Partitioned CRLs

[Nuno Ponte-2]

    Hi,

    We are running a CA that has thousands of revoked certificates,
which leads to CRLs of several MBytes.

    On the next nenewal of the CA, we are thinking of partitioning the
CRLs at each X number of issued certificates. The issued certificates
will have different CRL Distribution Points (CDP) according to the
partitions they are assigned.

    For example, for X=100, from certificate 1 to certificate 100, the
CDP would be http://myca.com/crl/myca-0001.crl, from certificate 101
to 200 the CDP would be http://myca.com/crl/myca-0002.crl, and so on.

    My question: Is mod_ssl/openssl prepared to support partitioned
CRLs like the way described? In particular, if CRLs are cached,
mod_ssl must be able to merge several different partitions according
to the CDP to create a unified view over the revocation universe of a
CA.

    Regards,

         Nuno Ponte
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[Cuesta Gilles]

Nuno Ponte a écrit :

>     Hi,
>
>     We are running a CA that has thousands of revoked certificates,
> which leads to CRLs of several MBytes.
>
>     On the next nenewal of the CA, we are thinking of partitioning the
> CRLs at each X number of issued certificates. The issued certificates
> will have different CRL Distribution Points (CDP) according to the
> partitions they are assigned.
>
>     For example, for X=100, from certificate 1 to certificate 100, the
> CDP would be http://myca.com/crl/myca-0001.crl, from certificate 101
> to 200 the CDP would be http://myca.com/crl/myca-0002.crl, and so on.
>  

CDP is embedded when creating certificate, so it might be possible

(client side).

Server side, you can stack as many crl as you want into either a single
file, or a directory (using hashing) and point to it into Apache.
But you may apply a patch for multiple identical DN handling.
http://marc.info/?l=apache-httpd-dev&m=120350484626015&q=p3

Why didn't you implement OCSP into Apache ?
http://sitola.fi.muni.cz/%7Etauceti/?download=ocsp_apache_2.2.patch (I
didn't test it anyway)

--
La Joconde ne sourit pas devant Chuck Norris.
Gilles CUESTA - Logiciels Libres
69139920

[Nuno Ponte-2]

    Hi Gilles,

    Thanks for your reply! :-)

    The CA also offers OCSP, which is obviously the preferred way to
validate certificate status. I am just trying to make sure that there
is support from the "applications world" to such a CRL partitioning
scheme. Wide interoperability is a key goal.

    Regards,

       Nuno Ponte


On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:04 AM, Cuesta Gilles <gilles.cuesta@...> wrote:

> Nuno Ponte a écrit :
>>     Hi,
>>
>>     We are running a CA that has thousands of revoked certificates,
>> which leads to CRLs of several MBytes.
>>
>>     On the next nenewal of the CA, we are thinking of partitioning the
>> CRLs at each X number of issued certificates. The issued certificates
>> will have different CRL Distribution Points (CDP) according to the
>> partitions they are assigned.
>>
>>     For example, for X=100, from certificate 1 to certificate 100, the
>> CDP would be http://myca.com/crl/myca-0001.crl, from certificate 101
>> to 200 the CDP would be http://myca.com/crl/myca-0002.crl, and so on.
>>
> CDP is embedded when creating certificate, so it might be possible
> (client side).
>
> Server side, you can stack as many crl as you want into either a single
> file, or a directory (using hashing) and point to it into Apache.
> But you may apply a patch for multiple identical DN handling.
> http://marc.info/?l=apache-httpd-dev&m=120350484626015&q=p3
>
> Why didn't you implement OCSP into Apache ?
> http://sitola.fi.muni.cz/%7Etauceti/?download=ocsp_apache_2.2.patch (I
> didn't test it anyway)
>
> --
> La Joconde ne sourit pas devant Chuck Norris.
> Gilles CUESTA - Logiciels Libres
> 69139920
>
>
>

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