-PATH defines the path to invoke the CGI program that parses
      the request.
   o  CGI-PROG is set to be the string "pkiclient.exe".  This is
      intended to be the program that the CA will use to handle the SCEP
      transactions.
   o  OPERATION depends on the SCEP transaction and is defined in the
      following sections.

   The CA will typically ignore CGI-PATH and/or CGI-PROG since it's
   unlikely to be issuing certificates via a web server.  Clients SHOULD
   set CGI-PATH/CGI-PROG to the fixed string "/cgi-bin/pkiclient.exe"
   unless directed to do otherwise to by the CA.

   Early SCEP drafts performed all communications via "GET" messages,
   including non-idempotent ones that should have been sent via "POST"
   messages.  This has caused problems because of the way that the
   (supposedly) idempotent GET interacts with caches and proxies, and
   because the extremely large GET requests created by encoding CMS
   messages may be truncated in transit.  These issues are typically not
   visible when testing on a LAN, but crop up during deployment over
   WANs.  If the remote CA supports it, any of the CMS-encoded SCEP
   messages SHOULD be sent via HTTP POST instead of HTTP GET.  This
   applies to any SCEP message except GetCACert, GetNextCACert, and
   GetCACaps, and avoids the need for base64- and URL-encoding that's
   required for GET messaging.  The client can verify that the CA
   supports SCEP messages via POST by looking for the "POSTPKIOperation"
   capability (See Section 3.5.2).

   If a client or CA uses HTTP GET and encounters HTTP-related problems
   such as messages being truncated, seeing errors such as HTTP 414



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   ("Request URI too long"), or simply having the message not sent/
   received at all, when standard requests to the server (for example
   via a web browser) work, then this is a symptom of the problematic
   use of HTTP GET.  The solution to this problem is typically to move
   to HTTP POST instead.  In addition when using GET it's recommended to
   test your implementation over the public internet from as many
   locations as possible to determine whether the use of GET will cause
   problems with communications.

   When using GET messages to communicate binary data, base64 encoding
   as specified in [2] MUST be used.  The base64 encoded data is
   distinct from "base64url" and may contain URI reserved characters,
   thus it MUST be escaped as specified in [8] in addition to being
   base64 encoded.  Finally, the encoded data is inserted into the
   MESSAGE portion of the HTTP GET request.

4.2.  Get CA Certificate

   To get the CA certificate(s), the client sends a GetCACert message to
   the CA.  The OPERATION MUST be set to "GetCACert".  There is no
   request data associated with this message.

4.2.1.  Get CA Certificate Response Message Format

   The response for GetCACert is different between the case where the CA
   directly communicates with the client during the enrolment, and the
   case where an intermediate CA exists and the client communicates with
   this CA during the enrolment.

4.2.1.1.  CA Certificate Response Message Format

   If the CA does not have any intermediate CA certificates, the
   response consists of a single X.509 CA certificate.  The response
   will have a Content-Type of "application/x-x509-ca-cert".


   "Content-Type: application/x-x509-ca-cert"

   <binary X.509>


4.2.1.2.  CA Certificate Chain Response Message Format

   If the CA has intermediate CA certificates, the response consists of
   a degenerate certificates-only CMS Signed-Data message (Section 3.4)
   containing the certificates, with the intermediate CA certificate(s)
   as the leaf certificate(s).  The response will have a Content-Type of
   "application/x-x509-ca-ra-cert".  Note that this designation is used



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   for historical reasons due to its use in older versions of this
   specification, no special meaning should be attached to the label.


   "Content-Type: application/x-x509-ca-ra-cert"

   <binary CMS>


4.3.  Certificate Enrolment/Renewal/Update

   A PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq (Section 3.3.1) message is used to
   perform a certificate enrolment, renewal, or update transaction.  The
   OPERATION MUST be set to "PKIOperation".  Note that when used with
   HTTP POST, the only OPERATION possible is "PKIOperation", so many CAs
   don't check this value or even notice its absence.  When implemented
   using HTTP POST the message might look as follows:


   POST /cgi-bin/pkiclient.exe?operation=PKIOperation HTTP/1.1
   Content-Length: <length of data>

   <binary CMS data>


   When implemented using HTTP GET this might look as follows:


   GET /cgi-bin/pkiclient.exe?operation=PKIOperation& \
   message=MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHA6CAMIACAQAxgDCBzAIBADB2MG \
   IxETAPBgNVBAcTCE......AAAAAA== HTTP/1.1


4.3.1.  Certificate Enrolment/Renewal/Update Response Message

   If the request is granted, a CertRep message (Section 3.3.2) with
   pkiStatus set to SUCCESS is returned.  The reply MUST also contain
   the certificate (and MAY contain any other certificates needed by the
   client).  The issued certificate MUST be the first in the list.

   If the request is rejected, a CertRep message (Section 3.3.2) with
   pkiStatus set to FAILURE is returned.  The reply MUST also contain a
   failInfo attribute.

   If the the CA is configured to manually authenticate the client, a
   CertRep message (Section 3.3.2) with pkiStatus set to PENDING MAY be
   returned.  The CA MAY return a PENDING for other reasons.




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   The response will have a Content-Type of "application/x-pki-message".


   "Content-Type: application/x-pki-message"

   <binary CertRep message>


4.4.  Poll for Client Initial Certificate

   Whe the client receives a CertRep message with pkiStatus set to
   PENDING, it will enter the polling state by periodically sending
   CertPoll messages to the CA until either the request is granted and
   the certificate is sent back or the request is rejected or some
   preconfigured time limit for polling or maximum number of polls is
   exceeded.  The OPERATION MUST be set to "PKIOperation".

   CertPoll messages exchanged during the polling period MUST carry the
   same transactionID attribute as the previous PKCSReq/RenewalReq/
   UpdateReq.  A CA receiving a CertPoll for which it does not have a
   matching PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq MUST ignore this request.

   Since at this time the certificate has not been issued, the client
   can only use its own subject name (which was contained in the
   original PKCS# 10 sent via PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq) to identify
   the polled certificate request (but see the note on identification
   during polling in Section 3.3.3).  In theory there can be multiple
   outstanding requests from one client (for example, if different keys
   and different key-usages were used to request multiple certificates),
   so the transactionID must also be included to disambiguate between
   multiple requests.  In practice however it's safer for the client to
   not have multiple requests outstanding at any one time, since this
   tends to confuse some CAs.

4.4.1.  Polling Response Message Format

   The response messages for CertPoll are the same as in Section 4.3.1.

4.5.  Certificate Access

   A client can query an issued certificate from the SCEP CA, as long as
   the client knows the issuer name and the issuer assigned certificate
   serial number.

   This transaction consists of one GetCert (Section 3.3.4) message sent
   to the CA by a client, and one CertRep (Section 3.3.2) message sent
   back from the CA.  The OPERATION MUST be set to "PKIOperation".




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4.5.1.  Certificate Access Response Message Format

   In this case, the CertRep from the CA is same as in Section 4.3.1,
   except that the CA will either grant the request (SUCCESS) or reject
   it (FAILURE).

4.6.  CRL Access

   Clients can request a CRL from the SCEP CA as described in
   Section 2.6.  The OPERATION MUST be set to "PKIOperation".

4.6.1.  CRL Access Response Message Format

   The CRL is sent back to the client in a CertRep (Section 3.3.2)
   message.  The information portion of this message is a degenerate
   certificates-only Signed-Data (Section 3.4) that contains only the
   most recent CRL in the crls field of the Signed-Data.

4.7.  Get Next Certificate Authority Certificate

   When a CA certificate expires then, depending on client and CA
   policy, certificates that have been signed by it may no longer be
   regarded as valid.  CA key rollover provides a mechanism by which the
   CA MAY distribute a new CA certificate which is valid in the future
   once the current certificate has expired.  When a CA certificate is
   about to expire, clients need to retrieve the CA's next CA
   certificate (i.e. the rollover certificate).  This is done via the
   GetNextCACert message.  The OPERATION MUST be set to "GetNextCACert".
   There is no request data associated with this message.

   Clients MAY store the not-yet-valid CA certificate, and any not-yet-
   valid client certificates obtained, until such time that they are
   valid, at which point clients switch over to using the newly valid
   certificates (but see the note in Section 2.1.3 about storing CA
   certificates).

4.7.1.  Get Next CA Response Message Format

   The response consists of a Signed-Data CMS message, signed by the
   current CA signing key.  Clients MUST validate the signature on the
   message before accepting any of its contents.  The response will have
   a Content-Type of "application/x-x509-next-ca-cert".


   "Content-Type: application/x-x509-next-ca-cert"

   <binary CMS>




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   The content of the Signed-Data message is a degenerate certificates-
   only Signed-Data message (Section 3.4) containing the new CA
   certificate(s) to be used when the current CA certificate expires.

   If the CA does not have rollover certificate(s) it MUST reject the
   request.  It SHOULD also remove the GetNextCACert setting from the CA
   capabilities returned by GetCACaps until it does have rollover
   certificates.

5.  SCEP State Transitions

   The following section gives several examples of client to CA
   transactions.  Client actions are indicated in the left column, CA
   actions are indicated in the right column, and the transactionID is
   given in parentheses.  The first transaction, for example, would read
   like this:

   "Client Sends PKCSReq message with transactionID 1 to the CA.  The CA
   signs the certificate and constructs a CertRep Message containing the
   signed certificate with a transaction ID 1.  The client receives the
   message and installs the certificate locally".

5.1.  Successful Transactions

   Successful Enrolment Case: Automatic processing


   PKCSReq (1)             ----------> CA issues certificate
                           <---------- CertRep (1) SUCCESS
   Client installs certificate


   Successful Enrolment Case: Manual authentication required


   PKCSReq (2)             ----------> Cert request goes into queue
                           <---------- CertRep (2) PENDING
   CertPoll (2)            ----------> Still pending
                           <---------- CertRep (2) PENDING
   CertPoll (2)            ----------> CA issues certificate
                           <---------- CertRep (2) SUCCESS
   Client installs certificate









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   CA certificate rollover case:


   GetNextCACert         ---------->
                         <---------- New CA certificate

   PKCSReq*              ----------> CA issues certificate with
                                     new key
                         <---------- CertRep SUCCESS
   Client stores certificate
   for installation when
   existing certificate expires.


   * Enveloped for the new CA certificate.  The CA will use the envelope
   to determine which key to use to issue the client certificate.

5.2.  Transactions with Errors

   In the case of polled transactions that aren't completed
   automatically, there are two potential options for dealing with a
   transaction that's interrupted due to network or software/hardware
   issues.  The first is for the client to preserve its transaction
   state and resume the CertPoll polling when normal service is
   restored.  The second is for the client to begin a new transaction by
   sending a new PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq rather than continuing the
   previous CertPoll.  Both options have their own advantages and
   disadvantages.

   The CertPoll continuation requires that the client maintain its
   transaction state for then time when it resumes polling.  This is
   relatively simple if the problem is a brief network outage, but less
   simple when the problem is a client crash and restart.  In addition
   the CA may treat a lost network connection as the end of a
   transaction, so that a new connection followed by a CertPoll will be
   treated as an error.

   The PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq continuation doesn't require any
   state to be maintained since it's a new transaction, however it may
   cause problems on the CA side if the certificate was successfully
   issued but the client never received it, since the resumed
   transaction attempt will appear to be a request for a duplicate
   certificate (see Section 8.4 for more on why this is a problem).  In
   this case the CA may refuse the transaction, or require manual
   intervention to remove/revoke the previous certificate before the
   client can request another one.





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   Since the new-transaction resume is more robust in the presence of
   errors and doesn't require special-case handling by either the client
   or CA, clients SHOULD use the new-transaction option in preference to
   the resumed-CertPoll option to recover from errors.

   Resync Case 1: Client resyncs via new PKCSReq (recommended):


   PKCSReq (3)           ----------> Cert request goes into queue
                         <---------- CertRep (3) PENDING
   CertPoll (3)          ----------> Still pending
                           X-------- CertRep(3) PENDING
   (Network outage)
   (Client reconnects)
   PKCSReq (4)           ---------->
                         <---------- CertRep (4) PENDING
   etc...


   Resync Case 2: Client resyncs via resumed CertPoll after a network
   outage (not recommended, use PKCSReq to resync):


   PKCSReq (5)           ----------> Cert request goes into queue
                         <---------- CertRep (5) PENDING
   CertPoll (5)          ----------> Still pending
                           X-------- CertRep(5) PENDING
   (Network outage)
   (Client reconnects)
   CertPoll (5)          ----------> CA issues certificate
                         <---------- CertRep (5) SUCCESS
   Client installs certificate



















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   Resync Case 3: Special-case variation of case 2 where the CertRep
   SUCCESS rather than the CertRep PENDING is lost (recommended):


   PKCSReq (6)           ----------> Cert request goes into queue
                         <---------- CertRep (6) PENDING
   CertPoll (6)          ----------> Still pending
                         <---------- CertRep (6) PENDING
   CertPoll (6)          ----------> CA issues certificate
                           X-------- CertRep(6) SUCCESS
   (Network outage)
   (Client reconnects)
   PKCSReq (7)           ----------> There is already a valid
                                     certificate with this DN.
                         <---------- CertRep (7) FAILURE
                                     Admin revokes certificate
   PKCSReq (7)           ----------> CA issues new certificate
                         <---------- CertRep (7) SUCCESS
   Client installs certificate


   Resync Case 4: Special-case variation of case 1 where the CertRep
   SUCCESS rather than the CertRep PENDING is lost (not recommended, use
   PKCSReq to resync):


   PKCSReq (8)           ----------> Cert request goes into queue
                         <---------- CertRep (8) PENDING
   CertPoll (8)          ----------> Still pending
                         <---------- CertRep (8) PENDING
   CertPoll (8)          ----------> CA issues certificate
                           X-------- CertRep(8) SIGNED CERT
   (Network outage)
   (Client reconnects)
   CertPoll (8)          ----------> Certificate already issued
                         <---------- CertRep (8) SUCCESS
   Client installs certificate


   As these examples indicate, resumption from an error via a resumed
   CertPoll is tricky due to the state that needs to be held by both the
   client and/or the CA.  A PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq resume is the
   easiest to implement since it's stateless and is identical for both
   polled and non-polled transactions, while a CertPoll resume treats
   the two differently (a non-polled transaction is resumed with a
   PKCSReq/RenewalReq/UpdateReq, a polled transaction is resumed with a
   CertPoll).  For this reason this specification recommends that error
   recovery be handled via a new PKCSReq rather than a resumed CertPoll.



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6.  Contributors/Acknowledgements

   The editor would like to thank all of the previous editors, authors
   and contributors: Cheryl Madson, Xiaoyi Liu, David McGrew, David
   Cooper, Andy Nourse, Max Pritikin, Jan Vilhuber, and others for their
   work maintaining the draft over the years.  Numerous other people
   have contributed during the long life cycle of the draft and all
   deserve thanks.  In addition several PKCS #7 / CMS libraries
   contributed to interoperability by doing the right thing despite what
   earlier SCEP drafts required.

   The earlier authors would like to thank Peter William of ValiCert,
   Inc.  (formerly of VeriSign, Inc.) and Alex Deacon of VeriSign, Inc.
   and Christopher Welles of IRE, Inc. for their contributions to early
   versions of this protocol and this document.

7.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.

8.  Security Considerations

   The security goal of SCEP is that no adversary can subvert the public
   key/identity binding from that intended.  An adversary is any entity
   other than the client and the CA participating in the protocol.

   This goal is met through the use of CMS and PKCS #10 encryption and
   digital signatures using authenticated public keys.  The CA's public
   key is authenticated via out-of-band means such as the checking of
   the CA fingerprint and the SCEP client's public key is authenticated
   through manual or pre-shared secret authentication.

8.1.  General Security

   Common key-management considerations such as keeping private keys
   truly private and using adequate lengths for symmetric and asymmetric
   keys must be followed in order to maintain the security of this
   protocol.  This is especially true for CA keys which, when
   compromised, compromise the security of all relying parties.

8.2.  Use of the CA keypair

   A CA key pair is generally meant for, and is usually flagged as,
   being usable for certificate (and CRL) signing exclusively rather
   than data signing or encryption.  The SCEP protocol however uses the
   CA private key to both sign and optionally encrypt CMS transport
   messages.  This is generally considered undesirable as it widens the
   possibility of an implementation weakness and provides an additional



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   location where the private key must be used (and hence is slightly
   more vulnerable to exposure) and where a side-channel attack might be
   applied.

8.3.  Challenge Password

   The challengePassword sent in the PKCS #10 enrolment request is
   signed and encrypted by way of being encapsulated in a pkiMessage.
   When saved by the CA, care should be taken to protect this password,
   for example by storing a salted iterated hash of the password rather
   than the password itself.

8.4.  Lack of Certificate Issue Confirmation

   SCEP provides no confirmation that the issued certificate was
   successfully received and processed by the client.  This means that
   if the CertRep message is lost or can't be processed by the client
   then the CA will consider the certificate successfully issued while
   the client won't.  If this situation is of concern then the correct
   issuance of the certificate will need to be verified by out-of-band
   means, for example through the client sending a message signed by the
   newly-issued certificate to the CA.  This also provides the proof of
   possession that's not present in the case of an update or renewal
   operation, see Section 8.6.

8.5.  GetCACaps Issues

   The GetCACaps response is not authenticated by the CA.  This allows
   an attacker to perform downgrade attacks on the cryptographic
   capabilities of the client/CA exchange.

8.6.  Lack of PoP in Renewal and Update Requests

   Renewal and update operations (but not standard certificate-issue
   operations) are processed via a previously-issued certificate and its
   associated private key, not the key in the PKCS #10 request.  This
   means that a client no longer demonstrates proof of possession (PoP)
   of the private key corresponding to the public key in the PKCS #10
   request.  It is therefore possible for a client to re-certify an
   existing key used by a third party, so that two or more certificates
   exist for the same key.  By switching out the certificate in a
   signature, an attacker can appear to have a piece of data signed by
   their certificate rather than the original signer's certificate.
   This, and other, attacks are described in S/MIME ESS [14].

   Avoiding these types of attacks requires situation-specific measures.
   For example CMS/SMIME implementations may use the ESSCertID attribute
   from S/MIME ESS [14] or its successor S/MIME ESSv2 [15] to



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   unambiguously identify the signing certificate, however other
   mechanisms and protocols typically don't defend against this attack.

8.7.  Unnecessary cryptography

   Some of the SCEP exchanges use unnecessary signing and encryption
   operations.  In particular the GetCert and GetCRL exchanges are
   encrypted and signed in both directions.  The information requested
   is public and thus encrypting the requests is of questionable value.
   In addition CRLs and certificates sent in responses are already
   signed by the CA and can be verified by the recipient without
   requiring additional signing and encryption.  More lightweight means
   of retrieving certificates and CRLs such as HTTP certificate-store
   access [11] and LDAP are recommended for this reason.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [1]        Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [2]        Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
              Encodings", RFC 4648, October 2006.

   [3]        Housley, R., "Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)",
              RFC 5652, September 2009.

   [4]        Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [5]        Nystrom, M. and B. Kaliski, "PKCS #9: Selected Object
              Classes and Attribute Types Version 2.0", RFC 2985,
              November 2000.

   [6]        Nystrom, M. and B. Kaliski, "PKCS #10: Certification
              Request Syntax Specification Version 1.7", RFC 2986,
              November 2000.

   [7]        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, May 2008.

   [8]        Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396,
              August 1998.



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9.2.  Informative References

   [9]        Schaad, J. and M. Myers, "Certificate Management over CMS
              (CMC)", RFC 5272, June 2008.

   [10]       Adams, C., Farrell, S., Kause, T., and T. Mononen,
              "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate
              Management Protocol (CMP)", RFC 4210, September 2005.

   [11]       Gutmann, P., "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure
              Operational Protocols: Certificate Store Access via HTTP",
              RFC 4387, February 2006.

   [12]       Alighieri, D., "Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) Protocol",
              RFC 4306, March 1300.

   [13]       Ramsdell, B. and S. Turner, "Secure/Multipurpose Internet
              Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 3.2 Message
              Specification", RFC 5751, January 2010.

   [14]       Hoffman, P., "Enhanced Security Services for S/MIME",
              RFC 2634, June 1999.

   [15]       Schaad, J., "Enhanced Security Services (ESS) Update:
              Adding CertID Algorithm Agility", RFC 5035, August 2007.

   [16]       Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.

Appendix A.  Background Notes

   This specification has spent more than sixteen years in the draft
   stage.  Its original goal, provisioning IPsec routers with
   certificates, has long since changed to general device/embedded
   system/IoT use.  To fit this role, extra features were bolted on in a
   haphazard manner through the addition of a growing list of appendices
   and by inserting additional, often conflicting, paragraphs in various
   locations in the body text.  Since existing features were never
   updated as newer ones were added, the specification accumulated large
   amounts of historical baggage over time.  If OpenPGP was described as
   "a museum of 1990s crypto" then the SCEP draft was its graveyard.

   About five years ago the specification, which even at that point had
   seen only sporadic re-posts of the existing document, was more or
   less abandoned by its original sponsors.  Due to its widespread use
   in large segments of the industry, the specification was rebooted in
   2015, cleaning up fifteen years worth of accumulated cruft, fixing
   errors, clarifying ambiguities, and bringing the algorithms and



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   standards used into the current century (prior to the update, the de-
   facto lowest-common denominator algorithms used for interoperability
   were the forty-year-old single DES and broken MD5 hash algorithms).

   Other changes include:

   o  Resolved contradictions in the text, for example a requirement
      given as a MUST in one paragraph and a SHOULD in the next, a MUST
      NOT in one paragraph and a MAY a few paragraphs later, a SHOULD
      NOT contradicted later by a MAY, and so on.
   o  Merged several later fragmentary addenda placed in appendices (for
      example the handling of certificate renewal and update) with the
      body of the text.
   o  Merged the SCEP Transactions and SCEP Transport sections, since
      the latter mostly duplicated (with occasional inconsistencies) the
      former.
   o  Updated the algorithms to ones dating from at least this century.
   o  Did the same for normative references to other standards.
   o  Updated the text to use consistent terminology for the client and
      CA rather than a mixture of client, requester, end entity, server,
      certificate authority, certification authority, and CA.
   o  Corrected incorrect references to other standards, e.g.
      IssuerAndSerial -> IssuerAndSerialNumber.
   o  Corrected errors such as a statement that when both signature and
      encryption certificates existed, the signature certificate was
      used for encryption.
   o  Condensed redundant discussions of the same topic spread across
      multiple sections into a single location.  For example the
      description of intermediate CA handling previously existed in
      three different locations, with slightly different reqirements in
      each one.
   o  Added a description of how pkiMessages were processed, which was
      never made explicit in the original specification.  This led to
      creative interpretations that had security problems but were
      employed anyway due to the lack of specific guidance on what to
      do.
   o  Relaxed some requirements that didn't serve any obvious purpose
      and that major implementations didn't seem to be enforcing.  For
      example the requirement that the self-signed certificate used with
      a request MUST contain a subject name that matched the one in the
      PKCS #10 request was relaxed to a SHOULD because a number of
      implementations either ignored the issue entirely or at worst
      performed some minor action like creating a log entry after which
      they continued anyway.
   o  Removed discussion of the transactionID from the security
      considerations, since the instructions there were directly
      contradicted by the discussion of the use of the transactionID in
      Section 5.



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   o  Clarified sections that were unclear or even made no sense, for
      example the requirement for a "hash on the public key" [sic]
      encoded as a PrintableString.
   o  Renamed "RA certificates" to "intermediate CA certificates".  The
      original document at some point added mention of RA certificates
      without specifying how the client was to determine that an RA was
      in use, how the RA operations were identified in the protocol, or
      how it was used.  It's unclear whether what was meant was a true
      RA or merely an intermediate CA, as opposed to the default
      practice of having certificates issued directly from a single root
      CA certificate.  This update uses the term "intermediate CA
      certificates", since this seems to have been the original intent
      of the text.
   o  Redid the PKIMessage diagram to match what was specified in CMS,
      the original diagram omitted a number of fields and nested data
      structures which meant that the diagram didn't match either the
      text or the CMS specification.
   o  Removed the requirement for a CertPoll to contain a
      recipientNonce, since CertPoll is a client message and will never
      be sent in response to a message containing a senderNonce.  See
      also the note in Section 3.3.2.
   o  Clarified certificate renewal and update.  These represent a
      capability that was bolted onto the original protocol with (at
      best) vaguely-defined semantics, including a requirement by the CA
      to guess whether a particular request was a renewal or not
      (updates were even more vaguely defined).  In response to
      developer feedback that they either avoided renewal/update
      entirely because of this uncertainty or hardcoded in particular
      behaviour on a per-CA basis, this specification explicitly
      identifies renewal and update requests as such, and provides
      proper semantics for both.
   o  Added the "SCEPStandard" keyword to GetCACaps to indicate that the
      CA complies with the final version of the SCEP standard, since the
      definition of what constitutes SCEP standards compliance has
      changed significantly over the years.
   o  Removed the discussion in the security considerations of
      revocation issues, since SCEP doesn't support revocation as part
      of the protocol.
   o  Clarified the use of nonces, which if applied as originally
      specified would have made the use of polling in the presence of a
      lost message impossible.
   o  Removed the discussion of generating a given transactionID by
      hashing the public key, since this implied that there was some
      special significance in the value generated this way.  Since it
      was neither a MUST nor a MAY, it was unsound to imply that servers
      could rely on the value being generated a certain way.  In
      addition it wouldn't work if multiple transactions as discussed in




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      Section 4.4 were initiated, since the deterministic generation via
      hashing would lead to duplicate transactionIDs.
   o  Added examples of SCEP messages to give implementers something to
      aim for.

Appendix B.  Sample SCEP Messages

   (Omitted from the drafts to keep the size down).

Author's Address

   Peter Gutmann
   University of Auckland
   Department of Computer Science
   Auckland
   New Zealand

   Email: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz

































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