IMPORTANT: This page is retained for historical purposes only.
For the latest version of the CCADB Policy, see https://www.ccadb.org/policy.
Version 1.1
Several Web PKI root store operators (“Stores”) have collaborated to create the Common Certificate Authority Database (CCADB), a data repository of certificate and Certificate Authority (CA) information. CAs who wish to be included in participating stores will need to maintain certain information in the CCADB. This document explains what is required of CAs who are required by Store policy to use the CCADB.
Stores may have their own additional CCADB-related requirements. For each root certificate, CAs must comply with the additional requirements pertaining to the Stores which contain that certificate.
This document does not cover how to obtain write access to the CCADB or how to use the CCADB’s web interface. Those topics are outside its scope. CAs should contact an appropriate Store for assistance.
Regardless of more specific provisions in these requirements, CAs have an overarching responsibility to keep the information in the CCADB about themselves, their operations and their certificates accurate, and make updates in a timely fashion.
All data in the CCADB may be made public or semi-public in a variety of forms; CAs should not place any information in the CCADB which they wish to keep confidential. However, Stores are not obliged to publish any CCADB information.
All client devices that are used to download Personally Identifiable Information from the CCADB must employ disk based encryption.
CAs are required to provide the following information for a Primary Point of Contact (POC), and at least one other POC, who may or may not be Primary:
- Name
- Office email address
- Office hours phone number
CAs may optionally designate further POCs, supplying at least one contact method for each. CAs must also supply one or two non-personal contact email aliases which are more likely to continue working as personnel change; these are maintained as part of the CA’s organizational entry.
All Primary POCs should be authorized to speak for and to bind the CA that they represent. At least one of the Primary POCs will hold a CA Community license; other POCs may also apply to a Store to be issued one. Those Primary POCs with a CA Community license are ultimately responsible for keeping CCADB data up-to-date for their CA.
Notification of security and audit-related issues will be emailed to all Primary POCs and the first email alias. CAs are advised to make sure those addresses reach sufficient people such that they can respond to an issue in an appropriate timeframe.
If POC or email alias information needs to be updated, the CA should notify one of the Stores containing their root certificates, because this information may only be edited by Stores. See the Store policy documents for Store contact information.
A root certificate is a certificate which is capable of issuing new certificates, which a CA designates as a trust anchor. It will usually be self-signed. CAs are required to maintain correct and current information about their root certificates.
If root certificate information needs to be updated, the CA should notify one of the Stores containing the certificate, because this information may only be edited by Stores. See the Store policy documents for Store contact information.
To update audit information for a root certificate, create an Audit Case.
An intermediate certificate is a certificate capable of issuing new certificates that is not a root certificate. To determine which intermediate certificates must be entered into the CCADB, refer to the individual Store policy documents. This includes certificates that are revoked. For newly-created intermediate certificates, this must happen before the certificate begins issuing publicly-trusted certificates.
Each instance (i.e. PEM data) of an intermediate certificate only needs to be included in the CCADB once, even if it chains up to two root certificates.
If an intermediate certificate is revoked, the CCADB must be updated to mark it as revoked, giving the reason why, within 24 hours for a security incident, and within 7 days for any other reason.
In the records for both root certificates and intermediate certificates, CAs are required to provide details of the Certificate Policy (CP) and/or Certificate Practice Statement (CPS) documents relating to that certificate, and also statements of attestation of their conformance to various requirements and other operational criteria (“audits”), those statements being made by a competent independent party or parties. These documents are hosted elsewhere and the URLs are stored in the CCADB. The URLs to such CPs, CPSes and audits, and any metadata about them such as the name of the auditor or the date of the audit, need to be updated as new information become available. For technical reasons, URLs to audit statements need to point to a PDF file.
The entry for each intermediate certificate has "Audits Same as Parent" and "CP/CPS Same as Parent" checkboxes. When those are checked, the details do not need to be duplicated from the parent cert. However, the intermediate certificate must be specifically listed in the audit statements of the parent certificate.
URLs for the following documents are required for each certificate, unless the exceptions below apply:
- Certificate Policy (CP)
- Certificate Practice Statement (CPS)
- Standard audit (WebTrust or ETSI)
- Baseline Requirements (BR) audit (if the certificate is capable of issuing TLS/SSL server certificates)
- Extended Validation (EV) SSL and/or Code Signing audit (if applicable)
Exceptions to providing audit information:
- The SHA-256 fingerprint of the certificate is specifically listed as in scope in the audit statements of the parent certificate, and the "Audits Same as Parent" checkbox is checked; or
- The certificate has expired; or
- The certificate is technically-constrained as described in section 7.1.5 of the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, or
- The certificate has been revoked, and the corresponding record in the CCADB has been updated with the correct revocation status.
CAs must provide English versions of any Certificate Policy, Certification Practice Statement and Audit documents which are not originally in English, with version numbers matching the document they are a translation of. The English version is not required to be authoritative in all cases of dispute, but the CA must attest that the translation is not materially different to the original.
CCADB uses an Audit Letter Validation (ALV) tool to automatically parse and validate audit statements. This system eliminates manual processing, but it requires audit statements to follow some basic rules in order to function properly. If the audit statement fails to meet any of the following requirements, the CA will be asked to work with their auditor to provide an audit statement that passes ALV.
Audit statements listed in the CCADB must contain at least the following clearly-labelled information in English:
- Name and address of the organization performing the audit;
- Full name of the CA that was audited;
- SHA-256 fingerprint of each root and intermediate certificate that was in scope of the audit (see format specifications below);
- List of the CA policy documents (with version numbers) referenced during the audit;
- Whether the audit is for a period of time or a point in time;
- Date the audit statement was written, which will necessarily be after the audit period end date or point-in-time date (see date format specifications below);
- Start date and end date of the period that was audited, for those that cover a period of time (this is not the period the auditor was on-site);
- Point-in-time date, for those that are for a point in time;
- Full names and version numbers of the audit standards that were used during the audit; and
- For ETSI, a statement to indicate if the audit was a full audit, and which parts of the criteria were applied, e.g. DVCP, OVCP, NCP, NCP+, LCP, EVCP, EVCP+, QCP-w, Part1 (General Requirements), and/or Part 2 (Requirements for trust service providers).
Audits based on ETSI CPs: Audits conducted by accredited conformity assessment bodies (CAB) must have their Audit Attestation Letter (AAL) uploaded to the CAB’s website. CAs provide the URL to the AAL on the CAB’s website, and ALV will verify those URLs against a known list of AAL locations.
- When an ETSI Certificate cannot be issued, the CA must still provide an AAL such that there are no gaps between audit periods for consecutive audits. The CA may post the AAL on their own website or attach the attestation report to a Bugzilla Bug and provide that URL. Additionally, the CA needs to provide an explanation about the problems and time frame for resolution of the problems.
WebTrust Audits: Audits conducted by licensed WebTrust practitioners must have a WebTrust Seal. CAs enter the URL to the WebTrust Seal into the CCADB, and upon saving of the record, the CCADB automatically converts the URL to point to the corresponding PDF file via integration with CPA Canada.
- For qualified WebTrust audits, the CA may post the audit statements on their own website or attach the audit statement to a Bugzilla Bug and provide that URL. Additionally, the CA needs to provide an explanation about the findings and time frame for resolution of the findings.
Format Specifications for SHA-256 Fingerprints:
- MUST: No colons, no spaces, and no line feeds
- MUST: Uppercase letters
- MUST: be encoded in the document (PDF) as text searchable, not an image
Format Specifications for Dates: The following formats are accepted by ALV
- Month DD, YYYY example: May 7, 2016
- DD Month YYYY example: 7 May 2016
- YYYY-MM-DD example: 2016-05-07
- Month names in English
- No extra text within the date, such as “7th” or “the”
From time to time, a Store may use the CCADB to send information to CAs. Mailshots will be sent to at least the Primary POC and the email aliases, and may also go to one or more of the other POCs; the exact recipient list is defined by the Store sending the information.
Any copyright in this document is dedicated to the Public Domain.