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IETF RFC 8398
Internationalized Email Addresses in X.509 Certificates
Last modified on Thursday, May 24th, 2018
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Melnikov, Ed.
Request for Comments: 8398 Isode Ltd
Updates: 5280 W. Chuang, Ed.
Category: Standards Track Google, Inc.
ISSN: 2070-1721 May 2018
Internationalized Email Addresses in X.509 Certificates
 Abstract
This document defines a new name form for inclusion in the otherName
field of an X.509 Subject Alternative Name and Issuer Alternative
Name extension that allows a certificate subject to be associated
with an internationalized email address.
This document updates RFC 5280.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
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). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in 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/RFC 8398.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2018 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
(https://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.
Melnikov & Chuang Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Name Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. IDNA2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Matching of Internationalized Email Addresses in X.509
Certificates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Name Constraints in Path Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Appendix A. ASN.1 Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Appendix B. Example of SmtpUTF8Mailbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
[RFC 5280] defines the rfc822Name subjectAltName name type for
representing email addresses as described in [RFC 5321]. The syntax
of rfc822Name is restricted to a subset of US-ASCII characters and
thus can't be used to represent internationalized email addresses
[RFC 6531]. This document defines a new otherName variant to
represent internationalized email addresses. In addition this
document requires all email address domains in X.509 certificates to
conform to IDNA2008 [RFC 5890].
2. 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 [RFC 2119] [RFC 8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
The formal syntax uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
[RFC 5234] notation.
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3. Name Definitions
The GeneralName structure is defined in [RFC 5280] and supports many
different name forms including otherName for extensibility. This
section specifies the SmtpUTF8Mailbox name form of otherName so that
internationalized email addresses can appear in the subjectAltName of
a certificate, the issuerAltName of a certificate, or anywhere else
that GeneralName is used.
id-on-SmtpUTF8Mailbox OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-on 9 }
SmtpUTF8Mailbox ::= UTF8String (SIZE (1..MAX))
-- SmtpUTF8Mailbox conforms to Mailbox as specified
-- in Section 3.3 of RFC 6531.
When the subjectAltName (or issuerAltName) extension contains an
internationalized email address with a non-ASCII local-part, the
address MUST be stored in the SmtpUTF8Mailbox name form of otherName.
The format of SmtpUTF8Mailbox is defined as the ABNF rule
SmtpUTF8Mailbox. SmtpUTF8Mailbox is a modified version of the
internationalized Mailbox that was defined in Section 3.3 of
[RFC 6531], which was derived from Mailbox as defined in Section 4.1.2
of [RFC 5321]. [RFC 6531] defines the following ABNF rules for Mailbox
whose parts are modified for internationalization: <Local-part>,
<Dot-string>, <Quoted-string>, <QcontentSMTP>, <Domain>, and <Atom>.
In particular, <Local-part> was updated to also support UTF8-non-
ascii. UTF8-non-ascii was described by Section 3.1 of [RFC 6532].
Also, domain was extended to support U-labels, as defined in
[RFC 5890].
This document further refines internationalized Mailbox ABNF rules as
described in [RFC 6531] and calls this SmtpUTF8Mailbox. In
SmtpUTF8Mailbox, labels that include non-ASCII characters MUST be
stored in U-label (rather than A-label) form [RFC 5890]. This
restriction removes the need to determine which label encoding, A- or
U-label, is present in the domain. As per Section 2.3.2.1 of
[RFC 5890], U-labels are encoded as UTF-8 [RFC 3629] in Normalization
Form C and other properties specified there. In SmtpUTF8Mailbox,
domain labels that solely use ASCII characters (meaning neither A-
nor U-labels) SHALL use NR-LDH restrictions as specified by
Section 2.3.1 of [RFC 5890] and SHALL be restricted to lowercase
letters. NR-LDH stands for "Non-Reserved Letters Digits Hyphen" and
is the set of LDH labels that do not have "--" characters in the
third and forth character position, which excludes "tagged domain
names" such as A-labels. Consistent with the treatment of rfc822Name
in [RFC 5280], SmtpUTF8Mailbox is an envelope <Mailbox> and has no
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RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
phrase (such as a common name) before it, has no comment (text
surrounded in parentheses) after it, and is not surrounded by "<" and
">" characters.
Due to name constraint compatibility reasons described in Section 6,
SmtpUTF8Mailbox subjectAltName MUST NOT be used unless the local-part
of the email address contains non-ASCII characters. When the local-
part is ASCII, rfc822Name subjectAltName MUST be used instead of
SmtpUTF8Mailbox. This is compatible with legacy software that
supports only rfc822Name (and not SmtpUTF8Mailbox). The appropriate
usage of rfc822Name and SmtpUTF8Mailbox is summarized in Table 1
below.
SmtpUTF8Mailbox is encoded as UTF8String. The UTF8String encoding
MUST NOT contain a Byte-Order-Mark (BOM) [RFC 3629] to aid consistency
across implementations, particularly for comparison.
+-----------------+-------------+--------------+-----------------+
| local-part char | domain char | domain label | subjectAltName |
+-----------------+-------------+--------------+-----------------+
| ASCII-only | ASCII-only | NR-LDH label | rfc822Name |
| non-ASCII | ASCII-only | NR-LDH label | SmtpUTF8Mailbox |
| ASCII-only | non-ASCII | A-label | rfc822Name |
| non-ASCII | non-ASCII | U-label | SmtpUTF8Mailbox |
+-----------------+-------------+--------------+-----------------+
Non-ASCII may additionally include ASCII characters.
Table 1: Email Address Formatting
4. IDNA2008
To facilitate comparison between email addresses, all email address
domains in X.509 certificates MUST conform to IDNA2008 [RFC 5890] (and
avoid any "mappings" mentioned in that document). Use of
non-conforming email address domains introduces the possibility of
conversion errors between alternate forms. This applies to
SmtpUTF8Mailbox and rfc822Name in subjectAltName, issuerAltName, and
anywhere else that these are used.
5. Matching of Internationalized Email Addresses in X.509 Certificates
In equivalence comparison with SmtpUTF8Mailbox, there may be some
setup work on one or both inputs depending on whether the input is
already in comparison form. Comparing SmtpUTF8Mailboxes consists of
a domain part step and a local-part step. The comparison form for
local-parts is always UTF-8. The comparison form for domain parts
depends on context. While some contexts such as certificate path
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validation in [RFC 5280] specify transforming domain to A-label
(Sections 7.2 and 7.5 in [RFC 5280] as updated by [RFC 8399]), this
document recommends transforming to UTF-8 U-label instead. This
reduces the likelihood of errors by reducing conversions as more
implementations natively support U-label domains.
Comparison of two SmtpUTF8Mailboxes is straightforward with no setup
work needed. They are considered equivalent if there is an exact
octet-for-octet match. Comparison with email addresses such as
internationalized email address or rfc822Name requires additional
setup steps for domain part and local-part. The initial preparation
for the email addresses is to remove any phrases, comments, and "<"
or ">" characters. This document calls for comparison of domain
labels that include non-ASCII characters to be transformed to
U-labels if not already in that form. The first step is to detect
use of the A-label by using Section 5.1 of [RFC 5891]. Next, if
necessary, transform any A-labels (US-ASCII) to U-labels (Unicode) as
specified in Section 5.2 of [RFC 5891]. Finally, if necessary,
convert the Unicode to UTF-8 as specified in Section 3 of [RFC 3629].
For ASCII NR-LDH labels, uppercase letters are converted to lowercase
letters. In setup for SmtpUTF8Mailbox, the email address local-part
MUST conform to the requirements of [RFC 6530] and [RFC 6531],
including being a string in UTF-8 form. In particular, the local-
part MUST NOT be transformed in any way, such as by doing case
folding or normalization of any kind. The <Local-part> part of an
internationalized email address is already in UTF-8. For rfc822Name,
the local-part, which is IA5String (ASCII), trivially maps to UTF-8
without change. Once setup is complete, they are again compared
octet for octet.
To summarize non-normatively, the comparison steps, including setup,
are:
1. If the domain contains A-labels, transform them to U-labels.
2. If the domain contains ASCII NR-LDH labels, lowercase them.
3. Compare strings octet for octet for equivalence.
This specification expressly does not define any wildcard characters,
and SmtpUTF8Mailbox comparison implementations MUST NOT interpret any
characters as wildcards. Instead, to specify multiple email
addresses through SmtpUTF8Mailbox, the certificate MUST use multiple
subjectAltNames or issuerAltNames to explicitly carry any additional
email addresses.
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RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
6. Name Constraints in Path Validation
This section updates Section 4.2.1.10 of [RFC 5280] to extend
rfc822Name name constraints to SmtpUTF8Mailbox subjectAltNames.
SmtpUTF8Mailbox-aware path validators will apply name constraint
comparison to the subject distinguished name and both forms of
subject alternative names rfc822Name and SmtpUTF8Mailbox.
Both rfc822Name and SmtpUTF8Mailbox subject alternative names
represent the same underlying email address namespace. Since legacy
CAs constrained to issue certificates for a specific set of domains
would lack corresponding UTF-8 constraints, [RFC 8399] updates,
modifies, and extends rfc822Name name constraints defined in
[RFC 5280] to cover SmtpUTF8Mailbox subject alternative names. This
ensures that the introduction of SmtpUTF8Mailbox does not violate
existing name constraints. Since it is not valid to include
non-ASCII UTF-8 characters in the local-part of rfc822Name name
constraints, and since name constraints that include a local-part are
rarely, if at all, used in practice, name constraints updated in
[RFC 8399] allow the forms that represent all addresses at a host or
all mailboxes in a domain and deprecates rfc822Name name constraints
that represent a particular mailbox. That is, rfc822Name constraints
with a local-part SHOULD NOT be used.
Constraint comparison with SmtpUTF8Mailbox subjectAltName starts with
the setup steps defined by Section 5. Setup converts the inputs of
the comparison (which is one of a subject distinguished name, an
rfc822Name, or an SmtpUTF8Mailbox subjectAltName, and one of an
rfc822Name name constraint) to constraint comparison form. For an
rfc822Name name constraint, this will convert any domain A-labels to
U-labels. For both the name constraint and the subject, this will
lowercase any domain NR-LDH labels. Strip the local-part and "@"
separator from each rfc822Name and SmtpUTF8Mailbox, leaving just the
domain part. After setup, this follows the comparison steps defined
in Section 4.2.1.10 of [RFC 5280] as follows. If the resulting name
constraint domain starts with a "." character, then for the name
constraint to match, a suffix of the resulting subject alternative
name domain MUST match the name constraint (including the leading
".") octet for octet. If the resulting name constraint domain does
not start with a "." character, then for the name constraint to
match, the entire resulting subject alternative name domain MUST
match the name constraint octet for octet.
Certificate Authorities that wish to issue CA certificates with email
address name constraints MUST use rfc822Name subject alternative
names only. These MUST be IDNA2008-conformant names with no mappings
and with non-ASCII domains encoded in A-labels only.
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RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
The name constraint requirement with SmtpUTF8Mailbox subject
alternative name is illustrated in the non-normative diagram in
Figure 1. The first example (1) illustrates a permitted rfc822Name
ASCII-only host name name constraint and the corresponding valid
rfc822Name subjectAltName and SmtpUTF8Mailbox subjectAltName email
addresses. The second example (2) illustrates a permitted rfc822Name
host name name constraint with A-label, and the corresponding valid
rfc822Name subjectAltName and SmtpUTF8Mailbox subjectAltName email
addresses. Note that an email address with ASCII-only local-part is
encoded as rfc822Name despite also having Unicode present in the
domain.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Root CA Cert |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
v
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Intermediate CA Cert |
| Permitted |
| rfc822Name: elementary.school.example.com (1) |
| |
| rfc822Name: xn--pss25c.example.com (2) |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
v
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Entity Cert (w/explicitly permitted subjects) |
| SubjectAltName Extension |
| rfc822Name: student@elemenary.school.example.com (1) |
| SmtpUTF8Mailbox: u+5B66u+751F@elementary.school.example.com |
| (1) |
| |
| rfc822Name: student@xn--pss25c.example.com (2) |
| SmtpUTF8Mailbox: u+533Bu+751F@u+5927u+5B66.example.com (2) |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Figure 1: Name Constraints with SmtpUTF8Name and rfc822Name
7. Security Considerations
Use of SmtpUTF8Mailbox for certificate subjectAltName (and
issuerAltName) will incur many of the same security considerations as
in Section 8 in [RFC 5280], but it introduces a new issue by
permitting non-ASCII characters in the email address local-part.
This issue, as mentioned in Section 4.4 of [RFC 5890] and in Section 4
Melnikov & Chuang Standards Track PAGE 7
RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
of [RFC 6532], is that use of Unicode introduces the risk of visually
similar and identical characters that can be exploited to deceive the
recipient. The former document references some means to mitigate
against these attacks. See [WEBER] for more background on security
issues with Unicode.
8. IANA Considerations
As described in Section 3 and the ASN.1 module identifier defined in
Appendix A, IANA has assigned the values described here.
o For the LAMPS-EaiAddresses-2016 ASN.1 module, IANA has registered
value 92 for "id-mod-lamps-eai-addresses-2016" in the "SMI
Security for PKIX Module Identifier" (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.0) registry.
o For the SmtpUTF8Mailbox otherName, IANA has registered value 9 for
id-on-SmtpUTF8Mailbox in the "SMI Security for PKIX Other Name
Forms" (1.3.6.1.5.5.7.8) registry.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2119>.
[RFC 3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, DOI 10.17487/RFC 3629, November
2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 3629>.
[RFC 5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5234, January 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5234>.
[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, DOI 10.17487/RFC 5280, May 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5280>.
[RFC 5321] Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 5321,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5321, October 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5321>.
Melnikov & Chuang Standards Track PAGE 8
RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
[RFC 5890] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC 5890, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5890>.
[RFC 5891] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names in
Applications (IDNA): Protocol", RFC 5891,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5891, August 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5891>.
[RFC 6530] Klensin, J. and Y. Ko, "Overview and Framework for
Internationalized Email", RFC 6530, DOI 10.17487/RFC 6530,
February 2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6530>.
[RFC 6531] Yao, J. and W. Mao, "SMTP Extension for Internationalized
Email", RFC 6531, DOI 10.17487/RFC 6531, February 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6531>.
[RFC 6532] Yang, A., Steele, S., and N. Freed, "Internationalized
Email Headers", RFC 6532, DOI 10.17487/RFC 6532, February
2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6532>.
[RFC 8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8174>.
[RFC 8399] Housley, R., "Internationalization Updates to RFC 5280",
RFC 8399, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8399, May 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8399>.
9.2. Informative References
[RFC 5912] Hoffman, P. and J. Schaad, "New ASN.1 Modules for the
Public Key Infrastructure Using X.509 (PKIX)", RFC 5912,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5912, June 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5912>.
[WEBER] Weber, C., "Attacking Software Globalization", March 2010,
<https://www.lookout.net/files/
Chris_Weber_Character%20Transformations%20v1.7_IUC33.pdf>.
Melnikov & Chuang Standards Track PAGE 9
RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
Appendix A. ASN.1 Module
The following ASN.1 module normatively specifies the SmtpUTF8Mailbox
structure. This specification uses the ASN.1 definitions from
[RFC 5912] with the 2002 ASN.1 notation used in that document.
[RFC 5912] updates normative documents using older ASN.1 notation.
LAMPS-EaiAddresses-2016
{ iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6)
internet(1) security(5) mechanisms(5) pkix(7) id-mod(0)
id-mod-lamps-eai-addresses-2016(92) }
DEFINITIONS IMPLICIT TAGS ::=
BEGIN
IMPORTS
OTHER-NAME
FROM PKIX1Implicit-2009
{ iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1) security(5)
mechanisms(5) pkix(7) id-mod(0) id-mod-pkix1-implicit-02(59) }
id-pkix
FROM PKIX1Explicit-2009
{ iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6) internet(1) security(5)
mechanisms(5) pkix(7) id-mod(0) id-mod-pkix1-explicit-02(51) } ;
--
-- otherName carries additional name types for subjectAltName,
-- issuerAltName, and other uses of GeneralNames.
--
id-on OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-pkix 8 }
SmtpUtf8OtherNames OTHER-NAME ::= { on-SmtpUTF8Mailbox, ... }
on-SmtpUTF8Mailbox OTHER-NAME ::= {
SmtpUTF8Mailbox IDENTIFIED BY id-on-SmtpUTF8Mailbox
}
id-on-SmtpUTF8Mailbox OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { id-on 9 }
SmtpUTF8Mailbox ::= UTF8String (SIZE (1..MAX))
-- SmtpUTF8Mailbox conforms to Mailbox as specified
-- in Section 3.3 of RFC 6531.
END
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Appendix B. Example of SmtpUTF8Mailbox
This non-normative example demonstrates using SmtpUTF8Mailbox as an
otherName in GeneralName to encode the email address
"u+8001u+5E2B@example.com".
The hexadecimal DER encoding of the email address is:
A022060A 2B060105 05070012 0809A014 0C12E880 81E5B8AB 40657861
6D706C65 2E636F6D
The text decoding is:
0 34: [0] {
2 10: OBJECT IDENTIFIER '1 3 6 1 5 5 7 0 18 8 9'
14 20: [0] {
16 18: UTF8String '..@example.com'
: }
: }
Figure 2
The example was encoded on the OSS Nokalva ASN.1 Playground and the
above text decoding is an output of Peter Gutmann's "dumpasn1"
program.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Magnus Nystrom for motivating this document. Thanks to
Russ Housley, Nicolas Lidzborski, Laetitia Baudoin, Ryan Sleevi, Sean
Leonard, Sean Turner, John Levine, and Patrik Falstrom for their
feedback. Also special thanks to John Klensin for his valuable input
on internationalization, Unicode, and ABNF formatting; to Jim Schaad
for his help with the ASN.1 example and his helpful feedback; and
especially to Viktor Dukhovni for helping us with name constraints
and his many detailed document reviews.
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RFC 8398 I18N Mail Addresses in X.509 Certificates May 2018
Authors' Addresses
Alexey Melnikov (editor)
Isode Ltd
14 Castle Mews
Hampton, Middlesex TW12 2NP
United Kingdom
Email: Alexey.Melnikov@isode.com
Weihaw Chuang (editor)
Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheater Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
United States of America
Email: weihaw@google.com
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Internationalized Email Addresses in X.509 Certificates
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 26562 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Thursday, May 24th, 2018
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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