]> RISE AB

shahid.raza@ri.se

RISE AB

joel.hoglund@ri.se

Ericsson AB

goran.selander@ericsson.com

Ericsson AB

john.mattsson@ericsson.com

Nexus Group

martin.furuhed@nexusgroup.com

This document specifies a CBOR encoding of X.509 certificates. The resulting certificates are called CBOR Certificates. The CBOR encoding supports a large subset of RFC 5280 and significantly reduces the size of certificates compatible with e.g. RFC 7925, IEEE 802.1AR (DevID), CNSA, and CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements. When used to re-encode DER encoded X.509 certificates, the CBOR encoding can in many cases reduce the size of RFC 7925 profiled certificates with over 50%. The CBOR encoding can also be used to encode “natively signed” CBOR certificates, which does not require re-encoding for the signature to be verified. The document also specifies COSE headers as well as a TLS certificate type for CBOR certificates.

One of the challenges with deploying a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for the Internet of Things (IoT) is the size and parsing of X.509 public key certificates , since those are not optimized for constrained environments . Large certificate chains are also problematic in non-constrained protocols such as EAP-TLS where authenticators typically drop an EAP session after only 40 - 50 round-trips and QUIC where the latency increases significantly unless the server only send less than three times as many bytes as received prior to validating the client address. More compact certificate representations are therefore desirable in many use cases. Due to the current PKI usage of DER encoded X.509 certificates, keeping compatibility with DER encoded X.509 is necessary at least for a transition period. However, the use of a more compact encoding with the Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) reduces the certificate size significantly which has known performance benefits in terms of decreased communication overhead, power consumption, latency, storage, etc. CBOR is a data format designed for small code size and small message size. CBOR builds on the JSON data model but extends it by e.g. encoding binary data directly without base64 conversion. In addition to the binary CBOR encoding, CBOR also has a diagnostic notation that is readable and editable by humans. The Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL) provides a way to express structures for protocol messages and APIs that use CBOR. also extends the diagnostic notation. CBOR data items are encoded to or decoded from byte strings using a type-length-value encoding scheme, where the three highest order bits of the initial byte contain information about the major type. CBOR supports several different types of data items, in addition to integers (int, uint), simple values (e.g. null), byte strings (bstr), and text strings (tstr), CBOR also supports arrays [] of data items, maps {} of pairs of data items, and sequences of data items. For a complete specification and examples, see , , and . CAB Baseline Requirements , RFC 7925 , IEEE 802.1AR , and CNSA specify certificate profiles which can be applied to certificate based authentication with, e.g., TLS , QUIC , DTLS , COSE , EDHOC , or Compact TLS 1.3 . RFC 7925 , RFC7925bis , and IEEE 802.1AR specifically target Internet of Things deployments. This document specifies a CBOR encoding based on , which can support large parts of . The encoding support all and IEEE 802.1AR and CAB Baseline profiled X.509 certificates. Two variants are defined using the same CBOR encoding and differing only in what is being signed: An invertible CBOR re-encoding of DER encoded X.509 certificates , which can be reversed to obtain the original DER encoded X.509 certificate. Natively signed CBOR certificates, which further optimizes the performance in constrained environments but is not backwards compatible with , see . This document specifies COSE headers for use of the CBOR certificates with COSE, see . The document also specifies a TLS certificate type for use of the CBOR certificates with TLS and QUIC (with or without additional TLS certificate compression), see .

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “NOT RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here. This specification makes use of the terminology in , , , and .

This section specifies the content and encoding for CBOR certificates, with the overall objective to produce a very compact representation supporting large parts of , and everything in , , and CAB Baseline . In the CBOR encoding, static fields are elided, elliptic curve points and time values are compressed, OID are replaced with short integers, and redundant encoding is removed. Combining these different components reduces the certificate size significantly, which is not possible with general purpose compressions algorithms, see . The CBOR certificate can be either a CBOR re-encoding of a DER encoded X.509 certificate, in which case the signature is calculated on the DER encoded ASN.1 data in the X.509 certificate, or a natively signed CBOR certificate, in which case the signature is calculated directly on the CBOR encoded data (see ). In both cases the certificate content is adhering to the restrictions given by . The re-encoding is known to work with DER encoded certificates but might work with other canonical encodings. The re-encoding does not work for BER encoded certificates. In the encoding described below, the order of elements in arrays are always encoded in the same order as the elements or the corresponding SEQUENCE or SET in the DER encoding.

The X.509 fields and their CBOR encodings are listed below, and used in the definition of CBOR Certificates, see . CBOR certificates are defined in terms of DER encoded X.509 certificates: version. The ‘version’ field is encoded in the ‘cborCertificateType’ CBOR int. The field ‘cborCertificateType’ also indicates the type of the CBOR certificate. Currently, the type can be a natively signed CBOR certificate following X.509 v3 (cborCertificateType = 0) or a CBOR re-encoded X.509 v3 DER certificate (cborCertificateType = 1), see . serialNumber. The ‘serialNumber’ INTEGER value field is encoded as the unwrapped CBOR unsigned bignum (~biguint) ‘certificateSerialNumber’. Any leading 0x00 byte (to indicate that the number is not negative) is therefore omitted. signature. The ‘signature’ field is always the same as the ‘signatureAlgorithm’ field and therefore omitted from the CBOR encoding. issuer. In the general case, the sequence of ‘RelativeDistinguishedName’ is encoded as a CBOR array of CBOR arrays of Attributes. Typically each RelativeDistinguishedName only contains a single attribute and the sequence is then ecoded as a CBOR array of Attributes. Each Attribute is encoded as a (CBOR int, CBOR text string) pair or as a (unwrapped CBOR OID, CBOR bytes) pair. The absolute value of the CBOR int (see ) encodes the attribute type and the sign is used to represent the character string type; positive for Utf8String, negative for PrintableString. In natively signed CBOR certificates all text strings are UTF-8 encoded and all attributes SHALL have a positive sign. Text strings SHALL still adhere to any X.509 restrictions, i.e. serialNumber SHALL only contain the 74 character subset of ASCII allowed by PrintableString and countryName SHALL have length 2. The string types teletexString, universalString, and bmpString are not supported. If Name contains a single Attribute containing an utf8String encoded ‘common name’ it is encoded as a CBOR text string. If the text string contains an EUI-64 of the form “HH-HH-HH-HH-HH-HH-HH-HH” where ‘H’ is one of the symbol ‘0’–’9’ or ‘A’–’F’ it is encoded as a CBOR byte string of length 8 instead. EUI-64 mapped from a 48-bit MAC address (i.e. of the form “HH-HH-HH-FF-FE-HH-HH-HH) is encoded as a CBOR byte string of length 6. validity. The ‘notBefore’ and ‘notAfter’ fields are encoded as unwrapped CBOR epoch-based date/time (~time) where the tag content is an unsigned integer. In POSIX time, leap seconds are ignored, with a leap second having the same POSIX time as the second before it. Compression of X.509 certificates with the time 23:59:60 UTC is therefore not supported. Note that RFC 5280 mandates encoding of dates through the year 2049 as UTCTime, and later dates as GeneralizedTime. The value “99991231235959Z” (no expiration date) is encoded as CBOR null. subject. The ‘subject’ is encoded exactly like issuer. subjectPublicKeyInfo. The ‘AlgorithmIdentifier’ field including parameters is encoded as the CBOR int ‘subjectPublicKeyAlgorithm’ (see ) or as an array with an unwrapped CBOR OID tag optionally followed by the parameters encoded as a CBOR byte string. In general, the ‘subjectPublicKey’ BIT STRING value field is encoded as a CBOR byte string. This specification assumes the BIT STRING has zero unused bits and the unused bits byte is omitted. For rsaEncryption and id-ecPublicKey, the encoding of subjectPublicKey is further optimized as described in . issuerUniqueID. Not supported. subjectUniqueID. Not supported. extensions. The ‘extensions’ field is encoded as a CBOR array where each extension is encoded as either a CBOR int (see ) followed by an optional CBOR item of any type or an unwrapped CBOR OID tag followed by a CBOR bool encoding ‘critical’ and the DER encoded value of the ‘extnValue’ encoded as a CBOR byte string. If the array contains exactly two ints and the absolute value of the first int is 2, the array is omitted and the extensions is encoded as a single CBOR int with the absolute value of the second int and the sign of the first int. Extensions are encoded as specified in . The extensions mandated to be supported by and are given special treatment. An omitted ‘extensions’ field is encoded as an empty CBOR array. signatureAlgorithm. The ‘signatureAlgorithm’ field including parameters is encoded as a CBOR int (see ) or as an array with an unwrapped CBOR OID tag optionally followed by the parameters encoded as a CBOR byte string. signatureValue. In general, the ‘signatureValue’ BIT STRING value field is encoded as the CBOR byte string issuerSignatureValue. This specification assumes the BIT STRING has zero unused bits and the unused bits byte is omitted. For natively signed CBOR certificates the signatureValue is calculated over the CBOR sequence TBSCertificate. For ECDSA, the encoding of issuerSignatureValue is further optimized as described in The following Concise Data Definition Language (CDDL) defines CBORCertificate and TBSCertificate, which are encoded as CBOR Sequences . The member names therefore only have documentary value.

For RSA public keys (rsaEncryption), the SEQUENCE and INTEGER type and length fields are omitted and the two INTEGER value fields (modulus, exponent) are encoded as an array of two unwrapped CBOR unsigned bignum (~biguint), i.e. [ modulus : ~biguint, exponent : ~biguint ]. If the exponent is 65537, the array and the exponent is omitted and subjectPublicKey consist of only the modulus encoded as an unwrapped CBOR unsigned bignum (~biguint). For elliptic curve public keys in Weirstraß form (id-ecPublicKey), uncompressed keys are point compressed as defined in Section 2.3.3 of . If a DER encoded certificate with a point compressed public key of type id-ecPublicKey is CBOR encoded, the octets 0xfe and 0xfd are used instead of 0x02 and 0x03 in the CBOR encoding to represent even and odd y-coordinate, respectively.

For ECDSA signatures, the SEQUENCE and INTEGER type and length fields as well as the any leading 0x00 byte (to indicate that the number is not negative) are omitted. If the two INTEGER value fields have different lengths, the shortest INTEGER value field is padded with zeroes so that the two fields have the same length. The resulting byte string is encoded as a CBOR byte string.

This section details the encoding of the ‘extensions’ field. The ‘extensions’ field is encoded as a CBOR array where each extensionID is encoded as either a CBOR int or a CBOR OID tag. If ‘extensionID’ is encoded an int (see ),the sign is used to encode if the extension is critical and the ‘critical’ field is omitted. Critical extensions are encoded with a positive sign and non-critical extensions are encoded with a negative sign. The ‘extnValue’ OCTET STREAM value field is encoded as the CBOR byte string ‘extensionValue’ except for the extensions specified below. The ‘extensionValue’ for the extensions mandated to be supported by , , and are encoded as follows: keyUsage. The ‘KeyUsage’ BIT STRING is interpreted as an unsigned integer n in network byte order and encoded as a CBOR int. subjectAltName. extensionValue is encoded as an array of (int, any) pairs where each pair encodes a general name (see ). If subjectAltName contains exactly one dNSName, the array and the int are omitted and extensionValue is the dNSName encoded as a CBOR text string. In addition to the general names defined in , the hardwareModuleName type of otherName has been given its own int due to its mandatory use in IEEE 802.1AR. When ‘otherName + hardwareModuleName’ is used, then [ oid, bytes ] is used to identify the pair ( hwType, hwSerialEntries ) directly as specified in .

basicConstraints. If ‘cA’ = false then extensionValue = -2, if ‘cA’ = true and ‘pathLenConstraint’ is not present then extensionValue = -1, and if ‘cA’ = true and ‘pathLenConstraint’ is present then extensionValue = pathLenConstraint. extKeyUsage. extensionValue is encoded as an array of CBOR ints (see ) or unwrapped CBOR OID tags where each int or OID tag encodes a key usage purpose. If the array contains a single int, the array is omitted.

subjectKeyIdentifier. extensionValue is the value of the ‘keyIdentifier’ field encoded as a CBOR byte string. authorityKeyIdentifier. extensionValue is encoded as an array where the value of the ‘keyIdentifier’ is encoded as a CBOR byte string, ‘GeneralNames’ is encoded like in subjectAltName, and ‘AuthorityCertSerialNumber’ is encoded as ~biguint exactly like certificateSerialNumber. Omitted values are encoded as CBOR null.

cRLDistributionPoints. If the cRLDistributionPoints is a sequence of DistributionPointName, it is encoded like subjectAltName, with the difference that if cRLDistributionPoints contains exactly one uniformResourceIdentifier, the array and the int are omitted and extensionValue is the uniformResourceIdentifier encoded as a CBOR text string. authorityInfoAccess. If authorityInfoAccess consist of only uniformResourceIdentifiers it is encoded as an array of uris.

The examples below use values from , , and : A critical basicConstraints (‘cA’ = true) without pathLenConstraint is encoded as the two CBOR ints -1, -1. A non-critical keyUsage with digitalSignature and keyAgreement asserted is encoded as the two CBOR ints 2, 17 (2^0 + 2^4 = 17). A non-critical extKeyUsage containing id-kp-codeSigning and id-kp-OCSPSigning is encoded as the CBOR int 3 followed by the CBOR array [ 3, 6 ]. A non-critical subjectAltName containing only the dNSName example.com is encoded as the CBOR int 4 followed by the CBOR text string “example.com”. Thus, the extension field of a certificate containing all of the above extensions in the given order would be encoded as the CBOR array [ -1, -1, 2, 17, 3, [ 3, 6 ], 4, “example.com” ].

For general purpose applications, the normative requirements of applies. This section describes the mandatory to implement algorithms and OIDs for constrained IoT application; the values of the OIDs including certificate fields and extensions, time format, attributes in distinguished names, etc. TODO: Write this section

CBOR certificates can be deployed with legacy X.509 certificates and CA infrastructure. In order to verify the signature, the CBOR certificate is used to recreate the original X.509 data structure to be able to verify the signature. For protocols like TLS/DTLS 1.2, where the handshake is sent unencrypted, the actual encoding and compression can be done at different locations depending on the deployment setting. For example, the mapping between CBOR certificate and standard X.509 certificate can take place in a 6LoWPAN border gateway which allows the server side to stay unmodified. This case gives the advantage of the low overhead of a CBOR certificate over a constrained wireless links. The conversion to X.509 within an IoT device will incur a computational overhead, however, measured in energy this is likely to be negligible compared to the reduced communication overhead. For the setting with constrained server and server-only authentication, the server only needs to be provisioned with the CBOR certificate and does not perform the conversion to X.509. This option is viable when client authentication can be asserted by other means. For protocols like IKEv2, TLS/DTLS 1.3, and EDHOC, where certificates are encrypted, the proposed encoding needs to be done fully end-to-end, through adding the encoding/decoding functionality to the server.

The CBOR encoding of the sample certificate given in results in the numbers shown in . After profiling, most duplicated information has been removed, and the remaining text strings are minimal in size. Therefore, the further size reduction reached with general compression mechanisms will be small, mainly corresponding to making the ASN.1 encoding more compact. For Brtoli , the brotli command line tool 1.09 was used with the default best compression level.

The difference between CBOR encoded X.509 certificate and natively signed CBOR certificate is that the signature is calculated over the CBOR encoding of the CBOR sequence TBSCertficate rather than the DER encoded ASN.1 data. This removes entirely the need for ASN.1 DER and base64 encodings which reduces the processing in the authenticating devices, and avoids known complexities and security issues with these encodings. Natively signed CBOR certificates can be applied in devices that are only required to authenticate to natively signed CBOR certificate compatible servers. This is not a major restriction for many IoT deployments, where the parties issuing and verifying certificates can be a restricted ecosystem which not necessarily involves public CAs. CBOR encoded X.509 certificates provides an intermediate step between or profiled X.509 certificates and natively signed CBOR certificates: An implementation of CBOR encoded X.509 certificates contains both the CBOR encoding of the X.509 certificate and the signature operations sufficient for natively signed CBOR certificates. The natively signed approach based on DER encoded X.509 certificates described in this document has also other benefits. For example, a CA can use existing ASN.1 machinery to create a DER encoded certificate, the DER encoded certificate can then be transformed to CBOR before signing.

The CBOR profiling of X.509 certificates does not change the security assumptions needed when deploying standard X.509 certificates but decreases the number of fields transmitted, which reduces the risk for implementation errors. The use of natively signed CBOR certificates removes the need for ASN.1 encoding, which is a rich source of security vulnerabilities. Conversion between the certificate formats can be made in constant time to reduce risk of information leakage through side channels. The mechanism in this draft does not reveal any additional information compared to X.509. Because of difference in size, it will be possible to detect that this profile is used. The gateway solution described in requires unencrypted certificates and is not recommended.

This document creates several new registries under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. For all items, the ‘Reference’ field points to this document. The expert reviewers for the registries defined in this document are expected to ensure that the usage solves a valid use case that could not be solved better in a different way, that it is not going to duplicate one that is already registered, and that the registered point is likely to be used in deployments. They are furthermore expected to check the clarity of purpose and use of the requested code points. Experts should take into account the expected usage of entries when approving point assignment, and the length of the encoded value should be weighed against the number of code points left that encode to that size and how constrained the systems it will be used on are. Values in the interval [-24, 23] have a 1 byte encodings, other values in the interval [-256, 255] have a 2 byte encodings, and the remaning values in the interval [-65536, 65535] have 3 byte encodings.

IANA has created a new registry titled “CBOR Certificate Types” under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. The columns of the registry are Value, Description, and Reference, where Value is an integer, and the other columns are text strings. For values in the interval [-24, 23] the registration procedure is “IETF Review” and “Expert Review”. For all other values the registration procedure is “Expert Review”. The initial contents of the registry are:

IANA has created a new registry titled “CBOR Certificate Attributes” under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. The columns of the registry are Value, Name, OID, DER, Comments, and Reference, where Value is an integer, and the other columns are text strings. Only non-negative values can be registered. For values in the interval [0, 23] the registration procedure is “IETF Review” and “Expert Review”. For all other values the registration procedure is “Expert Review”. The initial contents of the registry are:

IANA has created a new registry titled “CBOR Certificate Extensions” under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. The columns of the registry are Value, Name, OID, DER, Comments, extensionValue, and Reference, where Value is an integer, and the other columns are text strings. Only non-negative values can be registered. For values in the interval [0, 23] the registration procedure is “IETF Review” and “Expert Review”. For all other values the registration procedure is “Expert Review”. The initial contents of the registry are:

IANA has created a new registry titled “CBOR Certificate Extended Key Usages” under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. The columns of the registry are Value, Name, OID, DER, Comments, and Reference, where Value is an integer, and the other columns are text strings. For values in the interval [-24, 23] the registration procedure is “IETF Review” and “Expert Review”. For all other values the registration procedure is “Expert Review”. The initial contents of the registry are:

IANA has created a new registry titled “CBOR Certificate General Names” under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. The columns of the registry are Value, General Name, and Reference, where Value is an integer, and the other columns are text strings. For values in the interval [-24, 23] the registration procedure is “IETF Review” and “Expert Review”. For all other values the registration procedure is “Expert Review”. The initial contents of the registry are:

IANA has created a new registry titled “CBOR Certificate Signature Algorithms” under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. The columns of the registry are Value, Name, OID, Parameters, DER, Comments, and Reference, where Value is an integer, and the other columns are text strings. For values in the interval [-24, 23] the registration procedure is “IETF Review” and “Expert Review”. For all other values the registration procedure is “Expert Review”. The initial contents of the registry are:

IANA has created a new registry titled “CBOR Certificate Public Key Algorithms” under the new heading “CBOR Certificate”. The columns of the registry are Value, Name, OID, Parameters, DER, Comments, and Reference, where Value is an integer, and the other columns are text strings. For values in the interval [-24, 23] the registration procedure is “IETF Review” and “Expert Review”. For all other values the registration procedure is “Expert Review”. T The initial contents of the registry are:

This document registers the following entries in the “COSE Header Parameters” registry under the “CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE)” heading. The formatting and processing are the same as the corresponding x5bag, x5chain, x5t, and x5u defined in except that the certificates are CBOR encoded instead of DER encoded. Note that certificates can also be identified with a ‘kid’ header parameter by storing ‘kid’ and the associated bag or chain in a dictionary.

This document registers the following entry in the “TLS Certificate Types” registry under the “Transport Layer Security (TLS) Extensions” heading. The new certificate type can be used with addtional TLS certificate compression . EDITOR’S NOTE: The TLS registrations should be discussed and approved by the TLS WG at a later stage. When COSE WG has adopted work on CBOR certificates, it could perhaps be presented in the TLS WG. The TLS WG might e.g. want a separate draft in the TLS WG.

&RFC2119; &RFC4108; &RFC5280; &RFC8152; &RFC8174; &RFC8610; &RFC8742; &RFC8949; &I-D.ietf-cose-x509; &I-D.ietf-cbor-tags-oid; &RFC7228; &RFC7925; &RFC7932; &RFC8446; &RFC8603; &RFC8879; &I-D.ietf-lake-edhoc; &I-D.ietf-tls-dtls13; &I-D.ietf-uta-tls13-iot-profile; &I-D.ietf-tls-ctls; &I-D.ietf-emu-eap-tls13; &I-D.ietf-emu-eaptlscert; &I-D.ietf-quic-transport;

Example of profiled X.509 certificate parsed with OpenSSL.

The DER encoding of the above certificate is 314 bytes.

The CBOR encoding of the same X.509 certificate is shown below in CBOR diagnostic format.

The size of the CBOR encoding (CBOR sequence) is 138 bytes.

The corresponding natively signed CBOR certificate in CBOR diagnostic format is identical, except for cborCertificateType and signatureValue.

The size of the CBOR encoding (CBOR sequence) is 138 bytes.

Below are the issuer key pair and the subject private key belonging to the above example certificates. The private keys are encoded as in COSE . These issuer key pair can be used to sign or verify the example certificates and the subject private key allows the example certificates to be used in test vectors for other protocols like EDHOC.

EDITOR’S NOTE: To do

The www.ietf.org HTTPS server replies with a certificate message with 2 certificates. The DER encoding of the first certificate is 1209 bytes.

The CBOR encoding of the first X.509 certificate is shown below in CBOR diagnostic format.

The tools.ietf.org HTTPS server replies with a certificate message with 4 certificates. The DER encoding of the first certificate is 1647 bytes.

The CBOR encoding of the first X.509 certificate is shown below in CBOR diagnostic format.

The size of the CBOR encoding (CBOR sequence) is 1242 bytes.

The authors want to thank Henk Birkholz, Carsten Bormann, Russ Housley, Olle Johansson, Benjamin Kaduk, Ilari Liusvaara, Laurence Lundblade, Thomas Peterson, Michael Richardson, Stefan Santesson, Jim Schaad, Fraser Tweedale, and Rene Struik for reviewing and commenting on intermediate versions of the draft.