Subject: Free Public Key Enabled Application Test Suite Available (Update)

From: "Pawling, John" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 11:54:04 -0400

All,

This message is a reminder of the availability of free and openly
available test resources to facilitate vendor development of secure,
interoperable Public Key Enabled applications (see enclosed message from
Dave Fillingham).

Also, Getronics Government Solutions has posted the open source,
freeware Bridge Certification Authority (BCA) Interoperability Test
Suite (BITS) test data generation tool on the "DoD BCA Technology
Demonstration Site" web site <http://bcatest.atl.getronicsgov.com/>.
Anybody can use the test data generation freeware without paying
royalties or licensing fees.  This enables others to use the tool to
generate the equivalent BITS test data or to customize the test data
(such as including different distinguished names).

Please let us know if we can provide further information.

===========================================
John Pawling, [email-masked]
Getronics Government Solutions, LLC
===========================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Fillingham, David W. [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 9:19 AM
To: PKIX (E-mail)
Subject: Free Public Key Enabled Application Test Suite Available

This message announces the availability of free and openly available
test
resources to facilitate vendor development of secure, interoperable
Public
Key Enabled applications.  The US Department of Defense recently
completed
the Bridge Certification Authority (BCA) Technology Demonstration Phase
II.

The BCA Interoperability Test Suite (BITS) is now available from:

http://bcatest.atl.getronicsgov.com. 

It provides a standard set of test data that can be used to determine a
product's degree of interoperability (including error conditions) with
the
BCA Technology Demonstration Phase II architecture including: 

*   discovery and validation of X.509 certification paths in a
cross-certified Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) environment; 

* relying party processing of Certificate Policies and Certificate
Policy
Mapping extensions to accept or reject X.509 certification paths based
on
assurance level in a policy-heterogeneous PKI;

* relying party processing of Name Constraints extensions to limit
transitive trust of X.509 certification paths;

* certificate revocation using Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL);

* demonstration of cryptographic algorithm agility within X.509
certification paths; and

* transfer of signed and encrypted S/MIME messages between applications
constructing X.509 certification paths that include the BCA.

The BITS includes X.509 Certificates, CRLs, and CrossCertificatePairs
that
are equivalent to those created by the products for the BCA
Demonstration
Phase II. This test data is available via the Lightweight Directory
Access
Protocol (LDAP) from: 

ldap://bcatest.atl.getronicsgov.com

This single LDAP directory includes a directory information tree
equivalent
to that hosted on the directory servers used for the BCA Demonstration
Phase
II. This directory can be used to test a product's ability to use LDAP
to
retrieve the data required to build and validate X.509 certification
paths
composed of certificates from multiple PKIs.

The X.509 Certificates, CRLs, CrossCertificatePairs, S/MIME messages,
and
Public-Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS) #12 files (containing test
private
keys required to process the test S/MIME messages) are available in a
zip
file from: 

http://bcatest.atl.getronicsgov.com/. 

The initial BITS goal is to support the testing of S/MIME applications,
but
it is designed to serve as a general X.509 certification path discovery
and
validation test suite that can be used to test any PKI-enabled
application.

The "BCA Interoperability Test Description" documents the BITS test
cases,
procedures, and data. The BITS exercises all of the BCA Demonstration
Phase
II features except for attribute certificates, rule-based access
control,
and border directory concept. Getronics will assist vendors with
executing
BITS tests, answering technical questions, and providing troubleshooting
hints. 

Getronics used the open source, freeware Certificate Management Library
and
S/MIME Freeware Library (both available from:

http://www.getronicsgov.com/hot/sec_libraries.htm 

to successfully validate the BITS test data.

The BCA Demonstration Phase II final report is available from:

http://www.anassoc.com/BCA.html

It describes the BCA concepts, PKI architecture, cross-certification
relationships, test cases, and test results for the demonstration.