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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
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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