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IETF RFC 5877
The application/pkix-attr-cert Media Type for Attribute Certificates
Last modified on Thursday, May 6th, 2010
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Housley
Request for Comments: 5877 Vigil Security
Category: Informational May 2010
ISSN: 2070-1721
The application/pkix-attr-cert Media Type for Attribute Certificates
 Abstract
This document specifies a MIME media type used to carry a single
attribute certificate as defined in RFC 5755.
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 a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5877.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Housley Informational PAGE 1 
RFC 5877 application/pkix-attr-cert Media Type May 2010
1. Introduction
RFC 2585 [RFC 2585] defines the MIME media types for public key
certificates and certificate revocation lists (CRLs). This document
specifies a MIME media type for use with attribute certificates as
defined in RFC 5755 [RFC 5755].
Attribute certificates are ASN.1 encoded [X.680]. RFC 5755 [RFC 5755]
tells which portions of the attribute certificate must use the
distinguished encoding rules (DER) [X.690] and which portions are
permitted to use the basic encoding rules (BER) [X.690]. Since DER
is a proper subset of BER, BER decoding all parts of a properly
constructed attribute certificate will be successful.
2. IANA Considerations
This document registers with IANA the "application/pkix-attr-cert"
Internet Media Type for use with an attribute certificate as defined
in [RFC 5755]. This registration follows the procedures defined in
BCP 13 [RFC 4288].
Type name: application
Subtype name: pkix-attr-cert
Required parameters: None
Optional parameters: None
Encoding considerations: binary
Security considerations:
An attribute certificate provides authorization information. An
attribute certificate is most often used in conjunction with a
public key certificate [RFC 5280], and the two certificates
should use the same encoding of the distinguished name as
described in the Security Considerations of this document.
Interoperability considerations:
The media type will be used with HTTP to fetch attribute
certificates. Other uses may emerge in the future.
Published specification: RFC 5755
Housley Informational PAGE 2
RFC 5877 application/pkix-attr-cert Media Type May 2010
Applications that use this media type:
The media type is used with a MIME-compliant transport to
transfer an attribute certificate. Attribute certificates
convey authorization information, and they are most often used
in conjunction with public key certificates as defined in
[RFC 5280].
Additional information:
Magic number(s): None
File extension(s): .ac
Macintosh File Type Code(s): none
Person & email address to contact for further information:
Russ Housley
housley@vigilsec.com
Intended usage: COMMON
Restrictions on usage: none
Author:
Russ Housley <housley@vigilsec.com>
Intended usage: COMMON
Change controller:
The IESG <iesg@ietf.org>
3. Security Considerations
Attribute certificate issuers must encode the holder entity name in
exactly the same way as the public key certificate distinguished
name. If they are encoded differently, implementations may fail to
recognize that the attribute certificate and public key certificate
belong to the same entity.
4. References
4.1. Normative References
[RFC 5755] Farrell, S., Housley, R., and S. Turner, "An Internet
Attribute Certificate Profile for Authorization",
RFC 5755, January 2010.
Housley Informational PAGE 3
RFC 5877 application/pkix-attr-cert Media Type May 2010
4.2. Informative References
[RFC 2585] Housley, R. and P. Hoffman, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Operational Protocols: FTP and HTTP",
RFC 2585, May 1999.
[RFC 4288] Freed, N. and J. Klensin, "Media Type Specifications and
Registration Procedures", BCP 13, RFC 4288,
December 2005.
[RFC 5280] Cooper, D., Santesson, S., Farrell, S., Boeyen, S.,
Housley, R., and W. Polk, "Internet X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation
List (CRL) Profile", RFC 5280, May 2008.
[X.680] ITU-T Recommendation X.680 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8824-1:2002,
Information technology - Abstract Syntax Notation One
(ASN.1): Specification of basic notation.
[X.690] ITU-T Recommendation X.690 (2002) | ISO/IEC 8825-1:2002,
Information technology - ASN.1 encoding rules:
Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical
Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding
Rules (DER).
Author's Address
Russell Housley
Vigil Security, LLC
918 Spring Knoll Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
USA
EMail: housley@vigilsec.com
Housley Informational PAGE 4
The application/pkix-attr-cert Media Type for Attribute Certificates
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 6692 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Thursday, May 6th, 2010
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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