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28 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
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### Certificates ###
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We have, alas, several certificate types in Tor.
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The tor_x509_cert_t type represents an X.509 certificate. This document
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won't explain X.509 to you -- possibly, no document can. (OTOH, Peter
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Gutmann's "x.509 style guide", though severely dated, does a good job of
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explaining how awful x.509 can be.) Do not introduce any new usages of
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X.509. Right now we only use it in places where TLS forces us to do so.
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The authority_cert_t type is used only for directory authority keys. It
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has a medium-term signing key (which the authorities actually keep
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online) signed by a long-term identity key (which the authority operator
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had really better be keeping offline). Don't use it for any new kind of
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certificate.
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For new places where you need a certificate, consider tor_cert_t: it
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represents a typed and dated _something_ signed by an Ed25519 key. The
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format is described in tor-spec. Unlike x.509, you can write it on a
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napkin.
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(Additionally, the Tor directory design uses a fairly wide variety of
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documents that include keys and which are signed by keys. You can
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consider these documents to be an additional kind of certificate if you
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want.)
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