Metadata Signing Certificate

Metadata Signing Certificate

The InCommon metadata signing certificate is a long-lived, self-signed certificate containing the public key corresponding to the private metadata signing key. Important details about the metadata signing certificate are shown on this official web page:

• https://ops.incommon.org/inc_md_cert.html

Note in particular the certificate fingerprints listed at the top of that page. InCommon Operations certifies that these are the actual fingerprints of the metadata signing certificate. Accept no substitute!

Bootstrapping Trust

To ensure the security of your metadata refresh process, you must verify the XML signature on each and every metadata aggregate you consume. To do that, you need an authentic copy of the metadata signing certificate. The certificate must be obtained securely since all subsequent operations depend on it.

To obtain an authentic copy of the metadata signing certificate, perform the following steps:

1. Download a copy of the metadata signing certificate via a secure channel
2. Compute the SHA-1 and SHA-256 fingerprints of the metadata signing certificate
3. Compare the computed fingerprints to the actual fingerprints

The latter two steps guarantee the integrity of the metadata signing certificate.

You may check the integrity of the downloaded certificate in a variety of ways. For example, on a GNU/Linux system, you could use curl and openssl to check the integrity of the metadata signing certificate as follows:

# Step 1: Download a copy of the metadata signing certificate via a secure channel
$ MD_CERT_LOCATION=https://ds.incommon.org/certs/inc-md-cert.pem
$ MD_CERT_PATH=/path/to/inc-md-cert.pem
$ /usr/bin/curl --silent $MD_CERT_LOCATION > $MD_CERT_PATH

# Step 2: Compute the SHA-1 and SHA-256 fingerprints of the metadata signing certificate
$ /bin/cat $MD_CERT_PATH | /usr/bin/openssl x509 -sha1 -noout -fingerprint
SHA1 Fingerprint=7D:B4:BB:28:D3:D5:C8:52:E0:80:B3:62:43:2A:AF:34:B2:A6:0E:DD
$ /bin/cat $MD_CERT_PATH | /usr/bin/openssl x509 -sha256 -noout -fingerprint
SHA256 Fingerprint=2F:9D:9A:A1:FE:D1:92:F0:64:A8:C6:31:5D:39:FA:CF:1E:08:84:0D:27:21:F3:31:B1:70:A5:2B:88:81:9F:5B

Step 3: The final step is to compare the computed fingerprints to the actual fingerprints. The latter are shown on this official web page:

• https://ops.incommon.org/inc_md_cert.html

If the computed fingerprints match the actual fingerprints, you are done. You may now safely use the certificate to verify the signature on the metadata file.