Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) P. Gutmann
Request for Comments: 8894 University of Auckland
Category: Informational September 2020
ISSN: 2070-1721
Simple Certificate Enrolment Protocol
Abstract
This document specifies the Simple Certificate Enrolment Protocol
(SCEP), a PKI protocol that leverages existing technology by using
Cryptographic Message Syntax (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 document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8894.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Conventions Used in This Document
2. SCEP Overview
2.1. SCEP Entities
2.1.1. Client
2.1.2. Certificate Authority
2.2. CA Certificate Distribution
2.3. Client Authentication
2.4. Enrolment Authorisation
2.5. Certificate Enrolment/Renewal
2.5.1. Client State Transitions
2.6. Certificate Access
2.7. CRL Access
2.8. Certificate Revocation
2.9. Mandatory-to-Implement Functionality
3. SCEP Secure Message Objects
3.1. SCEP Message Object Processing
3.2. SCEP pkiMessage
3.2.1. Signed Transaction Attributes
3.2.1.1. transactionID
3.2.1.2. messageType
3.2.1.3. pkiStatus
3.2.1.4. failInfo and failInfoText
3.2.1.5. senderNonce and recipientNonce
3.2.2. SCEP pkcsPKIEnvelope
3.3. SCEP pkiMessage types
3.3.1. PKCSReq/RenewalReq
3.3.2. CertRep
3.3.2.1. CertRep SUCCESS
3.3.2.2. CertRep FAILURE
3.3.2.3. CertRep PENDING
3.3.3. CertPoll (GetCertInitial)
3.3.4. GetCert and GetCRL
3.4. Degenerate certificates-only CMS SignedData
3.5. CA Capabilities
3.5.1. GetCACaps HTTP Message Format
3.5.2. CA Capabilities Response Format
4. SCEP Transactions
4.1. HTTP POST and GET Message Formats
4.2. Get CA Certificate
4.2.1. Get CA Certificate Response Message Format
4.2.1.1. CA Certificate Response Message Format
4.2.1.2. CA Certificate Chain Response Message Format
4.3. Certificate Enrolment/Renewal
4.3.1. Certificate Enrolment/Renewal Response Message
4.4. Poll for Client Initial Certificate
4.4.1. Polling Response Message Format
4.5. Certificate Access
4.5.1. Certificate Access Response Message Format
4.6. CRL Access
4.6.1. CRL Access Response Message Format
4.7. Get Next Certificate Authority Certificate
4.7.1. Get Next CA Response Message Format
5. SCEP Transaction Examples
5.1. Successful Transactions
5.2. Transactions with Errors
6. IANA Considerations
6.1. Registration of the application/x-x509-ca-cert Media Type
6.2. Registration of the application/x-x509-ca-ra-cert Media
Type
6.3. Registration of the application/x-x509-next-ca-cert Media
Type
6.4. Registration of the application/x-pki-message Media Type
7. Security Considerations
7.1. General Security
7.2. Use of the CA Private Key
7.3. ChallengePassword Shared Secret Value
7.4. Lack of Certificate Issue Confirmation
7.5. GetCACaps Issues
7.6. Lack of PoP in Renewal Requests
7.7. Traffic Monitoring
7.8. Unnecessary Cryptography
7.9. Use of SHA-1
7.10. Use of HTTP
8. References
8.1. Normative References
8.2. Informative References
Appendix A. Background Notes
Acknowledgements
Author's Address
1. Introduction
X.509 certificates serve as the basis for several standardised
security protocols such as TLS [RFC8446], S/MIME [RFC8551], and IKE/
IPsec [RFC7296]. When an X.509 certificate is issued, there
typically is a need for a certificate management protocol to enable a
PKI client to request or renew a certificate from a Certificate
Authority (CA). This specification defines a protocol, the Simple
Certificate Enrolment Protocol (SCEP), for certificate management and
certificate and CRL queries.
The SCEP protocol supports the following general operations:
* CA public key distribution
* Certificate enrolment and issue
* Certificate renewal
* Certificate query
* CRL query
SCEP makes extensive use of CMS [RFC5652] and PKCS #10 [RFC2986].
1.1. Conventions Used in This Document
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 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
This document uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation as
specified in [RFC5234] for defining formal syntax of commands. Non-
terminals not defined in [RFC5234] are defined in Section 4.1.
2. SCEP Overview
This section provides an 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's fully qualified domain name or IP address.
2. Any identification and/or authorisation information required by
the CA before a certificate will be issued, as described in
Section 3.3.1.
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 policies and apply them to certificate requests, and it may
reject a request for any reason.
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 the key is to be used for
en/decryption) alongside the usual CA usages of keyCertSign and/or
cRLSign.
2.2. CA Certificate Distribution
If the CA certificate(s) have not previously been acquired by the
client through some other means, the client MUST retrieve 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 CA certificate request and
response data is instead transferred in the clear.
If an intermediate CA is in use, a certificates-only CMS SignedData
message with a certificate chain consisting of all CA certificates is
returned. Otherwise, the CA certificate itself 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 [RFC4387]. 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 it
in some manner unless this is deemed unnecessary, for example,
because the device is being provisioned inside a trusted environment.
For example, the client could compare the certificate's fingerprint
with locally configured, out-of-band distributed, identifying
information, or by some equivalent means such as a direct comparison
with a locally stored copy of the certificate.
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. Since intermediate CA certificates are rolled over more
frequently than long-lived top-level CA certificates, clients MUST
verify intermediate-level CA certificates before use during protocol
exchanges in case the intermediate CA certificate has expired or
otherwise been invalidated.
When a CA certificate expires, certificates that have been signed by
it may no longer be regarded as valid. CA key rollover provides a
mechanism by which the CA can distribute a new CA certificate that
will be valid in the future once the current certificate has expired.
This is done via the GetNextCACert message (Section 4.7).
2.3. 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. 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 available).
The self-signed certificate SHOULD use the same subject name and
key as in the PKCS #10 request. In this case, the messageType is
PKCSReq (see Section 3.2.1.2).
2. If the client already has a certificate issued by the SCEP CA,
and the CA supports renewal (see Section 2.5), that certificate
SHOULD be used. In this case, the messageType is RenewalReq (see
Section 3.2.1.2).
3. Alternatively, if the client has no certificate issued by the
SCEP CA but has credentials from an alternate CA, then the
certificate issued by the alternate CA MAY be used in a renewal
request as described above. The SCEP CA's policy will determine
whether the request can be accepted or not.
Note that although the above text describes several different types
of operations, for historical reasons, 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 ones are optional (see Section 2.9).
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, and it MUST be included in the signedData certificates
field (possibly as part of a full certificate chain). If the key
being certified allows encryption, then the CA's CertResp will use
the same certificate's public key when encrypting the response.
Note that, in the case of renewal operations, this means that the
request will be signed and authenticated with the key in the
previously issued certificate rather than the key in the PKCS #10
request, and the response may similarly be returned encrypted with
the key in the previously issued certificate. This has security
implications; see Section 7.6.
2.4. Enrolment Authorisation
PKCS #10 [RFC2986] specifies a PKCS #9 [RFC2985] challengePassword
attribute to be sent as part of the enrolment request. When
utilising the challengePassword, the CA distributes a shared secret
to the client, which will be used to authenticate the request from
the client. It is RECOMMENDED that the challengePassword be a one-
time authenticator value to limit the ability of an attacker who can
capture the authenticator from the client or CA and reuse it to
request further certificates.
Inclusion of the challengePassword by the SCEP client is RECOMMENDED;
however, its omission allows for unauthenticated authorisation of
enrolment requests (which may, however, require manual approval of
each certificate issue if other security measures to control issue
aren't in place; see below). Inclusion is OPTIONAL for renewal
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 as per Section 2.5
SHOULD omit the challengePassword but MAY send the originally
distributed shared secret in the challengePassword attribute. The
SCEP CA MAY authenticate the request using the challengePassword in
addition to the previously issued certificate that signs 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 authorisation in manual mode, the client's request is
placed in the PENDING state until the CA operator authorises or
rejects it. Manual authorisation 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 unauthorised requests or mark them for manual
authorisation according to CA policy.
2.5. Certificate Enrolment/Renewal
A client starts an enrolment transaction (Section 3.3.1) by creating
a certificate request using PKCS #10 and sends the request to the CA
enveloped using CMS (Section 3).
If the CA supports certificate renewal and the CA policy permits,
then a new certificate with new validity dates can be issued, even
though the old one is still valid. To renew an existing certificate,
the client uses the RenewalReq 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). The frequency of the polling operation is a CA/client
configuration issue and may range from seconds or minutes when the
issue process is automatic but not instantaneous, through to hours or
days if the certificate-issue operation requires manual approval.
If polling mode is being used, then the client will send a single
PKCSReq/RenewalReq 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.
2.5.1. 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 |
| |
+-----------------------+
CertRep(FAILURE) or
Max-time/max-polls exceeded
Figure 1: State Transition Diagram
The certificate-issue process starts at state CERT-NONEXISTENT.
Sending a PKCSReq/RenewalReq message changes the state to CERT-REQ-
PENDING.
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, a timeout occurs, or the maximum number of polls has been
exceeded.
Figure 2 shows a successful transaction in automatic mode
CLIENT CA SERVER
PKCSReq: PKI cert. enrolment message
--------------------------------> CertRep: pkiStatus = SUCCESS
Certificate attached
<------------------------------
Receive issued certificate.
Figure 2: Automatic Mode
Figure 3 shows 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.
Figure 3: Manual Mode
2.6. 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 instead via HTTP
certificate-store access [RFC4387] or Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP).
To retrieve 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 retrieve a certificate consists of
one GetCert (Section 3.3.4) message and one CertRep (Section 3.3.2)
message, as shown in Figure 4.
CLIENT CA SERVER
GetCert: PKI certificate query message
-------------------------------> CertRep: pkiStatus = SUCCESS
Certificate attached
<-----------------------------
Receive the certificate.
Figure 4: Retrieving a Certificate
2.7. CRL Access
SCEP clients MAY request a CRL via one of three methods:
1. If the CA supports the CRL Distribution Points (CRLDPs) extension
[RFC5280] in issued certificates, then the CRL MAY be retrieved
via the mechanism specified in the CRLDP.
2. If the CA supports HTTP certificate-store access [RFC4387], then
the CRL MAY be retrieved via the AuthorityInfoAcces [RFC5280]
location specified in the certificate.
3. Only if the CA does not support CRLDPs 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 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
(no certificates) in a degenerate certificates-only CMS SignedData
message (Section 3.4), as shown in Figure 5.
CLIENT CA SERVER
GetCRL: PKI CRL query message
---------------------------------->
CertRep: CRL attached
<-----------------------------
Receive the CRL
Figure 5: Retrieving a CRL
2.8. 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.
2.9. 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 AES128-CBC [AES] and SHA-256 [SHA2] 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-CBC and
SHA-1 algorithms to secure pkiMessages (Section 3.2).
Implementations MUST NOT support the obsolete and/or insecure single
DES and MD5 algorithms used in earlier versions of this
specification, since the unsecured nature of GetCACaps means that an
in-path attacker can trivially roll back the encryption used to these
insecure algorithms; see Section 7.5.
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 using ASN.1-like
pseudocode in Figure 6. 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.
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 6: 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
SignedData. If there is no messageData to be transmitted, the entire
pkcsPKIEnvelope MUST be omitted.
Samples of SCEP messages are available through the JSCEP project
[JSCEP] in the src/samples directory.
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, DSA or 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, which is then
sent to the recipient.
Note that some early implementations of this specification dealt with
keys that were not encryption capable 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 in cleartext 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 SignedData content type. The
following restrictions apply:
* The eContentType in encapsulatedContentInfo MUST be data ({pkcs-7
1}).
* 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.
* 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:
* A transactionID attribute (see Section 3.2.1.1).
* A messageType attribute (see Section 3.2.1.2).
* A fresh senderNonce attribute (see Section 3.2.1.5). However,
note the comment about senderNonces and polling in Section 3.3.2
* Any attributes required by CMS.
If the message is a CertRep, it MUST also include the following
authenticatedAttributes:
* A pkiStatus attribute (see Section 3.2.1.3).
* failInfo and optional failInfoText attributes (see
Section 3.2.1.4) if pkiStatus = FAILURE.
* 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 carried in the SignerInfo for this SignedData.
+================+=================+==============================+
| 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 |
+----------------+-----------------+------------------------------+
| failInfoText | UTF8String | Descriptive text for the |
| | | failInfo value |
+----------------+-----------------+------------------------------+
| senderNonce | OCTET STRING | Random nonce as a 16-byte |
| | | binary data string |
+----------------+-----------------+------------------------------+
| recipientNonce | OCTET STRING | Random nonce as a 16-byte |
| | | binary data string |
+----------------+-----------------+------------------------------+
Table 1: SCEP Attributes
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)} |
+----------------------+-------------------------------+
| id-scep | OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= {id- |
| | pkix 24} |
+----------------------+-------------------------------+
| id-scep-failInfoText | OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= {id- |
| | scep 1} |
+----------------------+-------------------------------+
Table 2: SCEP Attribute OIDs
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
provided by the client when starting a transaction. The client MUST
use 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.
Note that the transactionID must be unique, but not necessarily
randomly generated. For example, it may be a value assigned by the
CA to allow the client to be identified by their transactionID, using
a value such as the client device's Extended Unique Identifier (EUI),
Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) ID, or a similar unique identifier. This
can be useful when the client doesn't have a preassigned
Distinguished Name through which the CA can identify their request --
for example, when enrolling Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
(SCADA) devices.
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:
+=======+============+============================================+
| Value | Name | Description |
+=======+============+============================================+
| 0 | Reserved | |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------------------+
| 3 | CertRep | Response to certificate or CRL request. |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------------------+
| 17 | RenewalReq | PKCS #10 certificate request authenticated |
| | | with an existing certificate. |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------------------+
| 19 | PKCSReq | PKCS #10 certificate request authenticated |
| | | with a shared secret. |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------------------+
| 20 | CertPoll | Certificate polling in manual enrolment. |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------------------+
| 21 | GetCert | Retrieve a certificate. |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------------------+
| 22 | GetCRL | Retrieve a CRL. |
+-------+------------+--------------------------------------------+
Table 3: SCEP Message Types
Message types not defined above MUST be treated as errors unless
their use has been negotiated through GetCACaps (Section 3.5.1).
3.2.1.3. pkiStatus
All response messages MUST include transaction status information,
which is defined as a pkiStatus attribute:
+=======+=========+========================================+
| Value | Name | Description |
+=======+=========+========================================+
| 0 | SUCCESS | Request granted. |
+-------+---------+----------------------------------------+
| 2 | FAILURE | Request rejected. In this case, the |
| | | failInfo attribute, as defined in |
| | | Section 3.2.1.4, MUST also be present. |
+-------+---------+----------------------------------------+
| 3 | PENDING | Request pending for manual approval. |
+-------+---------+----------------------------------------+
Table 4: pkiStatus Attributes
PKI status values not defined above MUST be treated as errors unless
their use has been negotiated through GetCACaps (Section 3.5.1).
3.2.1.4. failInfo and failInfoText
The failInfo attribute MUST contain one of the following failure
reasons:
+=======+=================+==================================+
| Value | Name | Description |
+=======+=================+==================================+
| 0 | badAlg | Unrecognised or unsupported |
| | | algorithm. |
+-------+-----------------+----------------------------------+
| 1 | badMessageCheck | Integrity check (meaning |
| | | signature verification of the |
| | | CMS message) failed. |
+-------+-----------------+----------------------------------+
| 2 | badRequest | Transaction not permitted or |
| | | supported. |
+-------+-----------------+----------------------------------+
| 3 | badTime | The signingTime attribute from |
| | | the CMS authenticatedAttributes |
| | | was not sufficiently close to |
| | | the system time. This condition |
| | | may occur if the CA is concerned |
| | | about replays of old messages. |
+-------+-----------------+----------------------------------+
| 4 | badCertId | No certificate could be |
| | | identified matching the provided |
| | | criteria. |
+-------+-----------------+----------------------------------+
Table 5: failInfo Attributes
Failure reasons not defined above MUST be treated as errors unless
their use has been negotiated through GetCACaps (Section 3.5.1).
The failInfoText is a free-form UTF-8 text string that provides
further information in the case of pkiStatus = FAILURE. In
particular, it may be used to provide details on why a certificate
request was not granted that go beyond what's provided by the near-
universal failInfo = badRequest status. Since this is a free-form
text string intended for interpretation by humans, implementations
SHOULD NOT assume that it has any type of machine-processable
content.
3.2.1.5. senderNonce and recipientNonce
The senderNonce and recipientNonce attributes are each 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, then 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:
* contentType in encryptedContentInfo MUST be data ({pkcs-7 1}).
* 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
The messageData for this type consists of a PKCS #10 Certificate
Request. The certificate request MUST contain at least the following
items:
* The subject Distinguished Name.
* The subject public key.
* For a PKCSReq, if authorisation based on a shared secret is being
used, a challengePassword attribute.
In addition, the message must contain the authenticatedAttributes
specified in Section 3.2.1.
3.3.2. CertRep
The messageData for this type consists of a degenerate certificates-
only CMS SignedData 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 Sections
3.3.2.1 and 4. In addition, the message must contain the
authenticatedAttributes specified in Section 3.2.1.
Earlier draft 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 either carry this nonce over to subsequent polling
messages or verify its presence. More recent 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
SignedData message (Section 3.4). The content of this degenerate
certificates-only SignedData message depends on what the original
request was, as outlined in Table 6.
+==============+===============================================+
| Request-type | Reply-contents |
+==============+===============================================+
| PKCSReq | The reply MUST contain at least the issued |
| | certificate in the certificates field of the |
| | SignedData. The reply MAY contain additional |
| | certificates, but the issued certificate MUST |
| | be the leaf certificate. |
+--------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| RenewalReq | Same as PKCSReq |
+--------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| CertPoll | Same as PKCSReq |
+--------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| GetCert | The reply MUST contain at least the requested |
| | certificate in the certificates field of the |
| | SignedData. 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 SignedData. |
+--------------+-----------------------------------------------+
Table 6: CertRep Response Types
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 reply MAY also contain a
failInfoText attribute providing extended details on why the
operation failed, typically to expand on the catchall failInfo =
badRequest status. 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 draft versions of
this specification. The messageData for this type consists of an
IssuerAndSubject:
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 going through the
cryptographically expensive process of unwrapping and processing 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, the message must contain the authenticatedAttributes
specified in Section 3.2.1.
3.3.4. GetCert and GetCRL
The messageData for these types consist of an IssuerAndSerialNumber,
as defined in CMS, that uniquely identifies the certificate being
requested, either the certificate itself for GetCert or its
revocation status via a CRL for GetCRL. In addition, the message
must contain the authenticatedAttributes specified in Section 3.2.1.
These message types, while included here for completeness, apply
unnecessary cryptography and messaging overhead to the simple task of
transferring a certificate or CRL (see Section 7.8). Implementations
SHOULD prefer HTTP certificate-store access [RFC4387] or LDAP over
the use of these messages.
3.4. Degenerate certificates-only CMS SignedData
CMS includes a degenerate case of the SignedData 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 SignedData
MUST be omitted. When carrying certificates, the certificates are
included in the certificates field of the SignedData. When carrying
a CRL, the CRL is included in the crls field of the SignedData.
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 as
described in Section 4.1:
"GET" SP SCEPPATH "?operation=GetCACaps" SP HTTP-version CRLF
3.5.2. CA Capabilities Response Format
The response for a GetCACaps message is a list of CA capabilities, in
plain text and in any order, separated by <CR><LF> or <LF>
characters. This specification defines the following keywords
(quotation marks are not sent):
+==================+========================================+
| Keyword | Description |
+==================+========================================+
| AES | CA supports the AES128-CBC encryption |
| | algorithm. |
+------------------+----------------------------------------+
| DES3 | CA supports the triple DES-CBC |
| | 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 2.9. |
+------------------+----------------------------------------+
Table 7: GetCACaps Response Keywords
Table 7 lists all of the keywords that are defined in this
specification. A CA MAY provide additional keywords advertising
further capabilities and functionality. A client MUST be able to
accept and ignore any unknown keywords that might be sent by a CA.
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 text delimited by <CR><LF> as well as
the text delimited by <LF> specified in an earlier draft version of
this specification.
The client SHOULD use SHA-256 in preference to SHA-1 hashing and
AES128-CBC in preference to triple DES-CBC if they are supported by
the CA. Although the CMS format allows any form of AES and SHA-2 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 2.9) whose presence as a whole is signalled by the
"SCEPStandard" capability. However, it may be useful to announce
them in order to deal with older implementations that would otherwise
default to obsolete, insecure algorithms and mechanisms.
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 capabilities listed 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, and it will close the
connection if sent a GetCACaps message. This means that the
equivalent of GetCACaps must be performed through server
fingerprinting, which can be done using the ID string "Microsoft-
IIS". Newer versions of the same server, if sent a SCEP request
using AES and SHA-2, will respond with an invalid response that can't
be decrypted, requiring the use of 3DES and SHA-1 in order to obtain
a response that can be processed, even if AES and/or SHA-2 are
allegedly supported. In addition, the server will generate CA
certificates that only have one, but not both, of the keyEncipherment
and digitalSignature keyUsage flags set, requiring that the client
ignore the keyUsage flags in order to use the certificates for SCEP.
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 HTTP/1.1
might return:
AES
GetNextCACert
POSTPKIOperation
SCEPStandard
SHA-256
This means that the CA supports modern crypto algorithms, and the
GetNextCACert message allows PKIOperation messages (PKCSReq/
RenewalReq, GetCert, CertPoll, ...) to be sent using HTTP POST and is
compliant with the final version of the SCEP standard.
4. SCEP Transactions
This section describes the SCEP Transactions and their HTTP [RFC7230]
transport mechanism.
Note that SCEP doesn't follow best current practices on usage of
HTTP. In particular, it recommends ignoring some media types and
hard-codes specific URI paths. Guidance on the appropriate
application of HTTP in these circumstances may be found in [HTTP].
4.1. HTTP POST and GET Message Formats
SCEP uses the HTTP POST and GET methods [RFC7230] to exchange
information with the CA. The following defines the ABNF syntax of
HTTP POST and GET methods sent from a client to a CA:
POSTREQUEST = "POST" SP SCEPPATH "?operation=" OPERATION
SP HTTP-version CRLF
GETREQUEST = "GET" SP SCEPPATH "?operation=" OPERATION
"&message=" MESSAGE SP HTTP-version CRLF
where:
* SCEPPATH is the HTTP URL path for accessing the CA. Clients
SHOULD set SCEPPATH to the fixed string "/cgi-bin/pkiclient.exe"
unless directed to do otherwise by the CA.
* OPERATION depends on the SCEP transaction and is defined in the
following sections.
* HTTP-version is the HTTP version string, which is "HTTP/1.1" for
[RFC7230].
* SP and CRLF are space and carriage return/linefeed, as defined in
[RFC5234].
The CA will typically ignore SCEPPATH, since it's unlikely to be
issuing certificates via a web server. Clients SHOULD set SCEPPATH
to the fixed string "/cgi-bin/pkiclient.exe" unless directed to do
otherwise by the CA. The CA SHOULD ignore the SCEPPATH unless its
precise format is critical to the CA's operation.
Early SCEP drafts performed all communications via GET messages,
including non-idempotent ones that should have been sent via POST
messages; see [HTTP] for details. 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 POST, the CMS-
encoded SCEP messages MUST 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 "SCEPStandard" or
"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
("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 to update the
implementation to use HTTP POST instead. In addition, when using
GET, it's recommended to test the implementation from as many
different network 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 Section 4 of [RFC4648] 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
[RFC3986] 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 SignedData 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
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
A PKCSReq/RenewalReq (Section 3.3.1) message is used to perform a
certificate enrolment or renewal 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 is sent with a Content-Type of "application/x-pki-
message" and might look as follows:
POST /cgi-bin/pkiclient.exe?operation=PKIOperation HTTP/1.1
Content-Length: <length of data>
Content-Type: application/x-pki-message
<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 Response Message
If the request is granted, a CertRep SUCCESS message
(Section 3.3.2.1) is returned. If the request is rejected, a CertRep
FAILURE message (Section 3.3.2.2) is returned. If the CA is
configured to manually authenticate the client, a CertRep PENDING
message (Section 3.3.2.3) MAY be returned. The CA MAY return a
PENDING for other reasons.
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
When 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. A
CA receiving a CertPoll for which it does not have a matching
PKCSReq/RenewalReq MUST reject 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) 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, the client SHOULD 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".
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 2.7. 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 SignedData (Section 3.4) that contains only the
most recent CRL in the crls field of the SignedData.
4.7. Get Next Certificate Authority Certificate
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.
4.7.1. Get Next CA Response Message Format
The response consists of a SignedData CMS message, signed by the
current CA signing key. Clients MUST validate the signature on the
message before trusting 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>
The content of the SignedData message is a degenerate certificates-
only SignedData message (Section 3.4) containing the new CA
certificate(s) to be used when the current CA certificate expires.
5. SCEP Transaction Examples
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. For ease of reading, small integer values have
been used; in practice, full transaction IDs would be used. 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
PKCSReq (1) ----------> CA issues certificate
<---------- CertRep (1) SUCCESS
Client installs certificate
Figure 7: Successful Enrolment Case: Automatic Processing
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
Figure 8: Successful Enrolment Case: Manual Authentication Required
GetNextCACert ---------->
<---------- New CA certificate
PKCSReq* ----------> CA issues certificate with
new key
<---------- CertRep SUCCESS
Client stores certificate
for installation when
existing certificate expires.
Figure 9: CA Certificate Rollover Case
* 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, 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 the 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 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 7.4 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.
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...
Figure 10: Resync Case 1
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
Figure 11: Resync Case 2
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
Distinguished Name (DN).
<---------- CertRep (7) FAILURE
Admin revokes certificate
PKCSReq (8) ----------> CA issues new certificate
<---------- CertRep (8) SUCCESS
Client installs certificate
Figure 12: Resync Case 3
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 (9) ----------> Cert request goes into queue
<---------- CertRep (9) PENDING
CertPoll (9) ----------> Still pending
<---------- CertRep (9) PENDING
CertPoll (9) ----------> CA issues certificate
X-------- CertRep(9) SIGNED CERT
(Network outage)
(Client reconnects)
CertPoll (9) ----------> Certificate already issued
<---------- CertRep (9) SUCCESS
Client installs certificate
Figure 13: Resync Case 4
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 resume is the easiest to
implement, since it's stateless and is identical for both polled and
nonpolled transactions, whereas a CertPoll resume treats the two
differently. (A nonpolled transaction is resumed with a PKCSReq/
RenewalReq; a polled transaction is resumed with a CertPoll.) For
this reason, error recovery SHOULD be handled via a new PKCSReq
rather than a resumed CertPoll.
6. IANA Considerations
An object identifier for an arc to assign SCEP Attribute Identifiers
has been assigned in the "SMI Security for PKIX" registry
(1.3.6.1.5.5.7). This object identifer, Simple Certificate
Enrollment Protocol Attributes, is denoted as id-scep:
id-scep OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-pkix 24 }
IANA created the "SMI Security for SCEP Attribute Identifiers"
registry (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.24) with the following entries with
references to this document:
id-scep-failInfoText OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-scep 1 }
Entries in the registry are assigned according to the "Specification
Required" policy defined in [RFC8126].
Section 3.2.1.2 describes an "SCEP Message Type" registry, and
Section 3.5 describes an "SCEP CA Capabilities" registry; these
registries are maintained by IANA and define a number of such code-
point identifiers. Entries in the registry are assigned according to
the "Specification Required" policy defined in [RFC8126].
The "SCEP Message Types" registry has "Value", "Name", "Description",
and "Reference" columns. The "Value" entry is a small positive
integer; value "0" is reserved.
The "SCEP CA Capabilities" registry has "Keyword", "Description", and
"Reference" columns. Although implementations SHOULD use the "SCEP
CA Capabilities" registry, SCEP is often employed in situations where
this isn't possible. In this case, private-use CA capabilities may
be specified using a unique prefix such as an organisation identifier
or domain name under the control of the entity that defines the
capability. For example, the prefix would be "Example.com-", and the
complete capability would be "Example.com-CapabilityName".
IANA has registered four media types as defined in this document:
* application/x-x509-ca-cert
* application/x-x509-ca-ra-cert
* application/x-x509-next-ca-cert
* application/x-pki-message
Note that these are grandfathered media types registered as per
Appendix A of [RFC6838]. Templates for registrations are specified
below.
6.1. Registration of the application/x-x509-ca-cert Media Type
Type name: application
Subtype name: x-x509-ca-cert
Required parameters: none
Optional parameters: none
Encoding considerations: binary
Security considerations: This media type contains a certificate; see
the Security Considerations section of [RFC5280]. There is no
executable content.
Interoperability considerations: This is a grandfathered
registration of an alias to application/pkix-cert (basically a
single DER-encoded Certification Authority certificate), which is
only used in SCEP.
Published specification: RFC 8894
Applications that use this media type: SCEP uses this media type
when returning a CA certificate.
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Additional information:
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
Magic number(s): none
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: See the
Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894.
Intended usage: LIMITED USE
Restrictions on usage: SCEP protocol
Author: See the Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894
Change controller: IETF
Provisional registration? No
6.2. Registration of the application/x-x509-ca-ra-cert Media Type
Type name: application
Subtype name: x-x509-ca-ra-cert
Required parameters: none
Optional parameters: none
Encoding considerations: binary
Security considerations: This media type consists of a degenerate
certificates-only CMS SignedData message (Section 3.4) containing
the certificates, with the intermediate CA certificate(s) as the
leaf certificate(s). There is no executable content.
Interoperability considerations: This is a grandfathered
registration that is only used in SCEP.
Published specification: RFC 8894
Applications that use this media type: SCEP uses this media type
when returning CA Certificate Chain Response.
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Additional information:
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
Magic number(s): none
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: See the
Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894.
Intended usage: LIMITED USE
Restrictions on usage: SCEP protocol
Author: See the Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894.
Change controller: IETF
Provisional registration? no
6.3. Registration of the application/x-x509-next-ca-cert Media Type
Type name: application
Subtype name: x-x509-next-ca-cert
Required parameters: none
Optional parameters: none
Encoding considerations: binary
Security considerations: This media type consists of a SignedData
CMS message, signed by the current CA signing key. There is no
executable content.
Interoperability considerations: This is a grandfathered
registration that is only used in SCEP.
Published specification: RFC 8894
Applications that use this media type: SCEP uses this media type
when returning a Get Next CA response.
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Additional information:
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
Magic number(s): none
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: See the
Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894.
Intended usage: LIMITED USE
Restrictions on usage: SCEP protocol
Author: See the Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894.
Change controller: IETF
Provisional registration? no
6.4. Registration of the application/x-pki-message Media Type
Type name: application
Subtype name: x-pki-message
Required parameters: none
Optional parameters: none
Encoding considerations: binary
Security considerations: This media type consists of a degenerate
certificates-only CMS SignedData message. There is no executable
content.
Interoperability considerations: This is a grandfathered
registration that is only used in SCEP.
Published specification: RFC 8894
Applications that use this media type: SCEP uses this media type
when returning a Certificate Enrolment/Renewal Response.
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A
Additional information:
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
Magic number(s): none
File extension(s): N/A
Macintosh file type code(s): N/A
Person and email address to contact for further information: See the
Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894.
Intended usage: LIMITED USE
Restrictions on usage: SCEP protocol
Author: See the Authors' Addresses section of RFC 8894.
Change controller: IETF
Provisional registration? no
7. 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 preshared secret authentication.
7.1. 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.
7.2. Use of the CA Private Key
A CA private key is generally meant for, and 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
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.
7.3. ChallengePassword Shared Secret Value
The security measures that should be applied to the challengePassword
shared secret depend on the manner in which SCEP is employed. In the
simplest case, with SCEP used to provision devices with certificates
in the manufacturing facility, the physical security of the facility
may be enough to protect the certificate issue process with no
additional measures explicitly required. In general, though, the
security of the issue process depends on the security employed around
the use of the challengePassword shared secret. While it's not
possible to enumerate every situation in which SCEP may be utilised,
the following security measures should be considered.
* The challengePassword, despite its name, shouldn't be a
conventional password but a high-entropy shared-secret
authentication string. Using the base64 encoding of a keying
value generated or exchanged as part of standard device
authentication protocols like the Extensible Authentication
Protocol (EAP) or DNP3 Secure Authentication (DNP3-SA) makes for a
good challengePassword. The use of high-entropy shared secrets is
particularly important when the PasswordRecipientInfo option is
used to encrypt SCEP messages; see Section 3.1.
* If feasible, the challengePassword should be a one-time value used
to authenticate the issue of a single certificate (subsequent
certificate requests will be authenticated by being signed with
the initial certificate). If the challengePassword is single use,
then the arrival of subsequent requests using the same
challengePassword can then be used to indicate a security breach.
* The lifetime of a challengePassword can be limited, so that it can
be used during initial device provisioning but will have expired
at a later date if an attacker manages to compromise the
challengePassword value -- for example, by compromising the device
that it's stored in.
* The CA should take appropriate measures to protect the
challengePassword. Examples of possible measures include:
physical security measures; storing it as a salted iterated hash
or equivalent memory-hard function; storing it as a keyed MAC
value if it's not being used for encryption; and storing it in
encrypted form if it is being used for encryption.
7.4. 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 a renewal operation;
see Section 7.6.
7.5. 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. In particular, if the server
were to support MD5 and single DES, then an in-path attacker could
trivially roll back the encryption to use these insecure algorithms.
By taking advantage of the presence of large amounts of static known
plaintext in the SCEP messages, as of 2017, a DES rainbow table
attack can recover most encryption keys in under a minute, and MD5
chosen-prefix collisions can be calculated for a few tens of cents of
computing time using tools like HashClash. It is for this reason
that this specification makes single DES and MD5 a MUST NOT feature.
Note that all known servers support at least triple DES and SHA-1
(regardless of whether "DES3" and "SHA-1" are indicated in
GetCACaps), so there should never be a reason to fall all the way
back to single DES and MD5.
One simple countermeasure to a GetCACaps downgrade attack is for
clients that are operating in an environment where on-path attacks
are possible and that expect the "SCEPStandard" capability to be
indicated by the CA but don't see it in the GetCACaps response to
treat its absence as a security issue, and either discontinue the
exchange or continue as if "SCEPStandard" had been returned. This
requires a certain trade-off between compatibility with old servers
and security against active attacks.
7.6. Lack of PoP in Renewal Requests
Renewal 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 recertify 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 [RFC2634].
Avoiding these types of attacks requires situation-specific measures.
For example, CMS/SMIME implementations may use the ESSCertID
attribute from S/MIME ESS [RFC2634] or its successor, S/MIME ESSv2
[RFC5035], to unambiguously identify the signing certificate.
However, since other mechanisms and protocols that the certificates
will be used with typically don't defend against this problem, it's
unclear whether this is an actual issue with SCEP.
7.7. Traffic Monitoring
SCEP messages are signed with certificates that may contain
identifying information. If these are sent over the public Internet
and real identity information (rather than placeholder values or
arbitrary device IDs) is included in the signing certificate data, an
attacker may be able to monitor the identities of the entities
submitting the certificate requests. If this is an issue, then
[RFC7258] should be consulted for guidance.
7.8. 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 [RFC4387] and LDAP are recommended for this reason.
7.9. Use of SHA-1
The majority of the large number of devices that use SCEP today
default to SHA-1, with many supporting only that hash algorithm with
no ability to upgrade to a newer one. SHA-1 is no longer regarded as
secure in all situations, but as used in SCEP, it's still safe.
There are three reasons for this. The first is that attacking SCEP
would require creating a fully general SHA-1 collision in close to
real time alongside breaking AES (more specifically, it would require
creating a fully general SHA-1 collision for the PKCS #10 request,
breaking the AES encryption around the PKCS #10 request, and then
creating a second SHA-1 collision for the signature on the encrypted
data), which won't be feasible for a long time.
The second reason is that the signature over the message -- in other
words, the SHA-1 hash that isn't protected by encryption -- doesn't
serve any critical cryptographic purpose: The PKCS #10 data itself is
authenticated through its own signature, protected by encryption, and
the overall request is authorised by the (encrypted) shared secret.
The sole exception to this will be the small number of
implementations that support the Renewal operation, which may be
authorised purely through a signature, but presumably any
implementation recent enough to support Renewal also supports SHA-2.
Any legacy implementation that supports the historic core SCEP
protocol would not be affected.
The third reason is that SCEP uses the same key for encryption and
signing, so that even if an attacker were able to capture an outgoing
renewal request that didn't include a shared secret (in other words,
one that was only authorised through a signature), break the AES
encryption, forge the SHA-1 hash in real time, and forward the forged
request to the CA, they couldn't decrypt the returned certificate,
which is protected with the same key that was used to generate the
signature. While Section 7.8 points out that SCEP uses unnecessary
cryptography in places, the additional level of security provided by
the extra crypto makes it immune to any issues with SHA-1.
This doesn't mean that SCEP implementations should continue to use
SHA-1 in perpetuity, merely that there's no need for a panicked
switch to SHA-2.
7.10. Use of HTTP
SCEP is an encrypted, authenticated certificate enrollment protocol
that uses HTTP as a simple transport mechanism. Since SCEP messages
are already cryptographically secured, it does not require transport
layer security. Where HTTPS is elected, a performance hit may result
from the TLS overhead, operational problems may result due to the
more complex configuration, and potential security vulnerability may
result due to the addition of an entire TLS protocol stack alongside
the basic SCEP protocol.
In particular, experience has shown that the issue of configuring
certificates, CAs, and trust for both TLS and SCEP often leads to
interoperability problems because different certificates and trust
models are used in each. Use of HTTPS to authenticate the server
does not enable omission of the ChallengePassword or similar
authenticator in the SCEP message on the assumption that using HTTPS
instead of HTTP will somehow make this insecure usage secure again.
HTTPS is not soy sauce for security and is unnecessary for SCEP,
which uses cryptographically secured messages and does not require
transport layer security.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[AES] Technology, U. N. I. O. S. A., "The Advanced Encryption
Standard (AES)", FIPS 197, DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.197,
November 2001, <https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.FIPS.197>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC2985] Nystrom, M. and B. Kaliski, "PKCS #9: Selected Object
Classes and Attribute Types Version 2.0", RFC 2985,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2985, November 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2985>.
[RFC2986] Nystrom, M. and B. Kaliski, "PKCS #10: Certification
Request Syntax Specification Version 1.7", RFC 2986,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2986, November 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2986>.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986>.
[RFC4648] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
Encodings", RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC4648, October 2006,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4648>.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.
[RFC5280] 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, DOI 10.17487/RFC5280, May 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5280>.
[RFC5652] Housley, R., "Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)", STD 70,
RFC 5652, DOI 10.17487/RFC5652, September 2009,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5652>.
[RFC6838] Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13,
RFC 6838, DOI 10.17487/RFC6838, January 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6838>.
[RFC7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC7230, June 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7230>.
[RFC7258] Farrell, S. and H. Tschofenig, "Pervasive Monitoring Is an
Attack", BCP 188, RFC 7258, DOI 10.17487/RFC7258, May
2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7258>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[SHA2] Technology, U. N. I. O. S. A., "Secure Hash Standard
(SHS)", FIPS 180-3, October 2008.
8.2. Informative References
[HTTP] Nottingham, M., "Building Protocols with HTTP", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-httpbis-bcp56bis-09,
November 1, 2019, <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-
httpbis-bcp56bis-09>.
[JSCEP] "A Java implementation of the Simple Certificate Enrolment
Protocol", commit 7410332, January 2020,
<https://github.com/jscep/jscep>.
[RFC2634] Hoffman, P., Ed., "Enhanced Security Services for S/MIME",
RFC 2634, DOI 10.17487/RFC2634, June 1999,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2634>.
[RFC4387] Gutmann, P., Ed., "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Operational Protocols: Certificate Store
Access via HTTP", RFC 4387, DOI 10.17487/RFC4387, February
2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4387>.
[RFC5035] Schaad, J., "Enhanced Security Services (ESS) Update:
Adding CertID Algorithm Agility", RFC 5035,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5035, August 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5035>.
[RFC7296] Kaufman, C., Hoffman, P., Nir, Y., Eronen, P., and T.
Kivinen, "Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2
(IKEv2)", STD 79, RFC 7296, DOI 10.17487/RFC7296, October
2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7296>.
[RFC8446] Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8446>.
[RFC8551] Schaad, J., Ramsdell, B., and S. Turner, "Secure/
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 4.0
Message Specification", RFC 8551, DOI 10.17487/RFC8551,
April 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8551>.
Appendix A. Background Notes
This specification has spent over twenty 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 document was its graveyard.
About five years ago, the specification, which even at that point had
seen only sporadic reposts 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
standards used into the current century (prior to the update, the de
facto lowest-common-denominator algorithms used for interoperability
were the insecure forty-year-old single DES and broken MD5 hash
algorithms).
Note that although the text of the current specification has changed
significantly due to the consolidation of features and appendices
into the main document, the protocol that it describes is identical
on the wire to the original (with the unavoidable exception of the
switch from single DES and MD5 to AES and SHA-2). The only two
changes introduced, the "SCEPStandard" indicator in GetCACaps and the
failInfoText attribute, are both optional values and would be ignored
by older implementations that don't support them, or can be omitted
from messages if they are found to cause problems.
Other changes include:
* 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.
* Merged several later fragmentary addenda placed in appendices (for
example, the handling of certificate renewal) with the body of the
text.
* Merged the "SCEP Transactions" and "SCEP Transport" sections,
since the latter mostly duplicated (with occasional
inconsistencies) the former.
* Updated the algorithms to ones dating from at least this century.
* Did the same for normative references to other standards.
* Updated the text to use consistent terminology for the client and
CA rather than a mixture of client, requester, requesting system,
end entity, server, certificate authority, certification
authority, and CA.
* Corrected incorrect references to other standards, e.g.,
IssuerAndSerial -> IssuerAndSerialNumber.
* Corrected errors such as a statement that when both signature and
encryption certificates existed, the signature certificate was
used for encryption.
* 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 requirements in
each one.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* Added a requirement that the signed message include the signing
certificate(s) in the signedData certificates field. This was
implicit in the original specification (without it, the message
couldn't be verified by the CA) and was handled by the fact that
most PKCS #7/CMS libraries do this by default, but was never
explicitly mentioned.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* Clarified certificate renewal. This represents 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. In response to
developer feedback that they either avoided renewal entirely
because of this uncertainty or hard-coded in particular behaviour
on a per-CA basis, this specification explicitly identifies
renewal requests as such and provides proper semantics for them.
* Corrected the requirement that "undefined message types are
treated as an error", since this negates the effect of GetCACaps,
which is used to define new message types. In particular,
operations such as GetCACaps "Renewal" would be impossible if
enforced as written, because the Renewal operation was an
undefined message type at the time.
* In line with the above, added IANA registries for several entries
that had previously been defined in an ad hoc manner in different
locations in the text.
* 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.
* Added the optional failInfoText attribute to deal with the fact
that failInfo was incapable of adequately communicating to clients
why a certificate request operation had been rejected.
* Removed the discussion in the security considerations of
revocation issues, since SCEP doesn't support revocation as part
of the protocol.
* 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.
* 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 Section 4.4 were initiated, since the deterministic generation
via hashing would lead to duplicate transactionIDs.
* Added examples of SCEP messages to give implementers something to
aim for.
Acknowledgements
The editor would like to thank all of the previous editors, authors,
and contributors for their work maintaining the document over the
years: Cheryl Madson, Xiaoyi Liu, David McGrew, David Cooper, Andy
Nourse, Max Pritikin, Jan Vilhuber, and others. The IETF reviewers
provided much useful feedback that helped improve the document, and
in particular spotted a number of things that were present in SCEP
through established practice rather than by being explicitly
described in the text. Numerous other people have contributed during
the long life cycle of the document, and all deserve thanks. In
addition, several PKCS #7 / CMS libraries contributed to
interoperability by doing the right thing despite what earlier SCEP
documents required.
The authors of earlier draft versions of this document would like to
thank Peter William of ValiCert, Inc. (formerly of VeriSign, Inc.),
Alex Deacon of VeriSign, Inc., and Christopher Welles of IRE, Inc.
for their contributions to early versions of this protocol and this
document.
Author's Address
Peter Gutmann
University of Auckland
Department of Computer Science
Auckland
New Zealand
Email: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz