On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 09:22:34AM -0500, Peter Beal wrote:
On 12/4/14 7:08 PM, Fraser Tweedale wrote:
On Thu, Dec 04, 2014 at 10:36:10AM -0500, Peter Beal wrote:
Hi Fraser,
Thanks for the quick response.
I saw the ticket get opened. Thanks for jumping on that as well.
What I see at our EST based client as it is building the CSR is the following value being used for the challenge password
(gdb) p tls_uid $35 = 0x7ffff001a4d0 "H9wOU8vX9HX5s/hH" (gdb)
We take the TLS UID and run it through a base64 encoding and the above string is what is placed in the challenge password field. This appears to be a printable string for us as it's placed into the CSR. We verify the CSR at the EST server and then send it on to Dogtag unmodified. I haven't go into the RA or Dogtag to verify this, but I suspect this string is still set to this value when it arrives at Dogtag.
Thanks again for you help, Pete
The DER data in the Dogtag log output shows that the challengePassword attribute value has UTF8String encoding (tag 0x0C), not PrintableString (tag 0x13). Dogtag MUST be able to parse UTF8String challengePassword attributes, but according to the RFCs the value SHOULD have PrintableString encoding, so you may want to look into it.
I have a patch for the decoding issue in the works; should get it to the pki-devel list for review this morning. What OS and Dogtag version are you running? Hopefully we can get that patch in the next Dogtag release for your distro.
Regards,
Fraser Fedora version is 19 and the Dogtag version appears to be
Implementation-Version: 10.0.6
I am not sure if the patch will be backported to f19. Stay tuned.
Just curious, is there a way to find the version of Dogtag through the web interface?
I am not aware of a way. Regards, Fraser
Thanks, Pete
On 12/3/14 10:44 PM, Fraser Tweedale wrote:
On Wed, Dec 03, 2014 at 02:16:47PM -0500, Peter Beal wrote:
Hello,
Our group is developing its own RA to be part of a PKI solution that includes Dogtag. Our solution uses EST (RFC 7030) between the the clients and the RA, with the EST protocol terminating at the RA. The RA then takes the CSRs and sends them on to Dogtag using REST commands. This project has been going very well, however we did just hit one issue that we were hoping others might be able to provide some guidance on.
The EST protocol defines a feature called Proof Of Possession (PoP) where the clients insert the TLS unique ID of the TLS session between it and the EST server, in our case our RA. This TLS UID is sent in the challenge password attribute field of the CSR so that it can be signed by the client. The EST server is responsible for verifying this TLS UID, and once this verification is performed the value in the challenge password field no longer has any meaning. Because the CSR cannot be resigned at this point, the challenge password cannot be taken out of the CSR. This CSR is passed as is along to Dogtag and we're currently finding that Dogtag is checking the CSR and does not like the challenge password attribute:
[03/Dec/2014:13:37:59][http-bio-8444-exec-3]: Start parsePKCS10(): MIIBdDCB3gIBADAUMRIwEAYDVQQDDAkxMjcuMC4wLjEwgZ8wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEB BQADgY0AMIGJAoGBAMPNKtwZO82WfR5u/hS+SsVghdS9jD5BQS6Z5ymXrKcr9R4t DtSeEQ+AtCZ5qVNXcangb00vJgVqgS/7NH4MzSqscgNzZdpx9+mPklvOUuqTuYCv MFIlMwP/2DJ6TBrmF86vJ1I0GmZAyTSzHg4V4YWaN7r0V7x0RyvFqoBnZU51AgMB AAGgITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQcxEgwQTUR4clVZNmd6TnZqdWRmNzANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQsFAAOBgQAAKLbWGndYFfa+8IhopufYOEKIOAmcT+Nhr27vFt5I4ymoUwSlKX9L K+KpLho5Q2GsRoItNXJ6VxRcGe1CPZBW2ef7yPdZaKhFmnxXsYVQaqPY5BGI8kAY MMMr75WQcpn+XUpu+FNB4F2j8YY314u2rsplCMbOdR4tcrgc8WqucA==
[03/Dec/2014:13:37:59][http-bio-8444-exec-3]: EnrollProfile: parsePKCS10: signature verification enabled [03/Dec/2014:13:37:59][http-bio-8444-exec-3]: EnrollProfile: parsePKCS10: use internal token [03/Dec/2014:13:37:59][http-bio-8444-exec-3]: EnrollProfile: parsePKCS10 setting thread token [03/Dec/2014:13:37:59][http-bio-8444-exec-3]: EnrollProfile: parsePKCS10 java.io.IOException: DerValue.getPrintableString, not a string 12 [03/Dec/2014:13:37:59][http-bio-8444-exec-3]: EnrollProfile: parsePKCS10 restoring thread token
So we're wondering what the best approach might be to handle this. Is there a way to configure Dogtag so that it will ignore the challenge password?
Thanks very much, Pete Beal
Hi Pete,
Dogtag tries to decode the request object as a whole (and is failing; see below). There is no way to bypass this.
PKCS #9 (RFC 2985) ยง5.4.1 "Challenge password" states that "PKCS #9- attribute processing systems MUST be able to recognize and process all string types in DirectoryString values." Therefore, this is a bug in Dogtag, and I will file a ticket. (Incidentally, OpenSSL also fails to deal with with this part of the request object, but the problem is isolated to the attribute.)
The problem should not present when using PrintableString instead of UTF8String. Since according to RFC 7030 (EST) the value of the challengePassword attribute is base64 encoded, it is printable, and furthermore RFC 2985 also states, "ChallengePassword attribute values generated in accordance with this version of this document SHOULD use the PrintableString encoding whenever possible." If you have control over the clients (I understand you may not) then using PrintableString instead of UTF8String is recommended and should get you over the line with Dogtag until the decoding issue is fixed on our end.
Cheers,
Fraser