pyca / pyca/pyopenssl

Does order matter when verifying an X.509 store?

Open
#1,237 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
944
Forks
440
Avg merge
1d 6h
Merged PRs (30d)
6

Description

I noticed that changing the order of the two intermediate CAs (when one is irrelevant) results in a different verification result:

root_1, chain_1, leaf_1 = generate_chain()  # root, intermediate, leaf
root_2, chain_2, leaf_2 = generate_chain()

r0 = validate_chain(leaf_1, [chain_1], root_1)    # leaf, intermediates, root
r1 = validate_chain(leaf_1, [chain_1, chain_2], root_1)
r2 = validate_chain(leaf_1, [chain_2, chain_1], root_1)

print(r0, r1, r2) # True True False

I was under the impression that the order that certs are added to an X.509 store did not matter. I also didn't seem to find anything in the OpenSSL documentation about this. Can anyone clarify?

Example (source): https://gist.github.com/kaedenbrinkman/c5f2b7d05034999cd55821a4f3403720

PyOpenSSL v23.2.0, Python v3.7.7

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the ordering difference in the linked gist using validate_chain with the two intermediate-CA orders. Read the referenced OpenSSL X509_verify_cert documentation and compare its behavior with PyOpenSSL v23.2.0 and Python v3.7.7. Done means establishing whether the order-dependent result is expected and clearly identifying the relevant issue scope.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
security
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.