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Ballots CSC-26

RESULTS OF REVIEW PERIOD

CSC-26

Ballot CSC 26: Timestamping Private Key Protection Ballot

The Intellectual Property Review (IPR) period for Ballot CSC26: Timestamping Private Key Protection Ballot has completed. No IPR Exclusion Notices were filed, and the ballot is adopted as of Aug 1, 2024.

The new Code Signing BRs will be published to the CABF public website in accordance with the Bylaws.

CSC-26

Results of Voting

YesNoAbstain
Certificate IssuersCertum, DigiCert, eMudhra, Entrust, GlobalSign, IdenTrust, Sectigo, SSL.com
Certificate ConsumersMicrosoft

Purpose of the Ballot

This ballot updates the “Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly‐Trusted Code Signing Certificates“ version 3.7 in order to clarify language regarding Timestamp Authority Private Key Protection. The main goals of this ballot are to:

  1. Require Timestamp Authority Subordinate CA Private Keys to be stored in offline HSMs
  2. Add a requirement to remove Private Keys associated with Timestamp Certificates after a 18 months
  3. Add a requirement to reject SHA-1 timestamp requests

The following motion has been proposed by Martijn Katerbarg of Sectigo and endorsed by Bruce Morton of Entrust 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 3.7. MODIFY the Code Signing Baseline Requirements as specified in the following redline: https://github.com/cabforum/code-signing/compare/d431d9104094f2b89f35ed4bf1d64b9a844e762b...12130ff7c2b41d795d47925c084780ea0f7328cd

Latest releases
Server Certificate Requirements
SC-089: Mass Revocation Planning - Aug 26, 2025

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
v1.0.12 - Ballot SMC014 - Oct 13, 2025

This ballot introduces requirements that a Certificate Issuer MUST deploy DNSSEC validation back to the IANA DNSSEC root trust anchor on all DNS queries associated with CAA record lookups performed by the Primary Network Perspective, effective March 15, 2026. The ballot is intended to maintain consistency in the S/MIME Baseline Requirements with the requirements of Ballot SC-085 which implemented identical requirements in the TLS Baseline Requirements. Note: SC-085 also introduced requirements in TLS Baseline Requirements for the use of DNSSEC in domain control validation. These requirements are automatically adopted in the S/MIME BR by the email domain control methods that include a normative reference to section 3.2.2.4 of the TLS Baseline Requirements. The draft also includes minor corrections to web links in the text. This ballot is proposed by Stephen Davidson (DigiCert) and endorsed by Client Wilson (Apple) and Ashish Dhiman (GlobalSign).

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).