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Ballots CSC-21

RESULTS OF REVIEW PERIOD

The IPR review period ended on February 28, 2024 and no exclusion notices were filed.

The final document, with the effective date being 2024-02-28, is available here.

This Review Notice is sent pursuant to Section 4.1 of the CA/Browser Forum’s Intellectual Property Rights Policy (v1.3). This Review Period of 30 days is for one Final Maintenance Guidelines. The complete Draft Maintenance Guideline that is the subject of this Review Notice are available here for CSC-21

Summary of Review

Ballot(s) for Review: CSCWG 21 (version 3.6)

  • Start of Review Period: 17 January 2024 at 09:00 Eastern Time
  • End of Review Period: 18 February 2024 at 09:00 Eastern Time

Members with any Essential Claim(s) to exclude must forward a written Notice to Exclude Essential Claims to the Working Group Chair (email to Dean Coclin - dean.coclin@digicert.com) and also submit a copy to the CA/B CSCWG public mailing list (email to cscwg-public at cabforum.org before the end of the Review Period.

For details, please see the current version of the CA/Browser Forum Intellectual Property Rights Policy.

CSC-21

Results of Voting

YesNoAbstain
Certificate IssuersDigiCert, eMudhra, Entrust, GlobalSign, HARICA, Viking CloudSectigo
Certificate ConsumersMicrosoft

Purpose of the Ballot

This ballot updates the “Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly‐Trusted Code Signing Certificates“ version 3.4 in order to clarify language regarding Signing Service and signing requests. The main goals of this ballot are to:

  1. Clarify the Signing Service definition and the expected deployment model.
  2. Remove requirements for signing request.
  3. Change text so Signing Service is not categorized as a Delegated Third Party.
  4. Not allow Signing Service to transport Private Key to Subscriber.
  5. Ensure Network Security Requirements are applicable to Signing Service.
  6. State audit requirements for Signing Service.

The following motion has been proposed by Bruce Morton of Entrust and endorsed by Tim Hollebeek of DigiCert and Ian McMillan of Microsoft.

Motion

This ballot updates the “Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly‐Trusted Code Signing Certificates” (“Code Signing Baseline Requirements”) based on version 3.4. MODIFY the Code Signing Baseline Requirements as specified in the following redline: https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/compare/e0da5532ab81e35e2e92536c1bc9ea3c36765b26..1a134a77e74fb93ca2581d288e5a82859d6e8f88

Latest releases
Server Certificate Requirements
SC098: Process RFC 8657 CAA Parameters - Jun 16, 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
v1.0.15 - Ballot SMC017v2 - Jul 30, 2026

This ballot increases the minimum RSA key size for Root and Subordinate CA certificates in the S/MIME BRs from 2048 to 4096 bits for keys created after September 15, 2026, while retaining the 2048-bit minimum for Subscriber certificates. The ballot further requires that by September 15, 2027, CAs SHALL NOT issue Subscriber certificates from any Sub-CA whose RSA key modulus is less than 3072 bits, effectively sunsetting issuance from legacy 2048-bit Sub-CAs. The ballot also includes minor typographic corrections. This ballot is proposed by Martijn Katerbarg (Sectigo) and endorsed by Ben Wilson (Mozilla) and Stephen Davidson (DigiCert)

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

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