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Ballot SC015: Remove Validation Method Number 9

The voting period for Ballot SC15 has ended and the Ballot has Passed. Here are the results: Voting by Certificate Issuers – 23 votes total including abstentions

  • 23 Yes votes: Amazon, Buypass, Camerfirma, Certum (Asseco), Chunghwa Telecom, D-TRUST, DarkMatter, DigiCert, Disig, eMudhra, Entrust Datacard, GDCA, GoDaddy, HARICA, Izenpe, Kamu SM, Let’s Encrypt, SHECA, SSL.com, SSC, TrustCor, SecureTrust (former Trustwave), Visa

  • 0 No vote:

  • 0 Abstain:

100% of voting Certificate Issuers voted in favor. Voting by Certificate Consumers – 5 votes total including abstentions

  • 5 Yes votes: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, 360
  • 0 No votes:
  • 0 Abstain:

100% of voting Certificate Consumers voted in favor **Relevant Bylaw references
** Bylaw 2.3(f) requires:

a “yes” vote by two-thirds of Certificate Issuer votes and 50%-plus-one Certificate Consumer votes for approval. Votes to abstain are not counted for this purpose. This requirement was met for both Certificate Issuers and Certificate Consumers. at least one Certificate Issuer and one Certificate Consumer Member must vote in favor of a ballot for the ballot to be adopted. This requirement was also met. Under Bylaw 2.3(g), “a ballot result will be considered valid only when more than half of the number of currently active Members has participated”. Votes to abstain are counted in determining a quorum. Half of currently active Members as of the start of voting was 9, so quorum was 10 votes – quorum was met

Purpose of Ballot: Method 9, Test Certificate, is insecure when web hosting platforms use a single IP address for more than one Domain Name, so this method must not be used.

The following motion has been proposed by Doug Beattie of GlobalSign and endorsed by Bruce Morton of Entrust Datacard and Ryan Sleevi of Google.

Motion begins

This ballot modifies the “Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates” as follows, based on Version 1.6.2:

Replace the content of section 3.2.2.4.9 with:

This method has been retired and MUST NOT be used. Prior validations using this method and validation data gathered according to this method SHALL NOT be used to issue certificates.

Motion ends

*\* WARNING **: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE REDLINE BELOW IS NOT THE OFFICIAL VERSION OF THE CHANGES (CABF Bylaws, Section 2.4(a)):

A comparison of the changes can be found at: https://github.com/dougbeattie/documents/compare/master…dougbeattie:SC15-Remove-Method-9

The procedure for approval of this ballot is as follows:

Discussion (7+ days)

Start Time: 2019-01-22 08:15 Eastern

End Time: 2019-01-29 08:15 Eastern

Vote for approval (7 days)

Start Time: 2019-01-29 15:00 Eastern

End Time: 2019-02-05 15:00 Eastern

Latest releases
Server Certificate Requirements
SC099: Improve Recording of Validation Methods - May 19, 2026

Code Signing Requirements
v3.8 - Aug 5, 2024

What’s Changed CSC-25: Import EV Guidelines to CS Baseline Requirements by @dzacharo in https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/pull/38 Full Changelog: https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/compare/v3.7...v3.8

S/MIME Requirements
v1.0.14 - Ballot SMC016 - May 5, 2026

This ballot maintains consistency between the S/MIME Baseline Requirements and the TLS Baseline Requirements with changes introduced by Ballots SC096 and SC097. Specifically, this ballot: Creates a carve-out of the logging requirements for DNSSEC specifically, stating these are not in scope. For audit purposes, change management logging is able to confirm if the appropriate controls are in effect or not. Sunsets all remaining use of SHA-1 signatures in Certificates and CRLs. It is noted that most uses of SHA-1 signatures are already deprecated by SC097. With this ballot, all unexpired Subordinate CA Certificates issuing S/MIME containing the SHA-1 signature algorithm must be revoked. This proposal does not prohibit the use of SHA-1 to generate issuerKeyHash or issuerNameHash values as currently required by RFC 5019. Includes minor formatting corrections.

Network and Certificate System Security Requirements
Version 2.0.5 (Ballot NS-008) - Jul 9, 2025

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The Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser Forum) is a voluntary gathering of Certificate Issuers and suppliers of Internet browser software and other applications that use certificates (Certificate Consumers).