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Comment by cstdr

11 hours ago

But shouldn't such a HSM support key attestation (and the parent require such attestation)? Attestation would also track whether a key was imported or generated on the HSM, and of sufficient length.

Attestation is not required by the compliance standard for browser CAs (WebTrust) and it is also quite vendor-specific and not very interoperable, so it is not commonly done.

The Root CA must sign requests after authentication, but a "manual" approval is also accepted if done with the appropriate oversight with witnesses (clearly not the case here).

  • Of course it's not required, as we see here. The question is why not? Getting a simple code-signing cert seems to have more stringent requirements in that it either requires attestation or CA-issued hardware.

    • I’ve asked this question before and the answer was that not all HSMs support it and they're too expensive to replace.