#870497 dirmngr: SKS keyserver network CA certificate is self-signed using SHA1

Package:
dirmngr
Source:
gnupg2
Description:
GNU privacy guard - network certificate management service
Submitter:
Paul Wise
Date:
2017-10-17 16:27:02 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#870497#5
Date:
2017-08-02 16:00:45 UTC
From:
To:
I noticed that the SKS keyserver network CA certificate uses SHA1 for
the fingerprint. Since browser vendors are phasing out SHA1 certs,
the SKS keyserver network should probably do that too.

  $ openssl x509 -in /usr/share/gnupg/sks-keyservers.netCA.pem -text -noout | grep -i sha1
      Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption
      Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption
#870497#10
Date:
2017-08-02 16:52:22 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Paul--

I think you mean that the signature algorithm uses SHA1, not that it's a
SHA1 fingerprint.

I agree with you that this is bad practice, but it doesn't actually
matter for root certificates.  For a root certificate, what matters is
the public key in question, not how it's signed.

That said, it would be nice to have a re-generated root certificate that
uses a modern signing algorithm just to avoid anyone worrying about it
(or some toolkit being overly-strict and deciding to not accept it).

I've cc'ed the upstream maintainer of that CA, Kristian Fiskerstrand, to
see whether he's willing to issue an updated root cert with the same key
material but using a modern signing algorithm.

Thanks for the heads up,
#870497#17
Date:
2017-10-17 16:24:25 UTC
From:
To:
It doesn't have security relevance, so I won't do anything with the CA
pubkey. The certificates issued have been sha256 for a while, and the
rollover CA cert will be, though.